
Why Geeks Should Care About Sports - shakes
http://blog.rickyrobinett.com/2012/12/why-geeks-should-care-about-sports/
======
illumin8
The argument seems to mainly be: Sports are unpredictable, code is always
predictable, so try to make your apps have the excitement of unpredictable
experiences. Also, there is a lot of money in sports.

No thanks. I believe designers should strive for predictable experiences when
it comes to product design. Unpredictability is the #1 reason why I get those
evening phone calls from my 84 year old father-in-law who just saw a new
message on his computer and doesn't know what to do...

Regarding the money aspect: Those of us that don't really like sports think it
is pretty appalling that so much money is spent on mindless entertainment. In
so many Texas towns young boys are being told they will never be men unless
they play full contact football and sustain debilitating head injuries at an
extremely young age. They spend their entire school life being forced by their
parents to try and attain some unattainable dream of being a professional
athlete, and being deprived of a good education and a healthy life.

Is this not a shame that our society places so much value on sports that we
would destroy our kids lives to try and live our dreams through them? I choose
not to contribute my money and energy to sports because there are many other
things in this world that are much more deserving of my time.

~~~
arethuza
I've only become interested in team sports since my son started playing rugby
at his school nere in the UK and actually I've been rather impressed at the
positive impact it can have - he's learned a lot about self-discipline,
confidence and teamwork that has definitely helped with his academic work.

So I've actually completely changed my views of what team sports can do - at
the moment my son believes he can go to Harvard _and_ play rugby for Scotland,
both of are _his_ ideas, why would I want to stop him? Indeed, the QC that my
wife trained with as a devil _did_ play for Scotland - so crazy career
combinations are certainly possible!

~~~
illumin8
I appreciate this perspective and may change my mind when my son gets older. I
would still stay away from contact sports if possible, but some sports like
tennis, soccer, and baseball could be very rewarding.

~~~
arethuza
Rugby in the UK has a rather odd relationship with elite education:

"Football is a gentleman's game played by ruffians, and rugby is a ruffian's
game played by gentlemen."

NB I've seen a few rugby 7s games and they are _awesome_ \- even more athletic
than normal rugby matches:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_sevens>

------
redwood
While I am not a big sports fan (except for one particular sport) I want to
chime on on what I _thought_ this article would be about, but wasn't:

Sports are valuable to know about, because so many peers, especially in other
functions, value them. It's not that you need to even devote time to sports,
or to know _anything_. It's that posturing that shows you _respect_ others'
interests in sports, is valuable.

In fact this applies to any set of interets, however mainstream, nerdy, alpha,
or etc: whether sports, videogames, brewing, or bee-keeping. _Always_ show
interest and genuine respect for others' interests, instead of dismissing
them.

I'll never forget a guy in high school who overheard me talking about a
computer game... he said "Oh... you're still playing games? I stopped in
middle school!". I've thought of him as an ass hole ever since. And it wasn't
that he didn't play games (or enjoy sports, or etc): it was that he was
arrogant and dismissive of my interest and put me down indirectly as a result.

Never be arrogant and dismissive of others' interests: show appreciation and
respect... sometimes it helps to just genuinely look for what others enjoy. If
you can't find it: pretend! You'll find enormous benefit in terms of how much
others like you as a result: and this is important in any group. Especially
for something as massively popular as sports, don't fall into the trap.

~~~
rayiner
Yes! Especially if you're the enterprising type, being able to relate to
people's interest, and sports is a common interest, is an extremely useful
life skill.

I'm not a huge sports fan, but I've picked a lot up by osmosis since I did ACC
UG/Big 10 grad school. I can't tell you how often an interviewer has lightened
up and become more engaged after I brought up his alma mater's football team.
It's not just for show. It's social lubricant. It allows you to feel each
other out while talking about a relatively neutral topic that neither of you
have a big investment into, to cut down the tension involved in talking about
the business discussion at hand.

~~~
redwood
Spot on: in fact you bring up another great point... local knowledge is a
wonderful thing to share and when someone feels you know something about their
special place, they're always impressed!

The film Lincoln did a good job of showing old Abe doing that quite a bit in
order to gain favor :)

------
crazygringo
I've tried to get into watching sports for years, because it's something extra
to have in common with people, and I really wish I could share it.

But now, at 32, having tried probably about 10 times, I realize I just can't.
I just don't _care_. I care about politics, about music, about urban design,
about architecture, about so many things that clearly have meaning and affect
people's lives in real ways.

But when I watch two teams of people I don't personally know kick a ball
around... I simply couldn't care less. Absolutely nothing whatsoever hinges on
it. There's no meaning in it. And to this day, asking all my sports-obsessed
friends why they like it so much, I've never gotten an answer I can actually
understand or identify with. (The Onion T-shirt "the sports team from my area
is superior to the sports team from your area" pretty much sums up the extent
to which I understand it.)

And BTW, my code acts unpredictably often enough already, without my trying to
make it so ;)

~~~
cobrausn
You imply architecture and music have meaning and affect people's lives in
real ways, yet sports do not. Do I really have to point out what's wrong with
this statement? Not to mention it sounds incredibly pretentious.

