Comment by foobarbecue 2 days ago
Middle lanes are faster, and for some reason swimmer with the fastest record gets the middle in most events, which always seemed weird to me -- it's a positive feedback system. Seems like you should give the advantage to the people who are behind, not ahead... but that's common in sports and in modern society for some reason.
I've heard this said before, and I understand the reasoning, but I don't think it's good enough. We should be aiming for equality at the start of a race, not giving the better people a head start. If qualifying races are broken in the way, then just randomize the starting order. Literally do a random draw as people are walking/driving up to the start. It would make the events far more interesting as well.
As a counterpoint, think about the balancing act of trying to place as well as you can in the semifinals while not over-exhausting yourself to the point where you've got no energy left for the final.
I think this dynamic is way more interesting than what you'd get if semifinal rankings had no impact ; that latter scenario would basically result in a Dutch auction on effort, and likely suppress performance on the qualifying races.
Let’s consider auto sport. For most races, there are fixed starting positions that are determined by qualifying. Qualification is generally done by racing around the track as fast as you can without any other racer on the track or blocking you. The faster you qualify, the better your starting position. The better your starting position, the more advantage you have in the main race. If you are trying to figure out who the better racer is, it’s not a bad system. Everyone is incentivized to do as well as they can at each step.
But, I think there is another motivation to consider. I don’t think the point is necessarily to find the best racer (or swimmer in your case). Instead, I think the point may be to make it so that the best swimmers can swim their best race. The goal isn’t just to see who can win, but to see if the winners can beat a larger record. You want the best racers to have the best chance at performing their best. When the best swimmers are in the middle lanes, they have the best conditions for breaking other records.
It’s not the most fair system. Track is probably a little better, but even then, the lane you are in has certain advantages and disadvantages.
You could make it based on past performance at a given level. So your position in a qualifying race depends on your placement in last year's qualifying race. Your position at the final Olympic event depends on your placement at the same event in the last Olympics.
If it's your first time at a given event, I guess keep whatever we do now or make it random. The reason for this system would be to make surprise wins from less-known people more likely, which I'd think would be desirable.
It’s not strange at all. People want to see records broken. Levelling the playing field works against that goal.
Sports is an aspirational medium of entertainment. People want to see excellence. They want to see dynasties. Too much fairness and balance leads to loss of interest.
Look at the NBA. We’re in a period of unprecedented parity and balance. It seems like every year brings a different championship team. Ratings are way down and loads of people are complaining about the CBA which was written with the goal of bringing more parity to the league, a goal it’s quite obviously achieving!
On the other hand the NFL’s hard salary cap and consequent parity is what has made it the most popular US professional sporting league. People in the US don’t want to see big markets buy their way to championships.
as an adult the NFL is the most watchable professional sport for me, despite my city having no NFL team. every year I can just choose a playoff bound team to root for based on their style or storyline. And each game is meaningful whereas the other professional sports have regular seasons that just drag on and on. also love the one and done knockout playoff format.
You find 100 commercials per 11 minutes of gameplay watchable? https://qz.com/150577/an-average-nfl-game-more-than-100-comm...
I always thought that Americans just had the NFL on in the background or something and used it as an excuse to be social. But I'm realising I'm likely wrong about that reading comments like this.
I'm guessing you're just a vast amount more accepting of a high ad to content ratio than other cultures?
American football rules have the clock stop every time play stops, unlike association football which runs the clock continuously. This means that for 11 minutes of gameplay there is a lot of other stuff going on with a lot of commentary and replays as the players substitute on and off the field and move to get in position for the next snap.
So that means it's not 100 commercials per 11 minutes of content since much of the content happens while the clock is stopped.
I know that's the narrative about the NBA lately but it's just that - narrative.
It's far from proven that the short-lived "parity" that has emerged in the aftermath of the KD Warriors dynasty is the cause of down ratings.
I do personally dislike it though and find the parity via CBA to be artificial. It just causes continuity on a contender to be untenable.
And continuity is what makes for good basketball, hence why dynasties are so fun to watch. It's not just that they win, a lot. It's that they have a consistent style of play with a consistent cast of players (stars and role players) that fans get to know over the course of those dynastic years.
> People want to see records broken.
Not always. Some of the most prestigious horse races in the UK, US, and Australia ar handicap races. The horse that is most successful carries the most weight. The handicapper attempts to create a dead heat.
There was a period in World Rally Championship history when the top drivers would manipulate the starting order for the following day's stages by intentionally slowing down before the end of the stage. It was bizarre to watch teams intentionally give up 10+ second margins when stage wins can come down to half-second gaps.
