After yesterday's USC-Ohio State game, I got to thinking about college football as metaphor again.
From 1947 through 2001, the Rose Bowl football game matched up the Big Ten champion (often Ohio State) versus the Pac Eight/Ten champ (usually USC). Typically, the Big Ten representative would come to Pasadena with the higher ranking at the end of the regular season (frequently #1) due to its fearsome ground game. The Big Ten won 12 of the 13 Rose Bowls from 1947 through 1959. The 1960s were evenly split, then the West Coast teams won 9 out of 10 in the 1970s and 8 out of 10 ten in the 1980s. The big difference was that, on the whole, the West Coast team could pass, the offense of the future, as well as run.
The Cold War was kind of like that. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviets, with their 5.3 million person military and 53,000 tanks (both figures as of 1985 according to Gen. Odom's history of the collapse of the Red Army), resembled Woody Hayes' Ohio State: with a seemingly crushing ground game, but one-dimensional, geared to win the Last War. The Americans, with their air and sea power to complement their ground game were like U.S.C. In retrospect, it's not surprising who won, but it wasn't so obvious at the time.
From 1947 through 2001, the Rose Bowl football game matched up the Big Ten champion (often Ohio State) versus the Pac Eight/Ten champ (usually USC). Typically, the Big Ten representative would come to Pasadena with the higher ranking at the end of the regular season (frequently #1) due to its fearsome ground game. The Big Ten won 12 of the 13 Rose Bowls from 1947 through 1959. The 1960s were evenly split, then the West Coast teams won 9 out of 10 in the 1970s and 8 out of 10 ten in the 1980s. The big difference was that, on the whole, the West Coast team could pass, the offense of the future, as well as run.
The Cold War was kind of like that. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviets, with their 5.3 million person military and 53,000 tanks (both figures as of 1985 according to Gen. Odom's history of the collapse of the Red Army), resembled Woody Hayes' Ohio State: with a seemingly crushing ground game, but one-dimensional, geared to win the Last War. The Americans, with their air and sea power to complement their ground game were like U.S.C. In retrospect, it's not surprising who won, but it wasn't so obvious at the time.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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50 comments:
I don't think so.
In football, the rules changed to advantage the passing game and disadvantage the run-blocking game. This was not a "natural evolution", this was a designed change.
And in the Cold War, we didn't win a war because our military was better. We just persisted longer as an militarily strong society.
If we went back to the football rulebook of the 1960s, the ground game would rule again. And if we had ever come to field against the Soviets, let's be honest, it wasn't our air game that saved us, it was our nuclear deterent.
Steve, did you catch Tyler Cowen's latest post in which he offers his short thoughts on "Inglourious Basterds"?
He basically says what Trevor Lynch at The Occidental Quarterly Online and you at Taki's Mag already said. He indirectly acknowledges this though, linking to both your review and to the review at The Occidental Quarterly Online.
Curiously, but of course unsurprisingly, in linking to your review he explicitly makes clear that he disagrees with you "on fundamental issues" while agreeing with your fundamental take on the movie, but thinking that you "didn't go far enough." Presumably, the review in The Occidental Quarterly Online, an explicitly anti-Semitic White Nationalist outfit, did go far enough to suit Cowen's taste, for he doesn't say otherwise nor that he disagrees with the publication "on fundamental issues."
This is kind of amusing since Cowen refuses to link to Roissy when writing about him out of moral reasons or something.
And you probably know this already, but Cowen is a regular reading of your blog. He had a secret blog several years ago as he was promoting some book of his, and he basically revealed as much in it. It's pretty obvious when he basically lifts one of your ideas or posts and blogs about it sometimes, without acknowledging you. At least he mentioned you and linked to you this time.
