Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

WindyMan posted:

No, they're called games. If Jerry Seltzer, the Jesus* of roller derby, calls them games, then they're called games. Always have been.


Seltzer may call them games, but basically everyone else involved in the sport calls them bouts. :colbert:

Do we think there should maybe be a FAQ in the OP somewhere? Stuff to answer questions like "Is this sport faked like pro wrestling" and such.

Also, in the old thread OP there was a really nice infographic explaining the basic rules of the game that maybe should go in this OP.

Other than that, great OP and I'm glad this thread exists.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Stickarts posted:

The game can get borderline raunchy, which is awesome. All the girls also pick derby names like Clinty Gang Grenous that they go by. They also can get pretty with the costumes/persona they adopt in-game.


Which brings up a point I wanted to discuss in the old thread but it ended before I could.

There's a pretty big debate going on in the derby community right now. As Stickarts said, derby has a sort pf punk-rock culture around it, there's a lot of fishnets and booty shorts and wacky derby names. And I personally love that about the sport, and a lot of others, fans and skaters alike, do too.

Some skaters, however, think that the absolute goal of derby as a community should be to be taken seriously as a legitimate sport, with box scores in the newspaper and all that. They further believe that the sport will never get that recognition as long as there are fishnets and derby names and craziness. So some skaters (notably the entire Denver travel team) use their real names. They wear more traditional athletic uniforms. And so on.

Now, I personally think that this is a travesty. It's an attempt to homogenize and sanitize a sport that is interesting because it is so different. Skaters have crazy names and wear these outfits because they like them. It's not a moneygrab or an attempt to cash in on sex appeal. And I don't think the sport needs to have the quirky fun bulldozed out of it to be a real sport. Some of these girls are amazing athletes, and I for sure do not want to meet Beyonslay or Thoroughbled in a dark alley.

My girlfriend is not a sporty type at all, she hates exercise, but she loves derby because it has such a differnet culture and feel to it and she feels welcome. If you aren't built for basketball you can't play basketball. If you don't have the body for volleyball you can't play volleyball. But any bodytype can play derby, and can play it well.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Aericina posted:

Having flair also makes it easier to pick out certain girls to target for hits. Homogeneous outfits provide easier cover especially for jammers. This might be part of why skaters are embracing this more and more.

Maybe, but I've never heard it explained as such by teams or girls who do it.

Also, I don't just mean that everyone on the team wears the same thing. There's plenty of teams that have a uniform they all wear while still being "derby-ish", if that makes any sense. I don't have a problem with uniforms.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
Certainly I think it deserves respect and recognition as a sport. I just don't think they need to strip the fun and uniqueness out of it to get that. In other words, you can be a real sport without being treated exactly the same way as every other sport. Some girls skate because they find it fun and they love the game and the community, not because they want to be famous athletes.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Jiminy Krimpet posted:

(except the repeated formulaic "personal interest" features e.g. "by day she works in accounts receivable, but by night she straps on the skates and is known as 'Shanka Ho', how wacky is that?!")

I swear to god if I read the words "It's not your grandmother's roller derby!" one more time...

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

huplescat posted:

EDIT: Just wondering, what kind of rankings are used for girls who are yet to hit bouting level in the US and other countries? I just assumed that the star system we use is the same for any WFTA leagues, but now I'm not so sure.

Most leagues I have encountered use a star system for determining when skaters are ready to bout, but the system isn't standardized or anything. Charm City used to use white/yellow/orange/green, but recently dropped out the yellow and just do white/orange/green, with white being "passed tryouts for the league and can attend regular practices", orange being "can scrimmage", and green being "allowed to be drafted onto a home team and can bout".

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

huplescat posted:

Groovy, thanks Ria and Dominion :) It's always struck me that there's not that much difference between yellow and orange so one of them seems a bit redundant. Guess it depends on the league, what they teach at each level and how many girls are going through training though.

