User talk:Random89/Proposal for Sports on ITN

I know that Golf and Tennis seem over represented, but i can't think of a better way, since if one Major or Grand Slam is worthy than they all are. Random89 (talk) 05:16, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Soccer

I don't think the club and women's World Cups get enough press (we haven't added the Club WC at ITN as long as I could've remember.) --Howard the Duck 10:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering about the Club WC, but technically it's a step up from champion's league which everyone wants to see on. I wouldn't be opposed to replacing one with the other though. Random89 (talk) 16:32, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I dunno, the Club WC ironically doesn't have the stature of the UEFA CL, despite the UEFA CL technically classified as a "qualification tournament". As for the Women's WC, I dunno if it was ever added so I'm skeptical about that. --Howard the Duck 16:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

You've got point about the club world cup. But I'd rather see the WWC on there than not. Its the same issue with the FIBA Women's Championship and the US Women's Open (and to a lesser extent the IIHF World Women Championships. I would rather see the former two done away with and keep the FIFA Women's World Cup. Random89 (talk) 16:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the only women's sport worth keeping are the tennis events. --Howard the Duck 16:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I basically through them all in for discussion and it would not pain me at all to see the woman's basketball and golf gone. However, the soccer and hockey are a bit of a different story. Soccer is the most popular team sport in the world, and especially in north america, women's soccer is often as popular as men's. For the hockey, i think it's a matter of relative popularity; the IIHF championships for men aren't a huge deal, so by comparison the women's championships are more important. Random89 (talk) 19:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, women's basketball is a bit bigger than women's soccer, at least for me. When you ask soccer supremacists it's another story, but I'd say women's basketball is bigger. As for ice hockey, I don't know. It seems that the only time ice hockey made it was the Stanley Cup Finals and the Winter Olympics. --Howard the Duck 02:09, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree the World Club Championships probably shouldn't be there. It never seems to get a great deal of press here in Britain, but perhaps that's just because a British team hasn't won it yet. Hammer Raccoon (talk) 19:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Nil Einne (talk)

Cricket

As it stands, we will only be mentioning ODI cricket every four years. What about the ICC Champions Trophy? And what about other forms of cricket. For Twenty20 the Twenty20 World Cup is the obvious choice but for test cricket which is probably the most popular form in India or perhaps even all of South Asia as well as usually being considered the most prestigious form of the game we have no obvious choice (the only thing which perhaps came close was the best in the world vs rest of the world event but that failed spectacularly). Our best option perhaps is to continue what we are doing now, only mention it when there is an exceptional occurance e.g. the recent Australia-India controversy or Australia's spectacular loss of the Ashes in 2005. Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

How about The Ashes? It's extensively covered by the media. --Howard the Duck 14:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Rugby (union)

Okay for Rugby the problem is there is no genuine top level championship at the club level. Both the Heineken Cup and the Super 14 are of great importance. The Heineken Cup I presume involves significant more money and has a larger audience but the Super 14 arguably involves the better players. The player things is difficult to judge since there is no Heineken vs Super 14 game/s but despite their poor performance at the recent world cup, the trinations countries have usually dominated the IRB World Rankings and also have better records in tests against the six nations countries. Since players for the trinations countries generally have to remain in their country to play for their country this would suggest that the Super 14 players are probably better then the Heineken players (this is unlike football where a lot of the best players tend to end up in the UEFA). And in terms of 'prestigiousness', I don't think there is any clear boundry. NZ players and I guess players from the other trinations countries tend to want to go to the Heineken for the money but they don't seem to consider it an important part of their carrier otherwise. Ultimately, I think they both remain highly patrochial with the Heineken being the most important thing for the six nations countries/audience and the Super 14 for the trinations countries/audiences. So should we include both? Or neither? Or altenate? Or what? If we include both we will have rugby 2.25 times a year on average (i.e. 2 except in world cup years where its 3 times) Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I say we leave out the Super 14. The Heineken Cup seems to be covered more extensively (hence = news), and the competing countries are larger. --Howard the Duck 14:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Averages

The average calculation appears to assume that each event occurs once a year. This is obviously not the case for quite a few of the events, e.g. the olympics (every 2 years alternating between winter and summer), most world cups (every 4 years)... Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Most if not all club competitions are held annually, while national team competitions are held on longer intervals. Nevertheless, it will still guarantee a major sport will be mentioned at least once a year. --Howard the Duck 14:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Other sports