I'm sure Evil Neocon/T99/Whisky will tell you that you're out of your element. You are! But I'm not talking about foreign policy; I mean college football. It has nothing to do with the passing game. In fact, USC is the only consistently good west coast school because it's the only one that's not primarily a "faggy" passing team. When USC was dominating in the seventies and eighties, they were known as "Tailback U" ( Mike Garrett, O.J. Simpson, Anthony Davis, Ricky Bell, Charles White, and Marcus Allen). When Ohio State had Archie Griffith, they played in four straight Rose Bowls. Not to mention, Oklahoma and Alabama ran a running offense -- the wishbone -- and were just as successful as any PAC-10 team during the 60's and 70's. Had there been a BCS championship game in those decades, the Big 8 (now the Big 12) and SEC schools would have dominated as they do now because they had more quality black athletes.
How does this relate to the Cold War? I'm not sure, but it does seem like you nerdy types are always attempting to steal the glory from the warriors.
It's interesting that (from what I can tell)the football players w/the biggest egos tend to be passing game guys: quarterbacks and wide receivers. Seems like star running backs tend to be less ridiculous.
The thing about the passing game is that if your team doesn't have a solid line and a decent running game, some defensive roid-head can give your QB a concussion.
Yeah, but we never actually went to war except via proxies.
In the end, it was more about economic productivity; we were able to drive them to ruin, they couldn't keep up because their economic system was inefficient.
What's the sporting analogy for the nuclear exchange that would have made the soldiers and tanks redundant?
NB: The USSR and USA did not actually fight. >:)
Navy, arguably the most hidebound of the services, fields a football team coached by Paul Johnson who says he doesn't use a playbook, "they just end up on ebay." Instead, he describes a few basic plays which the players jot down in their own notebooks; perhaps a half dozen plays that work off the triple option. Then, they use a no huddle offense. So there is a lot of improvisation. This reminds me of 4th generation warfare, a kind of guerilla football. It relies on speed and intelligence against the huge, machine-like defenses of modern football. Am I making sense? Have I got anything here?
Interesting post, but the metaphor doesn't really work, because the Cold War never went hot -- we have no way of knowing which side actually would have won in a full-scale conventional war. Now if Ohio had bankrupted itself trying to develop a passing game, you might be on to something.
the soviet army from 1950 to 1990 was developed to sweep across europe. that was the reason for so many tanks.
it's not correct to say that the soviet air force and navy were less developed by comparison. they definitely were not. the soviets were the only group fielding a force of jets and submarines capable of matching US jets and submarines.
they simply had a huge amount of tanks, outnumbering everything else in their inventory, for the express purpose of occupying all of europe.
remember that it was the soviets, not the americans, who instigated not only the space race, but the age of surface to air missiles. in 1960, the soviets ended the era of the huge bomber, by demonstrating they could shoot down any enormous, high altitude, high velocity bomber. prior to that, between 1945 and 1960, global warfare was dominated by the doctrine of the gigantic nuclear bomber, flying too high and fast to be shot down by anything.
The Soviet military was geared for human wave attacks which barely worked against the starving, demoralized Nazis and was proven a pretty much a failure every time it was tried after that; but I guess they could take solice in the fact they weren't as poorly coached as OSU.
We fought and defeated the Soviet military?
What about the Clinton years? The Big 10 won seven out of the eight Rose Bowls from January of 1993 to January 2000.
Of course the real reason the Soviets lost is that they never developed the equivalent of US college football which apparently can be used to explain everything in the Universe.
It feels like SoCal does well since it makes good personnel decisions by position, and it gets the most out of its kids.
SoCal was among the first to use black running backs and wide receivers, and parents and coaches remember when matriculation decisions are made. Maybe as a result of this heritage, there hasn't been as much political pressure to diversify their quarterback job, the premier position in the country.
Ohio State, the Big Ten, and Notre Dame play a conservative game which is not attractive to elite players dreaming of endzone touchdown dances, and video game covers.
The funny thing is SoCal players generally underperform in the NFL, but Big Ten players black and white generally outperform in the pros. I think its because the conservative Big Ten restrains its talent, but win or lose the Big Ten has talent.
