Monthly Archives: February 2015

Hockey: A Numbers Game?

By Savannah Malnar

February 2, 2015

Statistics play a large role in sports. People are hired just to analyze stats and make team and player predictions based on simply numbers. For a long time, baseball has been the frontrunner in using more advanced statistics as a part of the game. Whenever a player is up to bat, dozens of numbers appear on your television screen; combinations and decimals all formed from a few swings of a bat. While baseball has embraced this sort of statistical nature, other sports have been slow to adopt it. One of these sports is hockey.

When it comes to hockey, most fans have only wanted to know three things on a player-to-player basis: goals, assists, and penalty minutes. As for teams, they just want the points and maybe some fact mentioned by their Fox Sports announcer about a winning or losing streak. But that has been slowly changing over the past few years.

Analysts have emerged themselves in the sport of hockey taking advantage of and perfecting some of the more “fancy” stats that have always existed. The most predominant being corsi and its variations. For being an advanced stat, corsi is extremely simple (and maybe that’s why it’s become attractive to the hockey community): blocked shots + missed shots + shots on goal. Usually shown as a percentage or a decimal compared to total shots in a game and is the best available statistic to measure puck possession. Mess around with the numbers a little and you can calculate individual corsi, team corsi, and see how it changes in different stages of the game.

Now with that sliver of context, it’s time to ask: why does it matter? And the answer is an honest one, it hasn’t, at least to the league. Until now, these stats have been calculated and distributed by fans. Some coaches and players have said they pay attention and use them, some had no idea what they meant. But fans have a growing desire of a better understanding of the game past the “score goals and maim the other team” mentality, and the NHL has decided to cater to that. The league has promised a revamp to their website’s stat page, and it will include corsi and many other statistics that seem ridiculous to the casual fan but craved by the diehard fan.

This news isn’t getting much coverage. Yahoo! Sports and NBC Sports both featured a short article about it, but that was it. No local media from any team picked up on the fact that the NHL is finally accepting that the game is moving towards a more statistical standpoint thanks to a fan-based push for it. This should be a much bigger deal, it shows just how powerful the fans of any sport can be in determining how it is analyzed and, eventually, coached and played across professional leagues.

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Super Bowl XLIX Halftime Review

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By Kia Tyus

February 2, 2015

An exciting first half to Super Bowl XLIX has been completed. The halftime crew starts of talking about some stats that happened during the first half. First, Tom Brady has tied Joe Montana with 11 touchdown passes thrown in the Super Bowl.

The crew then begins to discuss the struggles of the Seattle Seahawks. First point made, Seattle was having major matchup problems. After a great interception by cornerback Jeremy Lane, he ended up hurting his wrist and will not return. To replace him, Tharold Simon replaced him.

Right away, the Patriots took advantage of this and scored on their next drive.

On the bright side for Seattle, Chris Matthews scored his first career touchdown. And with 36 seconds left in the first half, Seattle marched down the field to tie the game up at 14-14.

On the other side, the halftime crew pretty much praised the play of the Patriots. Saying that the Patriots were out playing Seattle despite the score. The crew also talked about an interesting stat, that being that the Patriots scored 66 points total during the duration of the NFL season with less than 2 minutes in the first half.

After a recap of each team, the crew discussed how the Seahawks need to continue to run the ball on offense and their defense needs to get things going. The Patriots on the other hand need to continue to take advantage of mismatches and they cannot give up big plays.

The NFL also showed Bobby Sena for NFL 60 made the NFL ball hand off at the beginning of the game.

To close out the half, the crew talked about how New England out played Seattle but the game is still tied. They also stated how no expert had a clear-cut winner for the game. At the ending of the game may very well be decided by the field goal kickers.

All five of the Patriots Super Bowl games have been decided by four points or less.

To end the Toyota NFL Half Time Show, they showed the first half highlights.

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The Ongoing Battle of Marshawn Lynch vs. the Media

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This piece is written by Alexx Klein. She was a journalism major at Indiana U with a sport marketing and management concentration. Currently she serves as the Athletic Communications GA where she is the primary SID for cross country and swim/dive. Previously, she worked as the media relations intern in the IU athletic department, as well as the PR intern for the Washington Mystics. This summer she will further continue her WNBA experience and serve as the PR intern for the Indianapolis Fever. 

The saga began in last year’s Super Bowl with “I’m just ’bout that action, Boss.”

Then, his blatant disregard for the media, and the NFL’s rules surrounding it, continued through to this season. Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch has been putting on a spectacle with the media all year, which has now carried into the Big Game.

According to an ESPN article, in the 2014-15 season alone, Lynch “had been threatened with a $500,000 fine by the NFL if he skipped media day and has accumulated $131,050 in fines since the start of the regular season for violations of the league’s media policy as well as on-field conduct” (Marshawn Lynch, 2015, para 12).

Likely fearing harsher fines and punishment from the league, Lynch honored (some of) the regulations of the Super Bowl interview sessions and attended. He did, however, wear apparel from his line Beast Mode, which will undoubtedly earn him a decent sized fine.

Lynch got creative this time around, adding some variety to his Super Bowl Media Day press conferences. In his defiant refusal to give the media the information they were looking for, Lynch stuck with the phrase, “I’m just here so I won’t get fined,” for five straight minutes at Tuesday’s session. Wednesday it was, “you know why I’m here.”

However, it was after Thursday’s Media Day session that it became apparent why he was behaving the way he was, and it’s because he genuinely does not care about the media, or anything they stand for. On Thursday, he gave shoutouts to his hometown, his family, his teammates, his charity and his hat- all things that he is passionate about and that carry great importance to him. At the end of the day, he cares what his family and his teammates think of him, not how the media want to portray him to the sports fans of the world.

As a current member of the media, it is often frustrating when athletes do not allow you to easily do your job. However, taking a step back from my profession, I have come to a conclusion that I never thought I would in a situation like this.

It’s brilliant. And I respect it.

He stood true to what he believed in, and despite criticism from the media around him, never backed down. Washington Redskin’s safety Ryan Clark said it was “the perfect end to what he’s done with the media all season.” He finally let us in to his thoughts, what drives and motivates him, and what his perspective was on all of this.

Before last year’s Super Bowl, a profile on Lynch was done by Michael Silver. This profile explains why Lynch reacts the way he does to the media. He said, “Football’s just always been hella fun to me, not expressing myself in the media. I don’t do it to get attention… I’m not as comfortable, especially at the position I play, making it about me. As a running back, it takes five offensive linemen, a tight end, a fullback and possibly two wide receivers, in order to make my job successful. But when I do interviews, most of the time it’ll come back to me” (Marshawn Lynch’s, 2014, para 36 and 38).

I agree with Clark, Merrill Hodge and all of the other commentators who have praised Lynch for his behavior this week. This is not to say that I condone breaking league rules and policy, but hey, he warned the media early on: he is not interested and does not appreciate the attention. He was upfront and nobody respected his wishes.

On Thursday he told reporters he was here to prepare for the game, now let’s see if preparation pays off.

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