Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2011 January 7

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January 7

MLB and NBA

Questions about MLB and NBA: a) Why MLB and NBA don't draft players from Canadian Universities? b) Why MLB and NBA don't allow teams to wear white uniforms for road and colour uniforms for home? c) Why MLB and NBA are popular in America and not in Canada? d) What is unique about NBA and MLB from the rest of the leagues? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.89.43.48 (talk) 03:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

a) Good Canadian players (Steve Nash, Rick Fox, etc.) enroll in American universities because the competition is at a higher level and also because scouts are more likely to see them.

c) Unless you're from Toronto, it's not easy to root for the one mediocre MLB team that is a longshot every year to make the playoffs and the one currently lousy NBA team. Still, it's not that they're not popular. They're just not as popular as hockey, eh. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:51, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

a) There are also some notable Canadian baseball players, besides the basketball players noted above. The best known is probably Ferguson Jenkins, or the more recently active Éric Gagné, and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame attests to other notable players as well (not all of the inductees there are Canadians by birth, but some are).

b) Home teams in all four major American sports may generally choose to wear any color they want; with the stipulation that the away team has to wear a contrasting color. Tradition decides whether the home team in a sport usually wears white or a colored uniform. In major league baseball, the sport with the longest professional history in the U.S., the tradition was for teams to wear white uniforms at home and grey uniforms on the road; this system dates back to the 1800's. Other than accent colors on the hats, and maybe some colored piping on the shirts, all baseball uniforms followed this convention until Charlie Finley introduce the garish green-and-yellow color scheme to his Athletics teams in the 1960's. The gray away uniforms transitioned to "Robin's Egg Blue" in the 1970's, and by the 1980's, most teams except baseball's "Old guard" like the Yankees and the Red Sox used various colored home and away jerseys. By the late 1990's, the practice of having a third "alternate" jersey entered the MLB, meaning that nearly every team has a "white" a "grey" and a "colored" jersey now. For the NBA, the tradition has always been white at home and colors on the road; for many years the lone exception was the L.A. Lakers, who only very recently introduced a White jersey; for a long time the Lakers had only a Yellow home and Purple away jersey. In the NFL, the tradition has always been to have the home jersey to be the team's primary color, and thus the white jersey is usually used for road games; the exception being that the Dallas Cowboys who traditionally wear white at home; as a result of this they rarely wear their blue jerseys; out of spite their divisional rivals like the Redskins or the Giants will often wear white at home for just the Cowboy's games; to get the Cowboys in their blues occasionally. Like the NFL, the NHL has traditionally followed the "Colors at home, Whites on the road" tradition; but its still up to the home team's discretion.

c: has been adequately answered above.

d: Not sure what you mean by "unique". MLB has the distinction of having the longest season, in terms of number of games, of any major professional sports league (possibly worldwide; you'd have to check that, but I suspect it to be true) at 162. That creates a very different sort of strategizing; baseball strategy is based on the long-haul rather more winning individual games because of this. Baseball also has a much larger focus on statistics than other sports (see Sabrmetrics). The NBA is the youngest of the four major professional leagues; it's the only one of the four major leagues to be founded after WWII. The NBA also has traditionally featured teams in markets not served by the other sports. It remains the only major league with teams in cities like Orlando, Florida, Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, California, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Salt Lake City, Utah, and was the first league to enter the Phoenix, Arizona market by over a decade.

That's the best answers I can provide. --Jayron32 05:58, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

There was once a practical reason for wearing darker colors on the road, as the clubs could get away without laundering the uniforms so frequently, especially as they played nearly every day and it might have been tough to find quick-turnaround laundries. I recall when hockey teams wore their colors at home and white on the road, and then sometime in the 70s they switched to the baseball approach. Since then they seem to have switched back, or perhaps it's at the team's discretion now. The days of having literally just one uniform to wear on the road are presumably long past. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:14, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

They switched back to colours at home in the NHL for a couple of years recently, and then they switched back again to whites at home, this year or last year I think. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:20, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

To get back to the first question, Canadian university sports are played at a much less competitive level than top US college sports. Part of it is because there are few athletic scholarships in Canadian universities, part of it is because revenues from college sports are insignificant in Canada, and huge in the United States. As a result, the best Canadian professional prospects who attend university do so in the USA. That includes ice hockey players, by the way. There are a few exception: Canadian universities do graduate the majority of Canadian players in the Canadian Football League, the level of competition is not bad (a little weaker than Division II in the NCAA) and as a result a handful of Canadian university players - mainly linemen - have been drafted by NFL teams. In baseball, at least one Canadian university player, Jeff Francis of the University of British Columbia, has been a top draft choice (in 2002); in contrast, players are selected from Canadian high schools every year in baseball's first year player draft. There are also a few NHL players who have played in Canadian universities, but they are usually not drafted at all and they have to make it to the big leagues through sheer perseverance. --Xuxl (talk) 16:52, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Please, ignore the last question because the real question I wanted to asked was why MLB and NBA don't do award ceremony like CFL and NHL do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.20.191 (talk) 00:50, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean award ceremonies? Major league baseball and the NBA have numerous awards. Baseball has the Golden Glove awards for fielding, the Cy Young Award for pitching, the Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award, the Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award and several others. The NBA offers the all the awards listed on the template to the right. How does this make them different than the CFL or the NHL?--Jayron32 19:36, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

