One of the many, many reasons I don't like soccer is that there's no clock.  Or rather, there is a clock, but it doesn't really matter that much.  If the referee thinks there should be a couple of minutes added to the end of the game, he goes ahead and tacks them on while viewers and participants wonder when the game will end. 

Can you imagine if we played other, better sports the same way?  In football we'd have the two-ish minute warning.  NBA fourth quarters would take e v e n  l o n g e r.  Hockey would still go unwatched.  It would be chaos. 

Of course, there are some sports that are even worse.  Figure skating, gymnastics and synchronized swimming all have judges to tell us who won, since they don't have actual scoreboards.  It's the difference between swimming and diving.  Swimming is a sport.  Diving is an art - and art is always subjective. 

The only thing that saves these "judgment events" from complete irrelevance is that the governing bodies try to ensure the evaluation process is as open and straightforward as possible. For example, after a major scandal involving a French judge in the 2002 Olympics, figure skating overhauled its judging system to base it on more objective criteria.

Growing up, I remember getting steamed over some of the unusually high scores the Warsaw Pact judges seemed to give each other's athletes, but the fact that all scores were made public meant that truly ridiculous machinations were out of the question.

Which brings us to the FOXSports.com Next Great Sportswriter competition.

I'm kind of new around here, but I've been around long enough to realize that the people running this contest make the Bush administration look like a bunch of gossipy, loose-lipped neighbors by comparison.  Let's just say communication and openness are not their strong points.

The latest brilliant move by the judges is not releasing their scores for the assignments, preferring instead to offer some vague high-medium-low groupings.  The problem is that this closed process lends itself to all kinds of mischief.

There's an old joke: "Of course this is a democracy, it's just that I have 51 percent of the votes."  Well that could be what's happening here.

Consider two bloggers, we'll call the first one "Blogger A" and the second one "MooreSports."  Let's say these two folks turn in their second NGS assignment and after all the reader judging is in, Blogger A has an average rating of 3.1 points while MooreSports has an average rating of 4.0 points.  Seems like a runaway, right?  After all, that's a pretty huge difference and the judges only have 50 percent of the vote. 

But what if the judges decide - for some reason - that they don't want MooreSports to move on to the next round?  Well then, assuring that result really isn't that hard. They just give Blogger A a rating of 4.0 and give MooreSports a rating of 3.0.  After you average the scores together, MooreSports will be at 3.5 and Blogger A will be at 3.55.  A close call, to be sure, but Blogger A moves on, while the people's choice, MooreSports, is crying in his beer. 

But that's a pretty minor case.  What if MooreSports was actually at 4.2 after the "fan" voting and Blogger A was at 2.9?  Well, it's a bit tougher, but the omniscient judges can get their preferred result just by giving MooreSports a rating of 2.5 and Blogger A the same 4.0 rating.  That gives us a blended score of 3.35 for Moore and 3.45 for Blogger A.  Another close race, but once again Blogger A moves on.

And because the judge's scores are secret, no one will ever be the wiser.

So let's be honest.  In reality, the system the judges put in place allows them to pick whomever they want as the winner - despite their claim that they "only" have half the votes.  It's just like that presidential election a few years back, where millions of people went out and voted, but the only result that mattered was whatever the nine geezers on the Supreme Court decided.

The only safeguard against this kind of blatant score-fixing is the community's outcry over such obvious manipulation.  The problem is that - without knowing what scores the judges gave - even this minimal protection is nonexistent. 

So here's the thing.  Judges, I'm sure you have your reasons for not releasing the scores, but you're wrong.  Do the right thing here.  For once.  Have an open process.

And all you other bloggers who aren't in the contest, speak up.  Let your voices be heard.  The remaining 12 contestants can't say very much without risking the wrath of the judges.  Their hands are tied.  It's up to the rest of us to raise the issue and help ensure Fox runs a fair contest. 

The folks still in this thing deserve nothing less.  Agree?

Chuck Klosterman is a fantastic writer.  Although his subject matter is the epitome of ephemera, he manages to tease out deep causal connections from the most banal of pop culture material.  I love the guy.  He makes me think.

But today I think he's wrong. 

Klosterman has an article over on that other, lesser sports website where he manages to tie together hallucinogenic mushrooms, the Apocalypse and the expanding use of the 3-point shot in NBA basketball.  Read it - it's fantastic stuff.

The problem is that his underlying theory doesn't add up.  Klosterman suggests that the main reason players shoot so many long-range shots today is because the league briefly changed the rules by bringing in the 3-point line before the 1994-1995 season.  The new, shorter line only lasted three years (not the two Chuck claims), but it changed the game forever.  I'll let him tell it:

"The 3-pointer became a viable shot for everyone, which was bad for the game... But this, in its own way, was the equivalent of prehistoric apes getting stoned and making art. This brave new world of indiscriminate 3-launching was way more interesting; the players loved it, and they were never going to return to the way things were. So they just kept shooting them, even when the line was moved back. And because this felt normal, it became normal. The game changed in order to reflect the way its participants perceived it."