Yeah, with CCRG the only real distinctions are Can Practice, Can Scrimmage, and Can Bout, and people were getting confused about what the functional difference was between a white star and a yellow star.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

delfin posted:

The more I look into this revival, the more I love it, especially since it's not just a token teams-in-eight-major-cities thing; both the Member Leagues and Apprentice Leagues sections of the WFTDA show teams all over the country (and even some overseas). Places like Essex Junction, VT and Lancaster, PA and Lubbock, TX and Appleton, WI get to get in on the fun too.

Also, some of those team logos are awesome.

Yeah, there are literally hundreds of leagues. The OP wasn't kidding when it said that if you live in the continental US, there is almost certainly a league less than an hour's drive from you.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

oldskool posted:

Looks like after over a year of waiting I'm finally getting to go to a derby game. Season finale, naturally so it'll be months before I get to go again :gonk:

For next season, are suicide seats recommended? Is there any benefit other than "might get landed on"?

I happen to like watching the game from ground level rather than up in seats. Also, CCRG plays in an indoor soccer arena, so there's nets up that piss me off to watch through from the stands.

I don't usually sit in the suicide seating, though, because I usually stand right behind them. I get too antsy when I sit.

The benefit is being right up close. It's "the front row".

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
I really, really hate stopped packs and clockwise skating. I know it's legal, and I know it's sometimes good strategy, but to me it feels like it's not in the spirit of roller derby and it sort of breaks the game flow for a lot of spectators because it's counter-intuitive and they don't really get it.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
It also creates more stuff for the already overwhelmed ref crew to pay attention to, since now they have to watch for clockwise blocks and such.

Which brings me to another point about the state of the sport: It's outgrowing its refs. There's been too many rules added and changed too fast, and the sport is so fast and technical now that you almost need 1 ref per skater just to keep track of everything. It's also hard to find good refs in the best of times, and one bad ref ruins the whole thing and gives the crew a reputation for shittiness.

CCRG has some really great refs, but they get booed at every single bout because of one or two of them being really terrible and making egregiously bad calls. I guess I may be biased because I'm pretty sure CCRG is the most penalized team in the nation right now.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Aericina posted:

Assuming you're talking WFTDA, get them certified and make it a point to use a certain number of certified refs at a certain threshold. We have a ref training program that forces fresh meat zebras to shadow and participate for about a year before they see bout time, and then they start at B or C level bouts. That's about the only suggestion I could make.

The skaters themselves vote on rule changes. I might have heard this wrong, but the 5/26/10 ruleset will be the last major release for at least a year (other than clarifications). So blame them for the change or inaction on rules.

Oh yeah I don't blame the refs for making the rules too complicated. They're just the ones that get screwed by it because reffing gets harder and harder with stuff like pack stopping and clockwise skating and jammers getting cute and trying to jump the apex.

I know our refs are certified, but I really have no idea what levels or how many or such.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

scribe jones posted:

Sucks. Then again, the NBA was pretty boring before they started using a shot clock. Rules change, especially when the fans/skaters make enough of a stink about it.

There's already sort of a shot clock in that there's a jam clock.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

WindyMan posted:

I updated the first post with the new WFTDA regional rankings. Championships are this weekend, people!

I will be there! I would wager that Charm City will beat Minnesota on Friday and then get stomped into the dirt by Rocky Mountain on Saturday.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
The "Slow Derby Sucks" people at Nationals were hilarious. And by hilarious I mean hilariously wrong and not even internally consistent. But they had a literal manifesto they were handing out. And a bad website.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Totally TWISTED posted:

I agree with you. I'm looking at it from the perspective of "how can this sport be grown?" and I think a great way for that to occur is having high quality online streaming of at least the big events like Regionals/Nationals so I hope, and anticipate, that every season this aspect will improve.

Now I'm thinking/dreaming of having a espn/hulu/youtube site level of streaming, and streaming 480-720p. :D

The paid streaming for Westerns was amazingly high quality. The free version was good and very watchable, but the paid one was high enough quality that we streamed it to our HDTV and it was indistinguishable from real TV. Could read names on jerseys and stuff, which I usually can't do when I watch DNN/Justin.tv streams.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
I can see that no-starts and taking a knee are sort of lame. But here's why I disagree with the Slow Derby Sucks people:

1. They bitch about taking a knee to start a jam. That's not slow. It actually SPEEDS UP the game by being the complete opposite of a no-start. You can't really hate both of those things.