You don't understand. Award ceremonies mean that you have a program where a presenter says like for example the defensive player of the year goes to this player. instead mlb and nba give the award to the player before the regular season ends. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.154.203 (talk) 02:41, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

MLB gives out its awards once the baseball season is totally over. Not sure about the NBA, but at the very least, it wouldn't be announced until after the regular season is over. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Baseball gives out all of its awards after the end of the World Series. They generally get anounced to the public in "dribs and drabs" right after the end of the World Series, usually like one per day for like a week. I have no idea if there is a formal awards ceremony when they are handed out, or if the awarding body just mails the plaque or trophy. I suspect there is some sort of ceremony for each award, probably that it is just not televised. I did a little looking, and it looks like most NBA awards are given out after the end of the regular season, but before the finals; i.e. during the playoffs sometime. For example, Tim Duncan won the NBA MVP award on May 6 2002, while the 2002 NBA Finals were played the first full week of June. Again, I don't know that there is a formal ceremony for such awarding; there may be, and it may just not be televised. --Jayron32 13:02, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

College hockey players

How do Canadian and American universities' hockey players play in the National Hockey League? like how do they get drafted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.89.43.48 (talk) 03:20, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Some team picks them in the NHL Entry Draft. There's no rule against drafting university players. Harvard (of all places) had the most draftees of all universities in 1996.[1] Clarityfiend (talk) 04:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Because of an extensive junior hockey and minor league hockey system, along with very good overseas hockey infrastructure, college hockey does not produce the number of professional-level players that you find in sports like college basketball and college football. Hockey is much more like baseball in this manner; in that the "college" route is not the standard path to the pros. However, some players each year do reach the NHL out of college. Professional teams don't refuse to draft really good players out of college, but the number of players developed through other paths is great, reducing the need to use the college system as a defacto development league as the NBA and NFL do. --Jayron32 05:34, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know a lot about the fine details of how hockey runs its business, but although the minimum age at drafting is supposed to be 18, it seems that there are ways for teams to get their hooks into players well before that. I'm thinking specifically of Wayne Gretzky, who was a hockey prodigy if there ever was one. I recall hearing about him when he was in high school or maybe earlier, and I don't even follow the details of hockey all that much. He was the "can't miss kid" who indeed lived up to his potential. (On one of the ref desks, someone asked how talent and skill were different. Gretzky had both. Eric Nesterenko, to name one, was another story.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:01, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The 18-year-old rule was an NHL rule. Gretzky got around that by playing for a competing league until he turned 18. Prior to his 18th birthday he played for the WHA's Indianapolis Racers and Edmonton Oilers. By the time the WHA folded and the Oilers moved to the NHL, Gretzky was already 18. --Jayron32 15:58, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Often, players who are drafted from university, including Canadians, have avoided the junior hockey route all together. They often play in less-competitive leagues in order to concentrate on their high school studies - something that's very difficult while playing junior hockey - and then seek out an athletic scholarship at a US university. The downside is that they don't get to play against the best competition until a fairly advanced age, and that may hamper their development as players. Canadian universities tend to recruit older players who have played junior hockey, or younger ones who were not quite good enough to do so. Those players are in general focussed on their studies and play for pleasure, as their chance of going on to play in the NHL from there is extremely low, but once in a while, a player will catch the right breaks and make it. --Xuxl (talk) 17:00, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

One older player who joined a university team recently is Mike Danton...but he has little chance of making it back to the NHL. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:23, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, trying to kill your agent may be seen as a net positive on your resume in some circles --Jayron32 21:49, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Especially to the Calgary Hitmen. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:15, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Sports scores prediction

I frequently hear Warner Wolf on WABC radio not only predicting who will win a football game between two particular teams, but also the score. What's the sense in that? How can one predict a score? I sense that that's too particular of a thing to be able to pre-determine, almost like predicting whether someone will get tackled on the 30 yard line or the 20 yard line. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 14:15, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Considering how often the experts get the final result wrong, predicting a specific score is even less likely to be successful. It might be a subtle way of indicating the point spread. But in Warner's case, it's probably just part of his shtick. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