I say this as someone who doesn't really follow sports (maybe in the playoffs
or post-season), but can recognize it's impact on culture.

~~~
fiblye
I think a fair difference between music/architecture and sports is the
relative permanence of the former. An individual structure will be studied
4000 years from now and tell us how an entire culture thrived. Music from the
1700s is still enjoyed today. Most sports games have no lasting effects beyond
a week, and when we actually do study ancient sports, we study ancient art and
architecture to learn how it was played; individual games within that sport
usually have little relevance unless they involve royalty or politics.

It's certainly an important aspect of our culture, but it has a much smaller
role than music and architecture. Everybody knows the Empire State Building
and Beethoven, but most people don't know who won last week's football game
and by what margin.

~~~
cobrausn
An individual game will typically have no permanence to it, but the nature of
the game can last a lot longer. In many cases, the games we are playing today
originate from older versions that pre-date the 1700s, so if 'permanence' is
your qualification for cultural relevance, then sports seem to have as much
(if not more) relevance than music.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball#Origins_of_baseball>

~~~
yen223
Not to mention the Olympics =)

------
Swizec
> Sports are the exact opposite, they are almost completely unpredictable.

No they are not. Sports are very predictable, but they are a stochastic
process. You simply have to use a different way to reason about them.

A lot or programmers deal with stochastic processes as well and we have plenty
of tools at our disposal that make us able of reasoning about even the most
random seeming stuff. Case in point: software that predicts how many cash
registers a store might need to never have a single person waiting for more
than 3 minutes, while keeping costs at an optimum.

Good movie on this subject: Moneyball

~~~
mcos
If you've seen the movie, I'd highly recommend "Moneyball" the book too. It
goes into a lot of great detail that the movie doesn't deal with.

------
brnstz
I don't "get" sports, in that I'm incapable of forming the emotional
attachment to a team that seems so prevalent. (And as I type that, I wonder,
maybe I'm saying more about myself than I am about sports . . )

I don't get it. If you grew up in Queens, you're a Mets fan. If you grew up in
Philly, you're a Phillies fan. From my perspective, these people are exactly
the same, except they are wearing different colors. Yet they are supposed to
hate each other, and spend a large amount of time rationalizing their hate.
There are hours upon hours of sports talk (gossip) radio on every day in every
major city.

I've tried. There is a special place in my heart for the Baltimore Orioles. As
a kid, I liked Cal Ripken because he had consistent stats (talk about nerdy),
and later I lived in Baltimore. I'm trying to like the Brooklyn Nets, because
their stadium is a few subway stops from me.

But I'm always on the metaphorical sidelines when it comes to fandom. The
suspense can be fun, but at the end of the day, it's just a game to me.

One perfect example: A few years ago, the Philadelphia Eagles hired a
quarterback who spent time in jail for abusing dogs (Michael Vick). Despite
having grown up in Philadelphia, I immediately ceased rooting for that team.
It was the easiest decision I ever made. Meanwhile, my Philadelphia friends
agonized over this turn of events and eventually rationalized they could still
root for the team, so long as Michael Vick made amends via
charity/volunteering. The attachment is strong. I just don't get it.

Sports teams are the most powerful brands in the world. Maybe cigarette brands
are a close second.

~~~
fratis
I love sports for precisely the reason you don't.

Generally speaking, I'm militantly rational. My rational brain is engaged in
perpetual combat with my powerful Italian-American emotions, and I feel as
though even if I win most of the battles, the war will never end.

Except in sports. I _love_ my Mets, Devils, and Giants (screw basketball) with
the heat of a thousand stars. My rational brain recognizes the utter absurdity
of it, but I simply don't care. It's fun almost _because_ it doesn't make any
sense.

In a way, being an avid, emotionally invested fan of something so
insignificant is practice for the very real emotional ups and downs inevitably
experienced in 'real' life. Sports instruct us both in how to react to
traumatizing events (in a safe, controlled environment) and in how to feel,
how to attach ourselves emotionally to _something_.

------
cbs
This isn't a justification of why geeks should be into sports, it's why people
looking for a new market should consider that domain. That's fine and all but
a bit misleading.

I follow a few sports, the one my brother is on a team for I follow quite
closely and know unnecessarily deeply. It's not like there aren't techies that
like sports, or work inside of them already to bring the goods. There are
pockets that lack the latest and greatest tech, but thats true of every
industry and doesn't make sports some untapped gold mine. They are actively
seeking tech where it will help them, and on top of that just through osmosis
from coverage, stadium presentation and post game tape review teams soak up
even more tech.

If you're looking for an industry that could uniquely benefit from an infusion
of tech, it's not sports. The sabermetrics story is a big story because the
hostility to it it was an unusual case. It was also a very narrow case that
the application of that particular bit of math was such a game-changing
development.

Oh and that thing about sports as a way of thinking about software is not only
a stretch, my experience makes it sound like pablum.