One of the problems pro teams have with black players is the "I want the ball" attitude, but since the SoCal offense scores 5 or 6 touchdowns per game there are a lot of scoring chances and SportsCenter appearances to go around.
Many of these same criticisms could be levelled at the Germans in WWII - they never made the upgrades to their airforce and to their navy which would have been necessary to defeat the UK and the USA.
The Red Army had a lot of tanks because that is what their economy focused on producing. That and artillary.
American Lend Lease to the USSR was consisted of food, cloth and uniforms, trucks, as well as other high end products such as radios, high test gas for aeroplanes, telephone wires, trains, and some planes.
It should be no suprise that the USSR continued to focus on building tanks after WW2. Now if only they could have produced a loaf of bread.
The Soviet Union collapsed for internal reasons. The most important reason being that no one in the Soviet leadership felt strongly enough about saving the Soviet Union to violently overthrow Gorbachev. At least, not when push came to shove.
Gorbachev didn't understand how the Soviet Union really functioned, and brought it all tumbling down.
Of course, the Soviet leadership was an elderly remnant of a group already emasculated by Stalin, so perhaps it isn't that surprising.
Regardless, the relative sizes of the U.S. military or economy had very little to do with all this.
Am I making sense? Have I got anything here?
Well, yes, except that Paul Johnson doesn't coach Navy. He's at Georgia Tech now. But he is already having success with the triple option there, so the analogy holds.
"Russia and the West will be like fire and water," my father said. "There will be friction and probably war. Perhaps not immediately after our collapse, for the whole world is tired of war. The danger will come after a few years."
"A poor prospect for the British and Americans, don't you think?" I asked. "Russia's land forces are on an altogether different scale from those of the West."
"That isn't what will decide the issue," my father replied. "Have our better tanks and elite divisions in Normandy been of any avail? No, young man, the Americans have got command of the air and they'll keep it. That is a sentence of death for any land army, however large, that has to fight without adequate air cover."
"Perhaps the Russians will wait until after the war," my mother interrupted; "until the Americans have disarmed. The Western peoples want a high standard of living and their industries will be converted to civilian production."
"Even then the Americans and Britain will win," he replied; "even if Europe succumbs to the storm from the East. We mustn't forget that Britain and America have sea-power and can carry their war material to any point on the face of the globe which is accessible to the sea."
From The Rommel Papers, Erwin Rommel gives an analysis not too dissimilar to yours, Steve.
A guy what read Erwin
One angle you might find in your wheelhouse. The SEC, and USC, have much lower standards than the Big 10 or Notre Dame. Thus, they can let in those great athletes that Michigan can't touch.
The United States didn't "win" the cold war. The USSR LOST by default. This is the mentality that created the bull**** PNAC nonsense.
And in the Cold War, we didn't win a war because our military was better.
Wrong, Nellie Belle.
Sorry your side lost.
Did the U.S "win" the cold war? Was there a winner? Does one ever "win" an arms buildup?
We each played to our geopolitical strengths. They were a Eurasian land power. We, a blue water nation. Read some Alfred Thayer Mahan. It's an old story and a reason why Britain was also so dominant on the world stage.
We could have swept the high seas of Russkies without a doubt. They had more subs and more missiles and the like...but they were not a true blue water force. Our forces would have sea control on all major arteries and would even threaten ports and the like via our superior sub force (numerically inferior, but cat and mouse superior with decades of proof). Europe could have been a little dicey...although based on our performance in Iraq twice and the Soviet performance in Afghanistan and Chechnia, I think our forces would have done better than commonly beleived and theirs worse.
"Maybe as a result of this heritage, there hasn't been as much political pressure to diversify their quarterback job, the premier position in the country."
USC QB is not the premiere position in the country, it is not even the premiere position on the team. Hint; it's not called "quarterback U."