2. During the Rocky-Charm game, these people were very loudly cheering for Charm against Rocky, because they hate slow derby. Except, Rocky doesn't play slow derby; Denver does. Charm City however, is probably the 2nd most notorious slow-derby team around. So these people don't even follow derby enough to know what teams actually play the style of game they claim to hate, even while WATCHING a game. If they can't watch a game and point to which team is playing slow derby, how the hell can they profess to hate it so much?

You mentioned football as an example, but no one has a problem with kneeling the ball to run out clock in football. That's basically what a no-start is: Drawing out the play to run down clock. I really fail to see the difference.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Totally TWISTED posted:

I'm all for teams playing within the rules but as WindyMan said, change the rules.

Yeah, I'm sure that both those rules (no-start and taking a knee) will get changed in the next few months at the latest. I don't have a problem with them but a lot of people do.

It's fine to dislike those rules, but that's not all that goes into Slow Derby. A bunch of people literally do not like any playstyle that involves a slower pack, or manipulating the speed and movement of that pack, or god forbid sometimes skating clockwise. They want girls just skating fast and turning left, and to me THAT'S the boring style. You can't see any real tactics going on because everything is going to fast, and it's just a race. It's the old Runaway Pussy strategy, which they made up the destroying the pack penalty specifically to eliminate.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

WindyMan posted:

I don't have a problem with the taking a knee start, insofar as much as it actually forces a start and speeds the game up, like you said. However, that doesn't change the fact that teams find it necessary to do this in the first place, due to how the rules are drawn up. People shouldn't be criticizing the players or teams that do this, but instead should be criticizing the rules that cause the need for them to do it.

However, there is a difference between "slow" derby and "not moving" derby. If a team can manage to slow a pack to a crawl, then that team is showing pack dominance and is playing well. What's really at issue, what "slow" derby opponents are probably actually criticizing, is when the skaters stop moving altogether. Or worse, start skating backwards. It's ugly to watch, confusing as hell to an uneducated outside observer. Would it be so difficult to just mandate that skaters are attempting to move forward at all times? You don't need to make them skate fast, you just need to make them skate, period. Skating, after all, implies forward motion by its definition. This would also eliminate the need to do the no-pack start since skaters wouldn't be permitted to burn clock by not moving.

Traditional roller derby has never, ever, ever allowed stopping on the track during a jam. Skaters have always been made to move forward at all times. There are times they've moved really fast, and there are times they've moved really slow. But they've always been moving. And they've never moved backwards, either. Like I've previously said (I think) I don't know why being on a flat track somehow makes it logical to allow stopping and backwards skating when it was never a part of derby in the first place.

I guess we just disagree then. I have no problem at all with clockwise skating within the current rules. You can't block from a standstill or while moving clockwise, so that's a pretty big restriction. I don't think it's ugly at all, and it being confusing to an uninformed outsider doesn't bother me at all. If they like derby they can learn the rules and then they won't be an outside anymore.

Denver came to play Charm this season and the first half of that game was some of the most mindblowing and enlightening derby strategy I've ever seen. It was amazing, and taking that layer out of the sport would be a shame in my opinion.

For what it's worth, though, yes, it would be difficult to mandate that you always have to move forward. Would it apply if you were out of play? All the time people get blocked out and have to skate backwards a little while out of bounds to avoid cutting track.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

WindyMan posted:

That's fine, but if too many share that mentality the sport's growth will be restricted. You can't make the assumption that the population at large will want to learn anything more than the basics of derby, because if the basics are too complicated then they'll just move on to something else.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. If you're saying that we should make the game as simple as possible so that more people can follow it without learning anything about it, then I disagree strongly. I like rulesets that allow for strategic depth and a variety of valid styles and tactics. It should not be that speed is the only way to win.

quote:

I should have been more clear about that: Skating forward only while in play. In banked track (aka traditional) rules if you're out of play too far forward, you need to stop and wait for the pack (which is always moving forward) to catch back up to you.

