This Badminton thing is stupid!!

[QC]

This is absolutely stupid. It is NOT the players, or even the coaches fault, it is the rules of the tournament. There are times in the NFL where NOT scoring a touchdown is smart play. There are times in MLB where dropping the ball makes competitive sense. So the IOC thinks they can force players to play harder when throwing a game improves their chances at a gold medal? The teams' goals are the medals, not entertainment. The entertainment comes from the pursuit of the medal, make the pursuit harder. Change the rules!

This actually has me a little mad. The players work their butt's off to get here. The rules reward dropping the game, The coaches recommend it, and the players are the one's hurt. Even if they did play they'd just be going through the motions. How can you force someone to play hard when it is stupid to do it?

Eight Players Banned

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: This Badminton thing is stupid!!

This is absolutely stupid. It is NOT the players, or even the coaches fault, it is the rules of the tournament. There are times in the NFL where NOT scoring a touchdown is smart play. There are times in MLB where dropping the ball makes competitive sense. So the IOC thinks they can force players to play harder when throwing a game improves their chances at a gold medal? The teams' goals are the medals, not entertainment. The entertainment comes from the pursuit of the medal, make the pursuit harder. Change the rules!

This actually has me a little mad. The players work their butt's off to get here. The rules reward dropping the game, The coaches recommend it, and the players are the one's hurt. Even if they did play they'd just be going through the motions. How can you force someone to play hard when it is stupid to do it?

Eight Players Banned

I think the officials don't mind the players dropping a point or two (ie: touchdown equivalents) but losing the whole game on purpose to reposition themselves for the final medal games is not in the 'spirit of competition'. I've never known a pro sports team to openly do that....at least to my recollection.
I think what is probably more interesting will be how annoyed these countries (particularly China) will be at having their chances to win more gold medals completely eliminated in this competition...thus lowering their count or 'haul', so to speak.
Question: are you getting the games 'live' in the states? There has some controversy about there being a time hold back on the games in the U.S to show them at prime time only to extract higher advertisement revenues or something like that.
We are on the West Coast so the U.K is about 8hrs ahead of us I think...which makes it about 4-5 hrs ahead of the Eastern seaboard. I would think that some events are planned for more mid-morning so they show later in the afternoon over on this side of the pond?
All Good
BP

 

[spyder9179]

Re: This Badminton thing is stupid!!

NBA teams regularly "rest" starters (read-throw the game) in order to better position themselves in the draft. NFL teams do the same if they've already made the playoffs, more to reduce the chance of injury than to gain or lose positions on purpose, but the result is the same. Poorly competed games that fans are still required to pay full price for tickets to attend.

 

[oldjeep]

Re: This Badminton thing is stupid!!

Question: are you getting the games 'live' in the states? There has some controversy about there being a time hold back on the games in the U.S to show them at prime time only to extract higher advertisement revenues or something like that.

The "important" stuff is held back - finals of sports that americans tend to care about or are good at. There is a bunch of live stuff, but tends to be preliminaries for the popular sports. We get about 7 channels of olympic stuff right now, hard to say what is live and what is not.

Advertising may be a factor, but truth is that msot of us are at work when the events are on so replaying from 7-11 CST makes sense. Only thing I wish is that CNN and other outlets could restrain themselves from posting results on their home pages

As for the badminton thing - I have a hard time caring, but think that it is dumb to have rules in place that make it advantageous to throw a game.

 

[QC]

Re: This Badminton thing is stupid!!

but think that it is dumb to have rules in place that make it advantageous to throw a game.

Exactly, even if they went through the motions it would be a farce. The rules are the problem, not the players or coaches.