"
One of the problems pro teams have with black players is the "I want the ball" attitude,"
Yeah, it's amazing how teams win with offensive football players that actually want the ball; stunning actually, that would be like a president who wants power.
"Well, yes, except that Paul Johnson doesn't coach Navy. He's at Georgia Tech now."
The reason Johnson's offense works is because stopping it demands a paradigm shift in defenders and defensive coaching staffs. Most college football teams run some variation of either a pro-style passing attack or a spread passing attack. Assignments for the defensive front seven are not complicated in facing these offenses; the D linemen attempt to beat they're men and tackle the ballcarrier, be it the QB or the RB, the LB either drop into coverage or do the same, and the DB's either defend a man or an area of the field.
With Johnson's flexbone it's different. His lineman specialize in trap plays in which they all sprint in unison to one side of the field or the other trapping one defender 2 on 1 to create a mismatch and spring a RB. there are generally 3 RB's and a QB in the lineup and they are all possible ball carriers. The flexbone utilizes a series of fakes and feints to freeze the defenders.
What this does is requires defenders to think and not just react or they would be tackling the decoy all game long...and after so many fakes and feints, one running plays, the QB drops back to throw it deep to a WR against a secondary who has been playing close to the line of scrimage all game long.
With his offense, Johnson is able to perplex defenses with superior talent as he did against Georgia last year. He also had a winning record against the ACC while coaching Navy, and his successor beat Notre Dame last year.
What do Georgia Tech and Navy have in common? High academics and recruits who are not only there to play football. His system would take about as well as a cat to water at a football factory.
The Big 10 would have done better if Woody Hayes had been allowed to slug a few more of his opponents' players.
This is follow-up to feedback from Truth.
"USC QB is not the premiere position in the country". First, let's not confuse premier athlete with premier position. The premier athlete is Tim Tebow, so by extension maybe the premier position is Florida QB. However, the standard is: does this position enhance (overrate) the stature of the incumbent, and by that standard there are few college football player jobs as high profile as USC quarterback, maybe only Notre Dame and Texas can compete. However, the recent level of dominance and the off the field Hollywood glamour (which counts) means the USC job is the premier job in the country.
The true test, to me, is which school dominates NFL quarterbacks, but that is scatter shot: Harvard, Ole Miss, Michigan, Boston College, Delaware, Vanderbilt.
"It is not even the premiere position on the team". Please Google USC, quarterback, Heisman, Sanchez, Carson Palmer, or Matt Leinart. Yes QB is the premier position at SoCal. We can't confuse the past with the here and now, and today USC is a quarterback factory. Also, USC uses many running backs (a rotation or committee) but there is one QB. The stature of the running backs (do you know Joe McKnight?) is less than the QB (do you know Matt Barkley?).
John: Instead, he describes a few basic plays which the players jot down in their own notebooks; perhaps a half dozen plays that work off the triple option. Then, they use a no huddle offense. So there is a lot of improvisation. This reminds me of 4th generation warfare, a kind of guerilla football. It relies on speed and intelligence against the huge, machine-like defenses of modern football.
It all gets back to the rulebook.
This is what football looked like until about 1960, when the rules were changed to allow platooning, which, in turn, meant player [hyper-] specialization and coaches sending all the plays in from the sidelines [so that players were no longer required to think for themselves].
If you got rid of platooning, and players went back to playing both sides of the ball [like Chuck Bednarik did until 1962], then the heaviest players would lose about 100lbs [from 325ish down to 225ish], the IQ at all positions would soar by about 15 or 20 points, and you might not even need Prop 48 anymore [because football would start to look a whole lot more like lacrosse].
I'd point out that the same thing would happen in basketball - if some sort of miracle occurred and they decided to enforce the rule book again - but then Truth would get on here and call me a racist and frankly I don't feel like dealing with that right now.