It has to do with sports betting. "Respectable" journalists and the sports leagues they cover don't want to be seen as promoting gambling on their sport, so they won't often come out and give betting advice on individual games. However, in American football the two most common bets are bets against the point spread, and bets against the "over/under". See Spread betting for more details on both of these. When a sports commentator says he predicts the score will be, say, 24-21, what he is telling you is he believes there will be a three point spread, and the over/under line will be 45. You can sometimes really read between the lines on some of these things, for example Chris Berman's "Swami" persona is his betting advice persona; he never actually mentions the spread, but you can see sometimes when he tells you to "I pick the Eagles in this game" and then shows the Eagles losing by a score of, say, 21-20. When you check the papers and find that the spread is Eagles +3.5, its obvious he's giving betting advice, even though he wants to give the illusion that he isn't. --Jayron32 15:54, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

There have been serious scientific statistical studies that create formulas that predict some sports results, but I cannot put my finger on any details. 92.24.183.6 (talk) 17:43, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

One-day cricket uses one such formula to determine score targets in matches which have lost play to rain – the Duckworth–Lewis method. Oldelpaso (talk) 18:51, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

NFL and MLB

Why some teams are considered American in Baseball and national in football like Detroit and some teams are national in baseball and american in football like san diego and denver and cincinnati? Why some teams are considered American in both baseball and football cleveland and baltimore and kansas city and why some teams are considered national in both baseball and football like arizona, st.louis, and atlanta? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.33.138 (talk) 15:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to National and American Leagues, and National and American Conferences. Which conference a city is in for which sport is a product of the leagues' respective histories. The managements of the leagues themselves (MLB and NFL) are independent of each other. It would take many paragraphs here to explain it all, so just read the histories of those leagues and perhaps it will become clearer. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:00, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Just an overview: In both baseball and football, the original leagues were the National League (founded 1876) and the National Football League (founded 1920), respectively. Both leagues had a certain amount of instability in their early years but eventually settled down. Then rival leagues started to appear, typically called American-something. Some of those rival leagues folded. The ones that survived were the American League (founded 1900) and the American Football League (founded 1960). The American League is separate from the National League in many ways, although they do play interleague games. The American Football League was absorbed by the National Football League, and some realignment was done to make the two conferences the same size (currently 16 teams per conference). The NFL conferences are artificial. They could just as easily be called the George Halas and Lamar Hunt Conferences if the NFL wanted to (for the trophies that the conference winners get). OK, that's already pretty long-winded. Did that explanation help any? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

In baseball, the National and American Leagues operate no differently than the National and American Conferences do in football (with the LONE exception being the Designated hitter.) Consolidation to a single league structure happened more gradually in baseball than in football; but today MLB is a single league for all intents and purposes. The final vestiges of seperateness of the two baseball "leagues" ended in 1999, when the offices of American League President and National League President were abolished. --Jayron32 16:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, in baseball, they could rename the National and American Leagues the Warren Giles and Will Harridge Conferences if they wanted to, again named for their trophies. The reason they keep those National and American names presumably has to do with tradition and marketing (maybe not in that order). When the American Association folded in 1892 and 4 of its teams were brought into the National League, the league was officially called the National League and American Association for awhile. Likewise, when the All-American Football Conference was absorbed by the National Football League in 1950, they dropped the old Eastern and Western Divisions and renamed them the National and American Conferences. After a few years, they reverted back to Eastern and Western, but retain the suffix "Conference" instead of "Division". Divisions were introduced into baseball, and re-introduced into football, as necessitated by expansion. I hope the OP is getting all this, because there'll be a quiz next period. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:40, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Also, to respond to another of your earlier points, the AFC and NFC are NOT completely artificial, like the NL and AL in baseball, they have their origins in formerly independent leagues. All of the pre-merger 10 AFL teams (Bills, Dolphins, Pats, Jets, Raiders, Chiefs, Broncos, Chargers, Oilers, and Bengals) are part of the AFC. Because the AFL was a 10-team league and the NFL was a 16-team league at the time of the AFL-NFL merger, three NFL teams had to "jump" to the AFC to make the two conferences have an equal number of teams. Ultimately, the Browns, Steelers, and Colts were the teams to do so; however it was a contentious issue at the time of the merger as to WHICH teams would have to make the switch. Since the merger, teams have been added or swapped between leagues and/or divisions occasionally for geography or scheduling purposes, but as historic rivalries are also respected in these decisions, the old AFL teams still form the core of the AFC. The NL and AL are also not any more sacrosanct with regards to their membership than the football conferences. See Milwaukee Brewers. The point is that there is absolutely no fundemental difference to the way that the NFL and the MLB are organized. --Jayron32 16:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