Conveniently, that would also eliminate skaters stopping and then back-tracking to trap a jammer who got pushed out, which I absolutely hate. The spirit of the rule has always been for the player getting pushed out of bounds to not gain a positional advantage when re-entering the track. At least with how I interpret the rules, if a blocker skates backwards to prevent a jammer from coming back in from the same point on the track she left, that should be a backwards block; Rule 5 states that a block need not include contact if said block is positional.

The same rules say it is illegal to block while at a standstill, yet players and teams get way with that all the time. Again, the WFTDA's own ruleset says you don't need to contact someone to be blocking them; if you're in their way, it's a block. Is it not?

No, because being in someone's way is not the same at all as being in a position where they aren't allowed to come in ahead of you. That's never been included in the definition of a block, though you are correct that blocks don't have to include contact. You don't have to hit them, but you do have to be physically in their way. As in, if they moved forward, they would run into you, as you are blocking their path.

Skating backwards to prevent a blocked-out jammer from coming in ahead of you is not a positional block, because you are not physically in the way of their progress. They're free to come in ahead of you - in fact in many cases it's a better idea to just skate in and take the minor cut call than to backtrack.

Though, for what it's worth, there were a bunch of standstill-block and clockwise-block penalties called at Nationals, though admittedly only when there was contact. Yes, it should get called even when there isn't, but that goes back to my earlier point about the rules not being possible to enforce by any mortal ref crew. Just the cutting track rules alone are complex enough that no ref can actually follow them so only the most flagrantly visible ones get called.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

WindyMan posted:

In other words, any ruleset will call for strategic depth and a variety of valid styles and tactics. That argument is invalid.

Well, I disagree on that point too. Different rulesets can very much vary in level of available depth. Saying that any ruleset will have an equally large array of valid strategies within it is, in my opinion, simply false.

Chess has more numerous and varied available strategies than checkers. Poker has more available strategies than blackjack. Just because everyone is playing the same rules does not make two different rulesets equal in terms of complexity or balance.

We could probably make derby so simple anyone could pick up on it in minutes. We would do that by eliminating tactics that are currently legal, and when you reduce the number of things a player can do, you reduce the number of effective strategies that a player or team can choose from. We would also have to make track cutting easier to follow and understand, get some sort of agreement on the backblock/lowblock distinction (which was a huge problem at nationals), and several other things, if we were concerned with the Bar Crowd Test.

I really really liked that at Nationals, I got to watch Rocky, Oly, Gotham, Charm, Philly, and several other teams, all of which had very very different strategies and playstyles. Eliminating things like clockwise skating, slow packs, the ability to stop, etc, would eliminate several of those playstyles as real options.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Aericina posted:

WFTDA just announced the Big 5 Tournament dates and locations for next year. Guess who's hosting the NC tournament? (!!!)

http://wftda.com/news/2011-touranment-schedule-released

Love the misspelled URL.

Also I meant to comment on this earlier, but I am super psyched about Easterns being in Baltimore.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

SRM posted:

My aspiring rollergirl is looking for derby names - anybody have any good unused ones or any sites that would be good resources for em?

Well, the name registry is here: http://www.twoevils.org/rollergirls/

That's sort of the opposite of what you asked for: It's all the names that ARE taken, but you can get a good idea for what sorts of things are likely gone and can use it to brainstorm from there.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

WindyMan posted:



I don't agree with everything people hate about the so-called slow derby, but non-starts and inaction is one of them. There will come a point when the people harping "strategy" in slow derby will realize that unless rulebooks are written more robustly to account for these extreme situations you're going to lose the entertainment value from the persepective of the paying crowd. In other words, if it's turning people off from wanting to watch derby, is it ultimately worth it for derby's long-term health and potential?

I'm fine with non-starts when the goal is to burn some clock to kill a penalty or whatever, but a lot of teams seem to do it for no reason.

Even at Nationals, where I expect the highest caliber of strategy and understanding of the game, there were some instances of it where there was no logical reason to burn clock or slow the pack down, people were just doing it because they could, it looked like. It seemed like the real understanding of when you should non-start and when you should kneel-start and when you should just loving start just really hadn't sunk into everyone's mental game yet.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
Oh, also, having watched Philly and Gotham play for a couple years now, the fact that Suzy Hotrod is leaving Gotham and playing for Philly will 100% cause those two teams to swap places, at least. Gotham may even drop another spot or two.

