Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a fabulous week. None of you folks decided to drop by the TYAC home offices for the party, but we
had an excellent time without you. We all got drunk on PBR and a splendid concoction known only as “Oranje Amnesia.” Jon Levy and I have appointed ourselves to weekend warrior status for drinking nothing but booze for a 52 hour period. I can only hope that this weekend brings as many wonderful stories as the last.
It is time to move on to some more serious TYAC site news. Recently Editor-in-Chief Dan Seco, who currently has decided we must call him Chancellor Seco to get anything published, has hired an intern for this summer’s World Cup. I want to be the first to formally welcome the intern (who shall remain nameless) to the TYAC staff and family. I would also like to give our loyal readers a breakdown of the intern’s duties. Each morning the intern will prep Dan’s office, also known as the bathroom, with plenty of TP and reading material. After preparing coffee for the gang, he will proceed to cut the sleeves off each of Raf’s new shirts. During the afternoons, he will also make sure there is a perfect ratio of mayo to tuna on Jon’s lunch. And finally, after dinner, the intern will serve as my personal PBR caddy, quickly running fresh cool bottles of the World’s Finest from the cooler to my current location. Buckle up intern, it’s going to be a long summer.
In all seriousness, we are glad to have you as a part of the TYAC team.
Let’s get
to what I really want to bitch about this week, Nate Silver and the nameless four letter network. Just a few days ago, the four letter network’s webpage had an article about using a “Soccer Power Index” to predict the results of the approaching World Cup. You have to be fucking kidding me. I understand that many sports
fans are obsessed with statistics, especially in the age of the fantasy sports craze. It seems like every jackleg at the water cooler has something to say about how great Albert Pujols is against left handers in a 2-1 count on Sundays in the month of May during road games. If you have that much time to figure out those stupid facts, you either have never been laid, or are just an asshole and I don’t want to be anywhere near you.
This is the beauty of soccer, it is not a statistics driven sport like most others in the world. In many cases, the best player on the pitch during any given game may not score or assist on a goal. In the stat obsessed sports view, a goalkeeper who allows one goal on three shots looks like a jackass. But a box score and statistics can’t tell you that those two saves were freakishly athletic and also kept his team in contention to win. Educated fans understand this, but in an effort to cater to statistical epidemic that is current sports fandom, the four letter network has to come up with this bullshit “Soccer Power Index” shit.
Using this technique to simulate the World Cup results is about as useful are pissing into a stiff wind, or using Madden 2010 to simulate the Super Bowl winner. You are just giving all the stat jacklegs something else to annoy me with at the water cooler.
Nate Silver, I know you are supposed to be some type of world famous statistician, but you are barking up the wrong tree. Stick to Sabermetrics, and Gallup Polls and stay the fuck away from the beautiful game.
That’s all the bullshit I have time to spew today. Call the intern, and tell him to get my PBR on ice. Sorry for partying.
Puck is the pop culture guru for The Yanks Are Coming. He can be reached at puck@yanksarecoming.com.