It's a great theory, but once we give those mushrooms some time to wear off, we find it's not supported by the evidence.  Here's a graph depicting the percentage of 3-pointers taken each year in the NBA since the introduction of the 3-point line before the 1979-1980 season (sources: here and here):

Klosterman's right.  When the league moved the line closer, 3-point shot attempts went way up, as we would expect.  And when the league reverted to the old 3-point distance of 23 feet, 9 inches, attempts went down, but not all the way back to pre-rule-change levels.

The problem is this neat story masks a much larger trend.  After the 3-pointer was introduced, it took a few years for it to catch on, but since that time, 3-point attempts as a percentage of total field goal attempts has increased at a continuous, mostly regular rate. 

In fact, if you took out those three outliers and just looked at the rest of the graph, you would find that the trend line really didn't seem to change much at all.  Someone with a better statistical background could do some fancy math to better prove that point, but the relationship is strong enough to eyeball.

So what does this tell us?  First, that 3-point attempts have been going up since well before 1994.  Second, that Chuck Klosterman isn't always right.

And third, stay away from those magic mushrooms.

Hi all.  Me again.  Mr. "Pathetic Sore Loser Whiner Boy."  (And those are only the ones I can remember off the top of my head.)

Just wanted to give a little credit where it's due.  I emailed Ty Hildenbrandt (tyhildenbrandt@gmail.com) earlier this morning after the contest results came down and we all had a chance to enjoy the reaction.  Although I couldn't convince him to join the mud-slinging game ("c'mon, Ty, jump in, we're all doing it -- don't you wanna be one of the cool kids"), he did respond to my email in a very gracious, honest and reasonable way. 

That was cool. 

Especially since the judges basically stuck him out there like a pinata (can't find the tilda thingie right now), handed us all broomsticks, and said, "Hit me, sissy-boy (or girl)."

So while I think there are legitimate concerns with the way this whole thing went down, I did want to give at least some credit for how the aftermath is being handled.  In particular, I wanted to pass along one bit of what he said.  He looked into the Ross thing, and confirmed that he did indeed uncheck the box for competing in the contest.  I take him at his word.

Ross, I feel for ya, but it sounds like an honest mistake.

Good luck to all the finalists.  (Including you, my laconic new best friend)

The Dallas Mavericks spotlighted the stupid nature of the NBA's playoff seeding system by being slotted fourth, behind three division winners, despite having the second-best record in the Western Conference.  Now the West's two best teams are facing off in the second round of the post-season, a situation which isn't fair to either the teams or their fans.

Thankfully, the league recognized the flaw in this structure.  Earlier this week, NBA Commissioner David Stern announced a new seeding plan that would at least rank the three division winners and top "wild card" entrant in the correct order.

The problem is it shouldn't have come to this.  Everyone understood the potential problems with the system when the NBA realigned its divisions before the 2004-2005 season.  But the league did nothing about it until someone got hosed.  At least now everyone learned a lesson and things should work out better in the future. 

Which brings us to baseball.

The National League currently has 16 teams, while the American League only has 14.  The reason the teams aren't divided evenly is that having an odd number of teams in each league would require at least one inter-league game every single day of the season.  Major League Baseball isn't ready to take that step.

The problem is that with three divisions in each league, you're stuck with a situation where one division has six teams (NL Central) and one has only four (AL West).  All else being equal, the A's, Rangers, Athletics and Mariners have about a 25 percent chance of making the post-season each year, before you factor in the wild card.  The Cardinals, Reds, Astros, Brewers, Cubs and Pirates are under 17 percent (actually, the Pirates are under one percent, but that's a different story).

This is bad enough.  But check the current (5/19) MLB standings.  Notice anything?  Right now, there are four teams in the NL central that have better records than any teams in the AL West.  In fact, there are nine National League teams that would be leading the AL West right now, and three teams that would be only a half game back.

Now it's not likely that all of these teams will keep up this pace.  But one of these years, we are almost guaranteed a situation where an NL Central team is shut out of the playoffs with a record that would be good enough to win that rump AL Division.  There will be much chattering by sportswriters and television talking heads.  Fans in a place like Cincinnati are going to feel like they were robbed of the chance to see their team in the post-season.  Major League Baseball will look dumb and will respond by issuing a statement along the lines of: "We never anticipated something like this happening, but we still believe it is fair to reward division winners." 

That will make everyone feel better.

So what's the solution?  Kick the Brewers back into the American League.  I can never remember that they're in the NL anyway and I always end up forgetting to draft Ben Sheets for my NL-only fantasy team.  Then go ahead and have an inter-league game every day of the year.  The novelty has worn off by now, and if we're going to have inter-league play, I think it would be kind of fun to be able to focus on one series at a time. 

Of course, Commissioner Selig would never agree to move his old team back across league lines, so we'll have to wait until he moves on or some other NL owner steps up to the plate. 

Hmmm... Barry Bonds could certainly prolong his career by moving to DH...