There are a lot of other sports we IMHO should include here and which we have included before. E.g. Cycling (le tour de france I guess, anything else?), motorsport (F1? Indy? A1GP? WRC? Le Mans?), yatching (America's Cup, anything else?). Then there's also stuff which may have appeared before or at least has been suggested like rugby league, Aussie rules, Gaelic football, Canadian football (I seperated these since it's less obvious to me any of them should be included). And particularly if we are going to include the last few what about things like netball? volleyball? handball? badminton? hockey (I mean real hockey here i.e. field hockey not ice hockey)? Note that in particular when it comes to Aussie rules, Australia is a fairly small country and it isn't even the most popular sport in all parts of Australia so you could easily see the audience, even the English speaking audience for said sport being smaller then the audience which follows many of the other sports I've mentioned like badminton (which I'm pretty sure has a decent audience from China, Indonesia, Malaysia and possibly Denmark). Similarly according to comments when it came to handball it's a fairly popular sport in parts of Europe. And although cricket is the most popular sport by far in South Asia, I believe hockey is still fairly popular in South Asia particularly India and Pakistan despite the fact they don't do so well nowadays. Then there's also the tricky issue of stuff like athletic events, swimming events etc (where the top events are surely the olympics and there are way too many for us to mention singly) Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Include F1 and America's Cup. All other sports (netball, badminton, handball) are too minor; they rarely mentioned in BBC and CNN (I) sport recap programs. Add them only if something big really happened (like a final match needed 5 OTs to be finished, a major riot, etc.) I dunno about the Indy 500 since it was mentioned last year, maybe for the sole reason a non-American won in an American race. --Howard the Duck 14:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

PS: Add the Tour de France as well. --Howard the Duck 16:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Article

Shouldn't we emphasise that the article for events in the list should still be decent? Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

This is proposed a subset of the ITN criteria so these articles should also conform with the others. --Howard the Duck 14:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Boxing

How about boxing? The heavyweight division seems to be ignored so how about the lighter divisions? --Howard the Duck 14:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding sports I omitted from original list

First of all, Howard is right to say that this list would be subsidiary to other ITN criteria, meaning of something really impiortant sports-related happened it would still make it on (ie. 100m world record). Theres no real reason that i didn't include several of the sports you meantioned except that it didn't occue to me. Some of them now seem obvious, such as the Tour de France. Also, just for the record, I am canadian, so my knowledge of sports like cricket and rugby does suffer a bit. Random89 (talk) 16:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

How about adding a second class of sports events that'll be posted iff something unique happens? For example, a golf major that went through a playoff, etc. --Howard the Duck 16:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding multi-sport events

Following up on comments I made on the itn template talk: page, I would be in favour of including Commonwealth, pan-am, and asian, but not south-east asian, all based upon weather the articles are up to standards. Random89 (talk) 04:18, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

As so often, it becomes an issue of how far down a route we go. Meditteranean Games? Pan Arab Games? And what about multi-event, but not multi-sports events, such as the IAAF Championships, World Swimming or Weightlifting Championships? You have included other Olympic sports in their non-Olympic years. Kevin McE (talk) 10:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the swimming and weightlifting championships were covered that extensively... well swimming was quite covered, the IAAF were covered but not that much. The recent world boxing championships in Chicago (oh no, U.S. centric! lol) were covered in our country only because a few of our representatives reached the last four. --Howard the Duck 02:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I think swimming naked would be a lot of drama on WP. I say it should be covered :D --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:12, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Women's events

There is, unfortunately, a vast discrepancy between coverage of men's and women's sports. In the UK at least, many overseas football competitions for men have wider coverage than the Women's World Cup, and routine European Tour events in golf have more airtime and newspsper space than even the Women's US Open. So the issue must be faced up to as to whether the depth opf women's sport covered in such a list of events presumed to be post-worthy are determined by issues of equality and fairness, or by the extent to which thay are, indeed, in the news. Kevin McE (talk) 10:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

As I've said above, the women's sport that is covered most extensively is tennis, far followed by figure skating, golf and the team sports. I think in team sports volleyball is covered extensively but not by ITN standards. Again, if something unique happens in a sporting event that it receives enough coverage and attention, it may be considered for ITN. Also, I think the women's events in Olympics is covered extensively (Misty May, anyone?). --Howard the Duck 11:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I would add that the WWC is probably better covered in north america than in europe, as it is a tournament were both the canadian and american teams are competitve.Random89 (talk) 17:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Which returns us to the eternal, and eternally unresolved, ITN issue about whether we are dealing with what is of international importance, or what is in US/UK news reports. Kevin McE (talk) 21:36, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Essentially, what is reported extensively and has significant updated articles. However, much of the English language media is HQed in NYC and London so there'll be supposedly Anglophone bias, although the BBC makes efforts to report news from anywhere. --Howard the Duck 02:37, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The Next Step

As the edit level to this page has substantially dropped off, I will be moving it to Wikipedia:Sports on ITN and tagging it as an essay, moving along the road towards a new ITN guideline. If anyone feels there's a better way to proceed, go ahead and do it. Random89 (talk) 02:00, 6 February 2008 (UTC)