All this talk of the superior black athlete is bunk. Blacks have a leg up in school grade based competition due to starting puberty almost two years earlier (and being held back far more often). Let's see teams of 10th grade whites playing teams of 8th grade blacks and see where the superior athletes are. And that would just be equalizing the physical development... Put 10th grades whites on the field with 6th grade blacks, that would be emulating the situation as it currently exists, with one race have a 2 year developmental advantage on the other.
"If you got rid of platooning, and players went back to playing both sides of the ball [like Chuck Bednarik did until 1962], then the heaviest players would lose about 100lbs [from 325ish down to 225ish],..."
And what would be the point to this?
We live in an increasingly specialized world chief, family doctors don't practice brain surgery do they? In the 40's guys played both ways for one reason only; the owners couldn't afford two pay two seprate platoons plus backup. Obviously that is not the case today.
BTW, I never called you a racist, that voice you heard came from between your ears.
I think USC is both running back U and QB U- they have so much more depth than any team in thecountry- their 5th string back is Wendell Tyler's son who was the #3 recruit in the country two years ago. Also Mitch Mustain- #1 qb recruit is third string- no one has their talent - not even Florida and it's not close. An argument can be made that they have had the BEST team in the country at the end of every year since Carson Palmer's senior year when they destroyed an undefeated Iowa team in the Rose Bowl- consecutively...the fact they only have 2 natl titles is due to bad luck and occasional ;let downs.
Dan in DC
I'd point out that the same thing would happen in basketball - if some sort of miracle occurred and they decided to enforce the rule book again
Huh? What are you talking about? There's hardly any platooning or specialization in basketball. The best players in basketball play 35 to 38 minutes out of 48 during the regular season, and usually over 40 during the playoffs. They only take some minutes off during regular season games to keep their legs fresh for the long season and the playoffs.
OhioStater, Notre Dame QB is the premiere job in college football. They are independent and have their own network TV contract for a reason. USC plays in a conference.
When Bush and Lienart were both having great years it was Bush that the school promoted for Heisman, because he carries on the tradition of OJ, Marcus Allen, and the rest.
In "the Fifty Year War" Norman Friedman repeatedly points out the difficulties the post-Kruschev soviet leadership had in getting the MIC to adapt to new technologies. By the late seventies they were capable of cranking out missiles like sausages (something Kruschev falsely claimed to be doing in the 50s) but making the investments they needed in new technologies (like computers) would have meant cutting someone's budget, which was politically impossible. A large part of the reason Kruschev was deposed was, in fact, anger at the way he had disrupted the MIC in order to make massive investments in missiles. The sheer number of tanks in the Soviet armory was probably a result of similar forces, plus tanks being simple relatively to operate and supply compared to jets, ships, etc.
Huh? What are you talking about?
They haven't enforced the rulebook in basketball since about 1985, when David Stern decided that he wanted to maximize his short-term profits with superstar-driven thugball.
It worked fine as long as Michael Jordan was the superstar [although even Jordan's legacy is now the subject of an enormous controversy], but Stern's vision ended up destroying the sport, and now we have an entire generation of professional and semi-professional athletes playing the game who have no actual basketball skills at all, and the spectacle of it has become so boring that no one even watches it on TV anymore.
You see the results of this in international competition, where the referees enforce the rulebook [no palming, no walking/travelling, no push-offs, no handchecks, no hooking, no rebounding over-the-back, etc etc etc] and the USA [population 300 million, TFR 2.1] routinely loses to tiny little countries like Spain [pop 47M, TFR 1.3] and Serbia [pop 7M, TFR 1.7] who shouldn't even be on the same court as the USA.
Failing to enforce the rulebook in basketball is structurally indistinguishable from altering the rulebook in football to allow for platooning - the nature of the game is determined by the stated rules of the game [and whether or not those rules are adhered to].
Same thing in warfare: If you decide that starvation of civilians lies within the boundaries of the lawful rules of war, then you get Sherman marching through the countryside, burning crops in the fields and slaughtering livestock.