Philly is going to be really really hard to beat, since the one thing they were really missing was a dominant speed jammer, and Suzy is one of the best in the country.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

WindyMan posted:

I would think the Gotham/Philly gap will return to the level it was in late 2009, where Philly and Gotham were effectively equal. It will be interesting to see how Gotham losing a top-tier jammer and Philly picking one up affects things in the East and nationally. Philly has been stuck as fourth best in the country this year, but certainly has the potential to take it to anyone under the right circumstances.

Yeah, Gotham better have some fresh meat superjammer coming up through the ranks, because they are losing Suzy and Swede Hurt, which leaves them with Bonnie Thunders, who is amazing but only one person, and Hyperlynx, who isn't bad but is mainly their relief/change-of-pace jammer at the moment.

It would also help a lot if Beyonslay is able to get back to skating and can still perform at the level she did before her injury.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Spookydonut posted:

WFTDA rules are discussed and voted on by the WFTDA leagues. The skaters wrote/write the rules, so complain to the skaters not the refs.

No one is complaining to the refs about slow derby, they're complaining to WFTDA.

Also, I really think the slow derby sucks people are a highly vocal minority. No-starts piss off a lot of people and I expect those to get changed, but slow pack play and clockwise skating after a blockout, in my experience, don't really bother nearly as many people. The dozen people at Nationals who hated anything less than full speed Nascar skating are really not "the paying crowd".

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Spookydonut posted:

Complaining to WFTDA is pointless, since it is run by the individual leagues.


It's not completely pointless. WFTDA does have personnel, it's not completely democratic. It's the central point of contact. If everyone hates something and complains to them, it will likely filter down into the opinions and voting habits of individual leagues.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

WindyMan posted:

Oddly enough, they shouldn't be learning how to walk, run, or jump (without skates on). Our coach at Sugartown is a professional skater--he skated on Rollerjam, did skate-stunts in movies and commercials and has a coach chararacter in Whip It based on him--and he says that how we move without skates on is completely counter-intuitive to how we need to move with skates on. Long story short, everything you do during training or not should be done with skates on, if you can help it.

I don't think that was what he was asking. The implication was that there are things on ZebraHuddle that skaters (as opposed to refs) should not be reading for some reason, and he was wondering what sorts of things those might be. Come to mention it, I'm pretty curious about this myself.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Spookydonut posted:

Things that refs (should) discuss that skaters shouldn't really be privy to:

- Ethics. This coveres a lot of different things.
- Strategy. Wether it's a hypothetical or actual strategy, mostly discussion focuses on how the rules apply to it.
- Other. Things like "What part do refs play in the running of your league?"

I don't really see why skaters shouldn't be privy to any of these discussions. Knowing and understanding how their strategy, or strategy they may be thinking about or discussing, applies to the rules and how refs tend to interpret those rules, is pretty important. It's important for skaters to know WHY Action A draws a backblock while Action B is a trip instead, or why this strategy results in the pivot getting a destroying the pack or a clockwise block or whatever, especially as more complicated pack control strategies emerge and look illegal or confusing at first.

Similarly ref ethics is an issue that affects everyone in the sport, and mind-boggling stuff happens like Amanda Jamitinya's boyfriend being her jam ref during the finals at Nationals that maybe if everyone discussed stuff like that it wouldn't happen.

I can certainly see how certain conversations or threads shoudln't be read by PARTICULAR skaters (like, say, a thread about the AmJam situation I just mentioned is probably better off without her reading it), but I really cannot think of any topic about the sport that needs to be kept secret from skaters in general.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Spookydonut" posted:

So league ABC comes up with strategy DEF, and referee XYZ jumps online after seeing it and starts describing it in detail. You'd be okay with everyone being spoon-fed that strategy, along with exactly how the rules apply?
I wouldn't, and this is an opinion shared by almost every ref I know of.
If the skaters wan't to figure it out for themselves, that's fine. Refs aren't coaches, as Aericina mentioned.