In the BTCC, there was a similar situation for a while: in one of the races, the best-perfoming half of the pack would start at the back of the grid, and the worst-performing half at the front of the grid - but in-order within the two groups. However, since 2006 there has been some randomness added to the grid positioning, which makes attempting to manipulate it a risky business.
Makes sense. More interest in F1. More money for Bernie.
1. Ecclestone has been out of the sport for nearly a decade.
2. A race weekend is a three-day affair, with tickets sold for each day. What do you do on Saturday if there are no qualifs?
Just thinking if it's done F1 style it is fair. It's fresh at each competition.
If it's based on past times that creates possibly a feedback loop but depends on details. E.g. can a swimmer use a non competition record towards their qualification.
Track & Field races stagger the starting positions, to compensate for the outer lanes of the track being longer. American football has the teams switch goals every quarter, to even out the advantages of having the wind at your team's back.
Why should swimming be different?
Your examples are about making circumstances equivalent, thus canceling out any advantage. There's no way to e.g. switch lanes in swimming so we're bound to have some contestants advantaged.
In cases where some contestants have to be advantaged, the conventional solution in sports is to advantage the ones who performed better according to some metric.
I think it's unfair to reward those who were lucky or already advantaged somehow, but my wife who has a background in track and field thinks anything else would be unfair.
I believe the main reasoning why this is fair is that this advantage is earned.
Would it be fairer to use randomly assigned lane? Then you get almost equal competitors in advantageous and disadvantageous lanes?
Isn't the top result in a year also used for qualification purposes (and thus lane assignment) for top-level competitions? Basically, you earn a spot in the best lane throughout the calendar year.
When I hear of an advantage being earned, I imagine it would go to the one who has put in the most effort, or been most inventive. Here, it goes to the one with the best metric. Metrics are a proxy for effort/inventiveness, but far from perfect. (As any software developer in a large organisation can attest.)
> ... no way to e.g. switch lanes in swimming so ...
Why couldn't you shorten the pool, from a swimmer's PoV, by putting (say) a very shallow plywood box against the wall of the pool at one end of each "non-center" lane? Yes, you might need to do some math & stats to figure out just how shallow a box. Or, you could use a feedback loop - boxes start very shallow, leading swimmers get to pick a lane, boxes adjusted, repeat.
if there is an advantage to a lane in swimming can't we add a certain small amount of time to compensate
In US sports it is very common in the tournament for a single season, or in a single event to reward better performance earlier in that same season or same tournament. I like this because it incentivizes doing well early in a season.
On the other hand, the NFL and NBA give better draft odds for to teams who did badly in the previous season. I also like this because it allows teams who don't have the (comparatively) massive resources of a team based in a large market to compete. This is NEGATIVE feedback, and of course fans of teams in large markets don't like it. Even so, negative feedback is the core of making a stable system.
To summarize, in a single season or in a single tournament, doing well is rewarded. Across seasons, some sports have mechanisms to help poor teams become better.
It seems like the objectively fair solution is that everyone swims the exact same lane in a still pool and is timed.
Seeing the other competitors right next to you is often a factor in how hard one pushes themselves in a race, no matter the species.
Fewer records, fairer competition. I'd make that tradeoff
Is it fair if we get the objectively fastest swimmers to go slower so competition is closer?
Note that the advantaged swimmers in middle lanes are really objectively faster: they earn their spot through year long competitions and in-event qualifications. Sure, they will be an odd case or two.
See https://www.quora.com/How-are-the-lane-assignments-chosen-in...
You'd make that trade off? Do you swim competively or how many events do you watch per year?
I mean I'd make the tradeoff that there be no forward passes in the NFL but I'm not a follower of that sport so I'd likely not put that opinion out there because frankly I don't care.
I vote in favor of this idea and will even contribute $5 towards building the necessary O'Neill cylinder.
Now we only need to get Elon on board to fund the rest.
> for some reason
It is most likely because we are bad at pattern matching. By default we reward anything we perceive as positive, regardless of who we think is causing it or what the long-term consequences might be.
It takes some education to recognize the long-term effects of rewarding the wrong things, and then it takes even more education to not worry about the very long-term effects at all.
If slower qualifiers got better position, then what you'd get would be qualifiers deliberately trying to sandbag themselves for that. Such an incentive is never a good look for sports.
Giving advantages to the better participants is a practice common across a variety of racing sports. The idea being that, if you could earn an advantage by doing worse, then in a race where you know at a certain point that you can't medal anyway, it would be optimal to just intentionally slow down to try to come in last and secure an advantage in the next race.