PS: I'd throw in a little monologue about the underlying nihilism of pretending to have rules yet refusing to enforce them, but I figure I'm probably testing Komment Kontrol's patience at this point, and besides, Fred would just get on here and call me an anti-semite.
"From 1947 through 2001, the Rose Bowl football game matched up the Big Ten champion (often Ohio State) versus the Pac Eight/Ten champ (usually USC). Typically, the Big Ten representative would come to Pasadena with the higher ranking at the end of the regular season (frequently #1) due to its fearsome ground game. The Big Ten won 12 of the 13 Rose Bowls from 1947 through 1959. The 1960s were evenly split, then the West Coast teams won 9 out of 10 in the 1970s and 8 out of 10 ten in the 1980s. The big difference was that, on the whole, the West Coast team could pass, the offense of the future, as well as run."
Hell no. Terrible analogy. The difference is that fall in the Midwest has a lot of wet soggy weather. This makes the running game less reliable. For example, you might favor a more surefooted running back over one that was purely fast point a to point b, or a great zig zagger or whatever. The South and Southwest are much more dry, with firm ground. The bowl games are usually played under conditions that favor sunbelt teams.
The bowl games are usually played under conditions that favor sunbelt teams.
I've often thought that if the NCAA were to adopt an 8-team playoff, then they would need to have a round of northern sites so that the eventual champions will have proved that they can win in the cold.
Something like the following:
QUARTERFINALS, DECEMBER 25
1) "Cotton Bowl" [Jerry Jones Stadium]
2) "Orange Bowl" [Joe Robbie Stadium]
3) Fiesta Bowl
4) some substitute for the Sugar Bowl which doesn't involve NOLA
SEMIFINALS, JANUARY 1
1) Soldier Field, Chicago
2) Lambeau Field, Green Bay
CHAMPIONSHIP, JANUARY 8
Rose Bowl
You could have a 16-team tournament if you were willing to add another week on December 18th, or on January 15th, but that would be asking an awful lot of kids who are [or are at least ostensibly] amateurs and students.
"You see the results of this in international competition,"
You mean like the olympics where the US team won the gold medal by an average margin of victory of 33?
I think you're on the something with the no platoon system though; I would be highly amusing to watch Tom Brady playing "shutdown" corner.
USC won because OSU had a grossly incompetent "athletic" black quarterback in the Michael Vick mold. If OSU had even a mediocre quarterback, they would have won.
Notice something else about Rose Bowl participation over the years: the modern rarity of two private schools meeting therein. It happened eight times before 1940, but only once since, in 1996.
Of course, for a half-century it would have required Northwestern to win the Big 10, and that was a little slow to come about... But USC or Stanford won the Pac 10 23 times, over a third of the time, during the restricted years, giving the Wildcats plenty of opportunity to privatize the other end zone.
Lucius,
When was the last time a majority white basketball team won the Olympic gold medal by an average margin of 33 points?
Thank God Truth was on here to help sort through some of the crap that people have been spewing on here. Political types talking about sports is generally a bad idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AggeSjZwx6s
@ Anon: Terrelle Pryor isn't the problem at tOSU. Jim Tressel is.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Deconstructing-The-grisly-demise-of-Tressel-Ba?urn=ncaaf,189322
@ anonymous (re: NBA) - I am also not an NBA fan. But your raising up of the controversy from "bad speech" to "enormous controversy" seems to be in bad form. Not that many people watched it or saw it, either.
David Stern's development of the NBA from the mid-80s has been impressive. Don't forget, before Bird/Magic, the league was considered a backwater drug infested place. Franchise values have grown considerably since those days and that's really Stern's legacy. While ratings are indeed down, the NBA has come a long way. And this is coming from someone who doesn't really even watch it.
I think you're on the something with the no platoon system though; I would be highly amusing to watch Tom Brady playing "shutdown" corner.
Right, platooning discriminates in favor of specialists like Tom Brady.
