Should Strategy Be Legal?

I was a bit surprised to see some of the discussion going on regarding NFL teams easing up in their final weeks and resting their starters. Apparently some are a bit concerned that this multi-billion dollar industry is not playing by the unwritten rules.

www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...gaming_and_a_puzzle/

S.

Your comments are spot on.

Colts were still stupid to throw it, though.

The demands for "competitive play" are a eurogamer disease. Kingmaking, bash the leader, etc. are only problems in games in which player actions are so abstracted that they don't make sense and players, once aware of the fact that they've lost the game, will also lose interest.

For example in BSG every player is naturally playing as competitively as possible and once it's obvious the game's lost for one side, it is over and a clear winner exists. A different example is a multi-player wargamer, where even though one player might have no chance of winning, it might still be feasible to fight the player responsible for the others decay.

A different example is Agricola. Once players know they have no chance of winning, why should they continue playing? To build a nice looking farm? Why get into any more trouble trying to pick actions such as "Day Laborer"? No, something has to force them to continue, like a "social contract".

Sagrilarus wrote:

I was a bit surprised to see some of the discussion going on regarding NFL teams easing up in their final weeks and resting their starters. Apparently some are a bit concerned that this multi-billion dollar industry is not playing by the unwritten rules.

www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...gaming_and_a_puzzle/

S.

I'm fascinated that a 500-word column had to use 300 words to explain a 2-line analogy about resting one's starters as "suboptimal play." If you need that much space to explain it to your audience, perhaps a sports analogy isn't the "optimal choice."



Edit: (And, as a long-time fantasy football nerd, I can tell you from experience that, if your league runs the full 17 weeks, you absolutely will lose the final 2 playoff games if your team is built around Colts starters. They've been pulling the starters for the last 2-4 weeks of the season for the last 6 years.)

I see both sides of this one. On the one hand, I respect the Colts upper management for being careful with their top talent just before the play-offs. That's just good common sense, when dealing with a sport that involves so many injuries. On the other hand, if I were a Colts fan who paid all that money for a ticket (or even a season ticket), parking, a hot dog and a couple of beers, I would probably be pissed at the decision to bench the best players and let that long winning streak end.

As for the EuroGamers and their social contract, fuck them. Schweig, your remarks were very insightful, and probably informed by enduring more Euros than I would have ever tolerated.

Great post Simon.

I think it is yet another example of the collective middle finger that owners of NFL franchises hold up to their fan base. First of all, they are playing in stadiums that are paid for by the fans, paying the salaries of players with money provided by the fans (either directly through ticket sales and concessions or indirectly through money provided from the networks by advertising revenue). And if those fans decide that they don't want to cough up the money for a new stadium or whatever, thsoe same owners will pick up and move (witness the Colts, Ravens, Raiders, Rams, Cardinals, Titans, etc). Indianapolis fans pay good money to see Peyton play not Corgi.

I understand the need to rest players that may be injured but to wholesale rest them for the playoffs is stupid. I mean by the time the Colts play their next game, their starters will have been on ice for 3 weeks. One only needs to look at crap performance in bowl games to see the folly in that. Meanwhile, they will be facing a team that is cooking on all cylinders (having won their first playoff game).

Then again, if Manning got injured in that game and was out for the rest of the season, the Colts fans would be bitching about that.

On a different note, leaving star players on the bench happens all the time in European football. For example if in one week a team is playing in the Champions League (best of Europe tournament) and against a below-average team in the national league, only a substitutionary team will play in the league game.

Sounds like resource management to me.

Schweig! wrote:

On a different note, leaving star players on the bench happens all the time in European football. For example if in one week a team is playing in the Champions League (best of Europe tournament) and against a below-average team in the national league, only a substitutionary team will play in the league game.

European football isn't necessarily cool with that either, though. A few weeks ago, the news in the UK was full of this when Wolverhampton fielded a nearly completely changed team for a trip to Manchester United. It likely won't come to anything, but it was apparently worth some questions from the league.

story here

They were effectively resting their players in a game the manager assumed they had no chance to win, because they're struggling this year and had a much more winnable game coming up the following week. This isn't a playoff situation, either (for anyone who doesn't follow EPL) as the season is only half over, and every game is worth the same three points in the EPL. For whatever it's worth, they did go on to win that following game, otherwsie Mick McCarthy might have had a lot of explaining to do.

The weakened team stuff pops up every year at the end of the season as well, when teams who are scraping for points are hoping they have someone with nothing to play for or a team who's focus is on a cup competition. Sheffield United went through a lot of lawsuits with West Ham about end-of-season relegations a few years back as well.

(yeah, I play the other side of the pond's fantasy football, and you have to watch carefully at the end of the season to field useful players.)

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Sounds like resource management to me.

Or worker placement?

I honestly have no problem with what the Colts and other NFL teams did, because it's part of the system that NFL has chosen to play under. It the nature of leagues that have end-of-year playoffs, like MLB or NHL. Fans that buy tickets for the the final games of the season should know that they are taking a risk when they purchase it. Their game could have a been very important, in which their tickets would then have been worth even more.

I hope remember weeks like this in the NFL when they push for a college football playoff. Imagine Ohio St sitting its starters for the Michigan game, in order to prepare for the playoffs.

Yeah, the Champions league definitely shows this the best, in my view.

Though I had never given thought to a shitty team playing its bad players in the EPL. That's a nice move... and really highlights how absurdly uncompetitive Euro leagues are.