~~~
kevinpet
I was also turned off by the use of "geeks" when he really means "hustlers
looking to make a buck". Maybe they overlap, and there's especially a lot of
overlap on HN, but a market opportunity is not uniquely appealing to geeks.

------
mmcconnell1618
I'm not a big sports fan. Neither is my Dad and I'm sure that's part of the
reason why I never 'got' sports. For the longest time I wondered why so many
apparently sane people were addicted to a specific sports team or would spend
tons of money to own a jersey with their favorite player's number.

Then I learned about mirror neurons. The human brain has been shown through
functional MRI studies to 'mirror' emotions that are watched. Speculation
suggests this evolved as a way for one person to empathize with another's
situation. How does this relate to sports? It turns out that if you're
watching someone hit a home run at the crucial moment in the game your brain
gives you a little 'hit' of the same emotion that actual player is feeling. In
other words, people who love watching sports have a physical reaction that
makes them feel the highs and lows of the players.

I no longer assume that people addicted to sports are just in it for the beer.

------
dusing
There is a great business opportunity in sports. I started a digital sports
marketing company 6 years ago and we've had great success with this niche. The
marketing side of teams can be real progressive, we've built 4 SAAS apps that
and have worked with over 150 teams around the country.

I'd say the best part is although they compete on the field, they don't
consider each other competitors, so they exchange best practices constantly.
Meaning if you do something good for one team it will get out quickly. We have
hundreds of brand advocates in the space. Now when we launch a new product we
can go from 0 to 40 sales and 1/2 mil rev in 6 months.

And as it pertains to the story. Only 30% of our staff is into sports and has
a daily knowledge of players and league issues. In fact I don't follow any
sport or watch ESPN, I just enjoy going to games in person. I think our
companies objectiveness has helped is greatly.

Http://row27.com if you are curious. Our "apps" are <http://fanmaker.com> and
our news network is <http://sportsbusinessnow.com>

------
lazerwalker
> Sports are the exact opposite, they are almost completely unpredictable.

If code was almost completely predictable, we wouldn't spend so much darn time
squashing bugs. If users were predictable, we wouldn't need to spend time
prototyping or A/B testing or anything like that, we'd just build exactly what
our users wanted from the start.

If sports were almost completely unpredictable, sabermetrics wouldn't be as
large and a profitable field as it is, and we wouldn't have statisticians
working in other fields (such as everyone's favorite pundit Nate Silver) who
got their start modeling sports.

I totally appreciate the other arguments he's making about why the sports
industry presents a potentially lucrative one right now, but the point about
unpredictability seems like a nonsequitor. I'd like to think he's trying to
make an interesting and meaningful point with it, but it's not coming through
clearly at all.

------
untog
There will, I'm sure, be a lot of replies about how "I don't care about sports
and you can't make me"- which is fair enough. This stuff is very subjective.

But the point made about disruption in sports is interesting- I've seen a ton
of developers working on pick-up game organisers, and a few fantasy leagues,
but nothing more significant than that. The locked-in nature of sports
licensing makes it very difficult to 'disrupt' any sports franchise without
the consent of the owner- I suspect that will continue to be a barrier.

------
xpose2000
As someone who runs a bootstrapped sports company (focus on american sports),
I would like to add that it's very seasonal and unpredictable (in a bad way).

You never know when a lockout might occur to hurt your business. In fact,
there have been 3 lockouts in the past 4 years. NHL is STILL locked out from
Oct, with half their season gone and no deal in sight.

There are seasonal changes that impact your business. Fall/Winter are
wonderful since the NBA, NFL, and NHL are playing. NFL especially dominates in
terms of eyeballs.

You can combine all other sports and it still won't equal NFL's popularity and
how it drives user interest.

Once the NFL season ends, so does your revenue and/or traffic. In the summer,
you basically just have baseball and limp through wishing September would come
quicker.

~~~
patrickk
> You can combine all other sports and it still won't equal NFL's popularity
> and how it drives user interest.

 _Cough_ soccer _cough_.

~~~
xpose2000
This is true, though I am speaking about USA sports.

------
vog
When I read the headline I thought this will be about why geeks should _do_
sports. And I'd fully agree with that.

However, it appears that this article is just about _watching_ sports. What a
disappointment.

------
mynegation
When I read the title I was totally prepared to read why geeks should exercise
more. At least two and may be even all of the arguments in the OP work even
better if you do sports yourself, as you see the world of sports from inside.