If you get rid of platooning, then your quarterbacks are going to look a whole lot more like Eric Crouch:
In 2001, Crouch won the Heisman Trophy... During that year, he completed 105 of 189 passes for 1,510 yards and seven touchdowns, while also rushing for 1,115 yards and 18 touchdowns...
Crouch signed with the Kansas City Chiefs in January 2005 and was allocated to the Hamburg Sea Devils of NFL Europe. Crouch converted to the safety position, recording 25 tackles and 2 passes defended...
When was the last time a majority white basketball team won the Olympic gold medal by an average margin of 33 points?
They had to bring in Kryszewski and practice at it for three years [2006, 2007, and 2008], and even then they barely pulled it out in the finals [they led Argentina by only 9 points at halftime, and they led Spain by only 8 points at halftime - and there wasn't a single player for either Argentina or Spain who could have made the USA squad by NBA standards - not Ginobili, not Gasol, and not Rubio].
That after barely winning in 2000, and being humiliated in 2004.
Here are some other recent results in international play:
FIBA Mens' Basketball Championships
en.wikipedia.org
2006
Gold: Spain
Silver: Greece
Bronze: USA
2002
Gold: Yugoslavia
Silver: Argentina
Bronze: Germany
1998
Gold: Yugoslavia
Silver: Russia
Bronze: USA
FIBA Under-19 Men's Basketball Championships
wikipedia.org
2009
Gold: USA
Silver: Greece
Bronze: Croatia
2007
Gold: Serbia
Silver: USA
Bronze: France
2003
Gold: Australia
Silver: Lithuania
Bronze: Greece
1999
Gold: Spain
Silver: USA
Bronze: Croatia
World University Games, Basketball
09_mwug_guide_3.pdf
2009
Gold: Serbia
Silver: Russia
Bronze: USA
2007
Gold: Lithuania
Silver: Serbia
Bronze: Canada
2005
Gold: USA
Silver: Ukraine
Bronze: Serbia & Montenegro
2003
Gold: Serbia & Montenegro
Silver: Russia
Bronze: Canada
2001
Gold: Yugoslavia
Silver: China
Bronze: USA
"They had to bring in Kryszewski and practice at it for three years [2006, 2007, and 2008]"
You mean black guys actually have to practice at basketball to be good? Darn, who would have thought they couldn't just roll the ball out on the court and beat the best teams in Europe?!
"and even then they barely pulled it out in the finals [they led Argentina by only 9 points at halftime, and they led Spain by only 8 points at halftime"
And what was the final score there, Count Van Count?
"and there wasn't a single player for either Argentina or Spain who could have made the USA squad by NBA standards - not Ginobili, not Gasol, and not Rubio]."
Uh, Gasol and Ginobili are perennial all-stars in the racist NBA, and Ricky Rubio was 17 years old, Red Auerbach.
"That after barely winning in 2000.."
That's funny, I was always under the mistaken impression that you won the same gold medal for barely winning and trouncing the opposition.
"and being humiliated in 2004."
If taking home bronze is "being humiliated", how did the teams who didn't medal feel?
"Here are some other recent results in international play:"
You mean some of the other 50-some-odd nations that spend millions on youth basketball actually beat us sometimes? Wow, well maybe that's why basketball is still an Olympic sport there Einstein, unlike women's softball.
The inability of HBD to go mainstream can be explained by the above posts. Instead of giving credit to whom credit is due, these guys are using microscopes to amplify the supposed demerits of the black U.S. Olympic basketball teams.
The 1992 U.S. team won gold by an average margin of almost 44 points! The 1996 and 2008 teams won by 32 and 33 points, respectively. How can anyone pooh-pooh these amazing accomplishments? In 2000, the team may not have been as impressive, but still won gold. By the way, only one of these teams was led by Coach K, so the above poster’s logic is lacking.
