Sports at TRASHionals

ratatosk22 · Mon, 02 Apr 2001 15:00:32 -0700

I apologize for catching the "BR"
bug...hopefully
everyone will be able to read
this.

Sports had a
couple problems.
Mainly:

1) Almost no questions
on women's
sports.
2) Varying distribution
between packets -- a
problem in a couple rounds.
3)
Too few
questions on "the big four".

The
first
is the least excusable. Packet 1 had a toss-up
on
Tara Lipinski, which I nailed off the soap opera
clue.
THAT WAS IT for toss-ups. For bonuses, I counted
two
(ABL and W-USA nationalities), plus Alexis told me
of
a third on women's slam dunk, which I could
not
remember. Even so, 1&3 is insufficient. I found it
very
interesting that there were five questions (3&2) on
men's
tennis, and none on women's, esp. since the women's
game
is more popular now. And this is not a
sour-grapes
complaint; I love tennis, and I picked up all the
possible
points. There were no questions on women's golf, just
the
Lipinski for figure skating, and a part of a bonus
on
volleyball. What about women's college basketball,
or
softball, or the Olympics?

For the
second, I point
to three packets: Rounds 2, 10, and
14. Yes, my team
lost on two of these, so this is
probably more sour
grapes, I admit. Nonetheless, look
at the sports
toss-ups:

Round
2: Larry Beil, O'Reilly (sp?) I can't
even
remember if the second one was sports, but I think it
was.
That was it. Plus I think these two belonged in
the
same genre of "sports journalism".
Round
10:
Orbiter Trophy, softball, and ambidexterity. The
Trophy
was a difficult question on an ABA award
that
probably belonged as a hard bonus part, but fine, this
is
the national level. Softball had no clues at the
end
(particularly ones relating to women would have helped, and
the
question pointed to its history before
1900).
Ambidexterity was ambiguous; would switch-hitting,
switching
hands be acceptable? Plus that was a borderline
sports
question at best.
Round 14: Michael Waltrip, Kane
(sp?)
the pro wrestler. Is pro wrestling a sport?
Possibly,
but it certainly should not exist as one of only
two
sports toss-ups in a packet, especially when the
other
one is auto racing.

Which brings
me to
complaint three: while non Big-Four sports
(baseball,
hockey, college/pro football, college/pro
basketball)
deserve ample representation, it appeared they got
more
than 50% at times. I counted 22 non big-four
toss-ups
to 26 on the Big Four (though an even 21-21 split
in
the first 14 rounds). 50% should be the
absolute
limit on the non-majors, perhaps a bit lower. Yet
like
#2, this was more of a micro-level (ind.
packet)
problem than a tourney-wide
issue.

Yeah, the
larger emphasis on pre-1950 sports was
aggravating, but
this was nationals, and besides, it hurt
everyone
equally. Maldistribution is another matter;
individual
teams with better sports players
get
penalized.

-Adam