This is a good point, actually, I stand corrected.

Spookydonut posted:


I'd like to specifically address this as something that shouldn't have been an issue. If they weren't in a relationship I wouldn't have expected to see him do anything different. You're saying that because of the relationship he won't do his job, and that's unfair to him and to every other referee in the sport.

No, I'm not saying he reffed badly or anything. I watched the game and there was no bad reffing or really questionable calls, and I didn't know anything about the situation until afterwards.

But it's a conflict of interest and he should not have been reffing that game, especially jam reffing, where he has to make subjective calls which is it very hard to be unbiased about when you're calling them on your girlfriend in a national championship game. It's not like there was a shortage of refs at the time - It was the only game going on and there were multiple ref crews at the event.

He reffed well and that's commendable, but he shouldn't have even been in that position to begin with. The correct ethical move would have been to remove himself from that bout, thus removing all doubt in people's minds about whether or not their relationship may have affected the game. It was unprofessional for him to ref that game, and if derby is going to continue to grow into a "real" respected sport, it needs to be officiated with some professionalism.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Oodles of Wootles posted:

This is not a requirement for any sport.

Are you kidding? Rock solid, trusted officiating is absolutely crucial to turning a game into a respected sport.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Spookydonut posted:

You're still making the same point, and it's insulting to every referee and official in our sport.
You're also questioning the decision of the tournament head refs in rostering him for that game. If they didn't think it would be an issue, they wouldn't have rostered him for that game.
If you ask WFTDA about this, I guarentee they'll stand by the decision of the tournament head refs.

I know they would, and I am pretty sure they have. I'm not the first person to have an issue with this, it was a big deal on DNN and various other derby blogs when it came out as news. I do think it was a bad decision to roster him for that game, assuming everyone involved knew about the relationship.

I don't think it's insulting to referees in any way to expect them to act professionally and ethically with regards to possible conflicts of interest in the sport. Quite the opposite, I think it's insulting to the skaters and the fans to so flippantly not care about it, and to refuse to acknowledge that a conflict of interest could ever exist. Refs are human beings, and saying "You really shouldn't jam ref for your wife/girlfriend" is a completely reasonable policy to have to avoid it ever becoming a really contentious issue.

We're not talking about penalty trackers or scoreboard operators here, people who do a job that involves no serious judgement calls. We're talking about pack and jam refs, who make hundreds or thousands of small decisions that decide games, and who are not robots. To say that every ref is perfectly capable of making the same hundred snap decisions when it's their wife on the jam line as opposed to some girl they don't know is ludicrous. Human beings are not wired that way and that's why we have conflict of interest guidelines in other fields.

It wasn't an issue because it didn't really come up in that game, but what if it had? What if Tootie Tinwhistle had made an innocent but wrong call in Rocky/AmJam's favor and it cost Oly the game? He would then have to defend his decision to ref that bout, and convince people he didn't cheat, and it hurts the respect for the officiating crews and bodies and it damages the legitimacy of the sport when a national championship game even has a possibility of something like that happening.

None of this would ever be even possible if he had just said "Hey guys, I shouldn't ref this one". It's just so much cleaner and easier to avoid that situation ever happening than it is to try to clean it up when it eventually happens.

Derbytron says it better than me here: http://allknowingderbytron.blogspot.com/2010/11/simply-put-boyfriendrefs-are-bad-for.html

JoshTheStampede fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Feb 3, 2011

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

WindyMan posted:

Just the fact that people are talking about it at all is proof enough to raise doubt. The only way to prevent this doubt from cropping up in the first place is to prevent it from happening in the future. And if you want to go even further, you can make sure absoultely sure it won't be an issue in this year's Championships (and regionals too, if possible) that all the refs/NSOs from a league can't staff a game that has their team in it, or to pick them last if no other are available. Surely there are enough refs around to ensure that.

This was part of why it bothered me so much. This was the championship bout, the utter pinnacle of this entire sport. If there is ONE game that needed to be officiated with the utmost respect for the sport and taken seriously, and which had the resources to enact a policy like the one you mention, it was this one.