That is one reason why the Dallas Cowboys are in the Eastern Conference of the NFC, even though they are further west the the Western Conference St Louis Rams. Googlemeister (talk) 18:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, it used to be FAR worse. There was a time, prior to the current structure in the NFL, when the NFC West had the Carolina Panthers, Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints while the NFC East had the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals. While it may seem like team movement caused these alignments, that's not so. The Falcons were in the West and the Cardinals had played in the East since the AFL-NFL merger. The reason for this is the "horse trading" that went on during the merger process. The problem was, at the time, no teams wanted to move out of traditional alignments. On the first hand, no one wanted to move "out" of the NFC to the AFC, even though they had to; and the merger mandated a "six division" structure to the final league, however there was no clear way to make sure that a) traditional rivalries got preserved AND b) were geographically logical. Ultimately what happened (and this is a TRUE STORY) is that Pete Rozelle got so fed up with the bickering, he threw about twenty various proposals for the final league organization into a hat, drew one of them out at random, and THAT became the official organization. --Jayron32 19:17, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Which makes the DH issue all the more strange. It's kind of like if the AFC had the two-point conversion and the NFC didn't. Anyway, I wonder if the OP understands now, or is more baffled than ever. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:01, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

To maybe explain some specifics raised by the OP, consider San Diego. The Chargers began as a direct rival to the Rams in Los Angeles. Thus they were kind of like the Angels competing against the Dodgers. The Chargers couldn't compete in LA, so they moved to the open market in San Diego. The Angels, likewise, moved south - except they stopped at Anaheim. When MLB wanted to expand again, in 1969, they chose to place San Diego in the NL, for whatever reason, while assigning Seattle an AL franchise. That left the west coast with 3 AL teams and 3 NL teams. They could just as easily have assigned Seattle to the NL and San Diego to the AL, which would have coincidentally matched the NFL situations, but they didn't do it that way. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:15, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

National Football League game interruption rules

As this weekend brings the start of the National Football League playoffs, I recently wondered what would happen if one of the games was disrupted after in had started by any number of unfortunate events...(complete stadium power failure, terrorist attack, severe inclement weather, etc). How would the game be handled? Would the teams resume the game on a later date, retaining the scores when the original game was canceled? If a certain amount of time had been played, would they not resume and just declare a winner? I know games have been delayed or rescheduled in the past due to weather concerns, but what about situations where the game has started, a sizable amount of time has been played, and the game is interrupted and not finished the same day? 10draftsdeep (talk) 17:08, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The NFL tends to play in most any conditions, although a lights-out problem would be a show-stopper for sure. I think there was a game at the new Meadowlands this past season that had a power outage, and they just waited until power was restored. What you're asking is what if the power figured to be out for a long time, or maybe what if the Metrodome roof had collapsed at halftime instead of overnight. I'm assuming the league has contingency plans. But I wonder if a game ever has been interrupted. I'll see if I can find anything. (Although Jay might beat me to it.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:19, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, I have an NFL rules book for 2007, and I expect it's still good on this point. Rule 17 discusses how to handle various emergencies. In all cases, it is up to the Commissioner or his representative to decide whether to stop a game, unless they can't be reached, in which case the Referee makes the decision to stop the game. It is then up to the Commissioner to reschedule the game, and it will be picked up at the point the play stopped, effectively becoming like a suspended game in baseball, with one exception: If, in the Commissioner's opinion, the outcome of the game would not be affected, he can declare the game terminated. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:30, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

This item[2] contains a copy-and-paste of the portion of Rule 17 that I've been talking about. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:36, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Excellent. So it is a situational decision. If the game is tied or relatively close in score it will most likely be resumed at a later date, but if the score is 48 - 10 with only a couple minutes remaining in the 4th quarter, it seems like fair assumption it will be terminated and a winner declared. Thanks Bugs. 10draftsdeep (talk) 18:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The 50th Grey Cup game, in 1962, was interrupted by fog in the fourth quarter and completed the next day, starting from the point when it had been suspended. --Xuxl (talk) 18:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm pleased to see that our questioner would still be seeking a result for the game even after a terrorist attack. Good positive attitude there. ;-) HiLo48 (talk) 21:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

That's the same kind of thinking that went into the IRS having a contingency plan for collecting taxes in the event of a nuclear holocaust. :) On the other hand, the NFL played its normal schedule on 11/24/63, since "JFK would have wanted it that way." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:00, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner at the time, subsequently repeated many times that having the NFL play games that day had been the decision he had regretted most. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:04, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Surely the thing about our response to terrorism is that they don't get to dictate to us how our lives should be lead. If we give in on things like football schedules, they've won. It's already bad enough that we have to almost strip naked to get through the security gates at airports, thanks to them. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:50, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I seem to recall that Week 2 of the NFL was cancelled in 2001 due to 9/11. This was spun as a mourning sort-of thing, but probably had a great deal to do with the shutdown of the air traffic system. Baseball's shutdown was more immediate, and more obviously a practical reaction given their fuller schedule, with teams stranded in various cities. To the best of my knowledge, all of the postponed games were made up. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 20:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)