I am not against pro sports as an entertainment, but doing it yourself, as
opposed to sitting on the couch or stadium seat is so much better for your
health.

------
mbesto
Just because a team is valued at $2.2bil doesn't mean there is $2.2bil worth
of money floating around to be made. Yes, there is money to be made in Sports
& Entertainment, but that approach is misguided.

To give you a better idea. EPL clubs brought in £2.3bil last year[1] but lost
£361m. These losses are largely due to wages: _"In total, £1.5bn was spent on
wages by the 20 clubs in 2010-11 (including Birmingham's £38m wage bill in
2009‑10). That accounted for 69% of the clubs' total income, slightly up from
the 68% of income the clubs spent in 2009‑10 on wages."_ So if you can somehow
improve efficiencies for the other 31% of the costs then you could probably
make some decent money. Sports is highly irrational when it comes to business.

[1]- [http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/23/premier-
leagu...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/23/premier-league-
losses-2010-11-profits)

~~~
lmm
Why not go for the big fish: find clubs a way to cut their wage bill while
maintaining performance. There's plenty of money in that.

~~~
mbesto
Yup! Especially in the EPL where they are now in talks of adopting UEFA's
financial fair play model.[1] Without knowing enough about the intricacies of
the inefficiencies of club management and at least 70% of their costs coming
from wages (which can't be reduced by technology), I'm not sure where things
can be improved.

[1]-
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premi...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-
league/9542469/Premier-League-could-adopt-Uefas-financial-fair-play-
regulations-as-early-as-the-2013-14-season.html)

------
zdw
Relevant joke image: <http://i.imgur.com/Mz08u.jpg>

Forcing people to care about domain specific knowledge that is relatively
useless outside of social ingratiation seems like a waste of time.

That said, if you're into it it very well may be the fertile ground for
innovation the OP suggests.

------
gearoidoc
The amount of money being spent in the professional arena of a sport nor the
attitude of an over-zealous parent who you've never met should not hold people
back from enjoying sports.

Those who dismiss sports as being "for jocks" are not better than those who
consider computers "for nerds".

~~~
csense
> Those who dismiss sports as being "for jocks" are not better than those who
> consider computers "for nerds".

Sports are irrelevant to living in the modern world; we can leave them to the
jocks. Computers are not; knowing how to use a cell phone or the Internet
helps enormously with many inevitable tasks of daily life.

The fact that cheap computers became possible a few decades ago means our
lifestyles are _quite different_ from before that time.

The fact that the Red team beat the Blue team in the Capture the Flag Series
Bowl Cup a few decades ago is largely irrelevant to most people -- even to
most sports fans.

~~~
gearoidoc
> Sports are irrelevant to living in the modern world

So am I not living in the modern world?

Playing (and following) sports helps improve communication, discipline,
teamwork and leadership without mentioning the obvious health benefits.

Oh and guess what? A decent sports knowledge helps enormously with connecting
with your fellow man, something I get the feeling you may have trouble with.

------
lectrick
It's definitely a market opportunity (see: the movie Moneyball), but I
wouldn't say programmers should just go into sports unless they actually love
sports (and programming). While this type of person is rare, they exist, and
it's their market to own, basically.

------
njharman
> UNPREDICTABLE

First most (interesting) code deals with exterior inputs. Typically "user"
inputs. Which means software engineering is far from as predictable as CS 101
might make you believe.

Second, sports (at least at the game level, and to some extent the player
performance level) are highly predictable. If they were not book making and
sports betting would not work.

I kind of stopped reading at that point. But, it sounded like actually theme
was "care about the sports _industry_ as it is a market" which is very much
different than care about sports.

~~~
csense
> If they were not book making and sports betting would not work.

Why not? Taking parimutuel wagers [1] is guaranteed [2] to make money.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting>

[2] In most US jurisdictions, the organizer taking a percentage of the pot is
either illegal, or requires the organizer to pay millions for a gaming
license. Of course, you also have costs and taxes, like any other business.
Mathematically the _pool_ is guaranteed to make money as long as there's at
least one paying customer; whether the _business_ makes money is another
question. (Another path would be to operate without approval -- illegal
gambling is one of the most common forms of organized crime. It obviously has
its own set of challenges, including the possibility of jail time and physical
danger from competitors and customers. On the whole, it's not a market you
should consider entering if you value your freedom and your life.)

------
ommunist
The title reminds me the famous Winston Churchill's attitude to sports. Once
asked how he is keeping terrific mental and physical prowess in his age, he
answered "Absolutely no sports."

------
jinushaun
Sports doesn't need any extra help. They're doing just fine. There are enough
computer geeks out there that also love sports to keep the industry up-to-date
in tech. SV doesn't need to pivot to the NFL.