I get that at home bouts, normal travel bouts, and maybe even at regionals you might simply not have enough refs to go around to make sure no one refs their own team, but nationals didn't have that excuse.
calls.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Oodles of Wootles posted:

In theory, sure. In practice, not so much. I suppose you should have respected refereeing on the way up, but once the sport has established itself refereeing becomes just another thing for fans to complain about and for the league to overlook.

I disagree. Officiating is always something fans will bitch about, of course. Sports fans are like that; It's in their nature to find some reason their team lost other than "we got beat", and "pssh, loving refs" will often get you less argument than other statements to that effect, so its easy.

But really, no football fan literally thinks that the refs are paid off, or even that they are by and large incompetent - they trust that the refs are the best refs the league could get, and that they are as unbiased and free from conflict of interest as possible. The same goes for every other major sport. There's nothing about derby that makes it free from that requirement.

The rules of the game need to be clear, understandable, and shown to be enforced and handled fairly and without bias whenever possible. Removal of the doubt that WindyMan mentioned is an important part of that, and it leads to the fanbase taking the game more seriously. It is what turns games into sports.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Ria posted:



That being said, I have never once met a ref that wouldn't call it just as hard on their own girls as on the opposing team. Every one that I've met (and I've met dozens at this point) are there for the love of the game and to try to call it fairly. There isn't money exchanging hands (that I've ever heard of) and there isn't even really even any monetary of physical compensation for winning the tournaments. Just bragging rights and a top spot on the national rankings.

Most refs I know effectively DO have an "area of reffing" that they travel and ref in, because there's a lot of smaller leagues around here that need refs.

I'm not saying that any ref would intentionally cheat. I'm saying that it's practically impossible to be unbiased about someone you love, when making hundreds of decisions in a fast-paced game that is already difficult to officiate, and removing that doubt is easier than the potential repercussions of not removing it.

If anything, many refs would overcompensate out of a desire to not show favoritism and would wind up being HARDER on their SO than on some other random skater. That's STILL a bad thing.

Also, I get that they are all volunteers, but that is not an excuse for the sport as a whole to accept either sub-par officiating or lax officiating policies. The amount of certifications refs are required to go through sort of means the "but they can't be expected to be held to standards because they are volunteers" argument doesn't hold water. We already hold them to standards, and as you said, they do this because they love it. I respect that a great deal, but you can't build a sport on the honor system.

Aericina posted:

edit: Dominion you're a ninja.

E: sorry. :)

JoshTheStampede fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Feb 3, 2011

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Bananananana posted:

Woah this is a neat thread, I had always thought roller derby was like pro wrestling and it was all corny acting.

It was exactly that, in the 70s.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Spookydonut posted:

I do all sorts of crazy things on my toe stops, like skating -> running -> skating, spinning, jumping, etc...

It's really useful to be able to do those sorts of things, even if you never have reason to.

One of the better jammers on CCRG (Holden Grudges) basically runs through the pack on her toe stops. It's really amazing to watch once you realize that's what she's doing.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
So in April there's a 4-team tournament in London. Charm City is going along with Montreal and Steel City, should be a pretty cool tourney, I'm really interested to see how London plays.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
The name registry sort of gets to me. I am really strongly in favor of one existing, because as a fan I don't want every team to have a Cherry Bomb and a Black Widow and so on. I like the unique names. But the combination of the rapid expansion of roller derby and the glacial speed with which twoevils handles name registration is really not working.

I get that it's basically one person handling all these name requests by hand, but it can literally take up to 6 months to get a name approved or denied. And then in the meantime you find out that while you were being polite and not using your name until it was official, some other girl across the country has been skating with that name for months and happened to register a day before you so you don't have a name. Sorry.

I don't like to pull out the "come on, I could do this faster myself" card, but this is a situation in which it is really time-sensitive stuff and there's no reason at all it should take months to take an email from someone, check it against a list, and respond, even with thousands of requests a week. I know a girl who has been trying to change her name since she transferred to us months ago, and keeps coming up with names that are not on the registry, only to have them rejected when she sends them in because of girls farther ahead in the pipeline than her, and there's no way she could have known that.

  • Locked thread