Why are some of you disparaging the U.S. team and offering nary a word of criticism against Team Argentina in 2004? If the U.S. team can be criticized by “only” winning by 30 to 40 points, surely the white Argentine team should be scrutinized very heavily for “only” winning by an average margin of 7 points! By the way, that same Argentine team had two losses during the 2004 Olympic tournament. Yet, you besmear Team USA for going undefeated in the 2008 Olympics (and other years as well)!
Again, I ask, why? Why judge a black team so harshly, but ignore the even more glaring faults of a white team?
Mainstream pundits and laymen have suspicions about the intentions of HBD, chalking up the community as a movement of bitter, racially biased people, instead of a movement that champions scientific objectivity and realpolitik. How does baselessly discrediting the most impressive U.S. Olympic basketball teams serve to debunk this image?
It does not.
You guys who are trying to defend the state of American basketball don't know anything about the game.
They haven't enforced the rulebook in basketball since about 1985, when David Stern decided that he wanted to maximize his short-term profits with superstar-driven thugball.
Thank God Truth was on here to help sort through some of the crap that people have been spewing on here. Political types talking about sports is generally a bad idea.
The inability of HBD to go mainstream can be explained by the above posts. Instead of giving credit to whom credit is due, these guys are using microscopes to amplify the supposed demerits of the black U.S. Olympic basketball teams.
Wow - does this story have "iSteve" written all over it, or what?!?
Whores, professional sports, ethnic racketeering, the corruption of the law [and the rulebook], mysterious "bankers" who become overnight multi-gazillionaires in the breakup of the old Soviet Union - I don't know that you could ask for much more than this:
Stern keeps his enemies close
Alexander Wolff
Posted: Friday September 25, 2009 11:16AM
Updated: Friday September 25, 2009 5:16PM
sportsillustrated.cnn.com
...with Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov's impending purchase of the Nets, a league that had to secure a line of credit for its franchises in the wake of last fall's financial crisis can now count as one of its owners a man more liquid than the Black Sea...
But a portrait emerged. In the tradition of Jerry Buss, he enjoys the company of glamorous young women. He has a genuine love for the game; he grew up with the Gomelsky family, whose patriarch, Alexander, was the longtime Russian national team coach. And his spare change has hitherto been poured into the Russian Biathlon Federation...
Alexander Yakovlevich Gomelsky
en.wikipedia.org
...He was the Soviet national team coach in 1972, and was expected to coach the team at the 1972 Summer Olympics, but the KGB confiscated his passport fearing that, since Gomelsky was Jewish, that he would defect to Israel...
The richer they come...
In pictures: Russia's oligarchs
Luke Harding
The Guardian, Monday 2 July 2007
guardian.co.uk
Mikhail Prokhorov
According to the Moscow tabloids, he is Russia's most eligible bachelor, with a snappy little fortune of $15bn. At the age of 42, Prokhorov is still defiantly unmarried, despite a string of eligible girlfriends and a recent spoof announcement that he intended to tie the knot. His playboy reputation was cemented in February when French police arrested him during an investigation into an international prostitution ring. Police seized Prokhorov in the French skiing resort of Courchevel - a favourite destination for Russia's ultra-rich. He was later released without charge. "The allegations are absurd," Sergei Chernytsin, spokesman for Prokhorov's firm Norilsk Nickel, said in January. He added: "Naturally, he likes girls, and treats them in a natural way. But this isn't a pretext to accuse him of pimping." The incident provoked a personal chewing-out from the ascetic Putin, it is said...
Back in the early 1990s, Prokhorov was a clever young banker working for the state-run International Bank of International Cooperation. Vladimir Potanin, an influential banker from a privileged Soviet background, talent-spotted him. The two men moved into private banking, got their mitts on several billion-dollar government accounts, and never looked back. In November 1995 Potanin and Prokhorov snapped up Norilsk Nickel, Russia's largest nickel company, for £78m less than the asking price. Months later Potanin had become deputy prime minister...
How the 'Golden Horde' hoarded its way to top of Russia's rich list
Clem Cecil
May 13, 2004
timesonline.co.uk
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