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.
Should there even be a poll here???
This poll is closed.
Yes 106 15.84%
No 117 17.49%
Goku 446 66.67%
Total: 669 votes
[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

 
  • Post
  • Reply
Wingnut Ninja
Jan 11, 2003

Mostly Harmless

CaptainSarcastic posted:

I really meant the whole flopping thing - I am aware of stuff like deflategate in football and sign-stealing in baseball. But the absurd faking injuries like a toddler seems to be more soccer-specific.

Not quite as dramatic as in soccer, but in football it's pretty common for every false start/offsides to have one or both teams immediately start pointing fingers to try and lay blame. Seems like kind of a similar principle.

In general there's not as much incentive to fake injuries in football because getting hit and getting injured is an expected part of the game, and even a completely legal hit can cause an injury that takes a player out of the game, or the season, or the sport, or life. Plus with instant replay the refs can just go look at the tape if there's any question about it.

And in baseball contact of any kind is so rare that there's not a lot of opportunity for it.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

How is sign-stealimg cheating?

Bottom Liner
Feb 15, 2006


a specific vein of lasagna

The Lone Badger posted:

How is sign-stealimg cheating?

knowing what pitch is coming next is a big fuckin deal. like almost knowing what the opponent is throwing next in rock paper scissors level.

snergle
Aug 3, 2013

A kind little mouse!

CaptainSarcastic posted:

I really meant the whole flopping thing - I am aware of stuff like deflategate in football and sign-stealing in baseball. But the absurd faking injuries like a toddler seems to be more soccer-specific.

happens in basketball to. not to the extent of faking injuries but the fall on the ground look i was fouled.

Abugadu
Jul 12, 2004

1st Sgt. Matthews and the men have Procured for me a cummerbund from a traveling gypsy, who screeched Victory shall come at a Terrible price. i am Honored.
Ah, misunderstood the question.

Football does have flopping, to some extent. When an offense has been driving down the field, usually late in the game where teams are low on timeouts, you'll often see a defensive player fake an injury to give the rest of the defense a breather for a few minutes. There's an infamous video I'll try to dig up where two guys drop with "injuries" after a play almost simultaneously.


https://www.reddit.com/r/sports/comments/kl4jk/forget_soccer_anyone_catch_the_ny_giants_faking/

Abugadu fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Apr 13, 2021

Azathoth
Apr 3, 2001

The Lone Badger posted:

How is sign-stealimg cheating?

the astros had a video tape setup where nonplayers would watch for the signs and then make a distinct noise related to a certain pitch (banging a trashcan for a fastball, for example) to signify to the hitter what the next pitch was going to be. it's been an accepted part of the game to protect your signs from the runner at second for as long as there have been signs and while it's always been considered a little dirty to engage in that kind of thing, it's a far cry from an organization employing modern technology (and loud trashcan signals from outside the game) to literally tell a player what pitch is coming next.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Bottom Liner posted:

knowing what pitch is coming next is a big fuckin deal. like almost knowing what the opponent is throwing next in rock paper scissors level.

That's just tactics isn't it?

Thomamelas
Mar 11, 2009

Azathoth posted:

yeah, that level of cheating happens in pretty much every sport but it seems to be more publicly discussed in soccer for one reason or another

i think some of it is just the overall slower pace of the game makes it way easier for the fans / announcers to catch it as it happens unlike, let's say basketball, which features a similar level of flop but is fast enough that a lot of it goes unnoticed / unmentioned because of the flow of the game doesn't stop if a foul isn't called

it also seems to me that some segment of soccer fans are, for one reason or another, just more accepting of it as part of the game. whether that's the fans being more honest about something that's actually happening in pretty much every sport or whether it's being more tolerant than they should of unsportsmanlike conduct, i'll leave that without comment

I feel like it's that the cheating looks so silly. It's like watching drama students practice pratfalls. Where as racing cheating is fun engineering poo poo. PEDs scandals in baseball have exciting homers. Deflategate was pretty lame but you can torment Pats fans with it. Other forms of cheating can be exciting but flopping is just silly.

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist

The Lone Badger posted:

That's just tactics isn't it?

Really against the spirit of the game. It's not like we're cheating a casino here.

Takes No Damage
Nov 20, 2004

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.


Grimey Drawer

Zesty posted:

Really against the spirit of the game. It's not like we're cheating a casino here.

You think they're out there playing for the love of the game :lol: The :airquote: spirit of all major league sports is to make money, and you do that by winning games.

Wingnut Ninja
Jan 11, 2003

Mostly Harmless
Now I'm going down a rabbit hole reading about baseballs in major league games; I knew they changed them out frequently but I didn't realize it was basically any time they touch something other than a hand or a mitt.

Memento
Aug 25, 2009


Bleak Gremlin

Thomamelas posted:

Where as racing cheating is fun engineering poo poo.

Hard :agreed:

I don't think the video up the thread mentioned it but the Toyota World Rally Championship cheating scandal in the mid-90s was the absolute best poo poo I've ever seen.

The WRC at the time had 34mm restrictor plates on the intake, before the turbo, which meant you could only get (x) amount of air into the car in any second. That amount of air was good for around 300hp, give or take a single-digit number of hp based on the other efficiencies you managed to have in the engine. Toyota made an intake with a special series of springs inside that meant while the car was running and the turbo was sucking air in as hard as it could, it would open up the area around the restrictor plate, meaning they would get around an extra 50hp. But when it was opened up by the officials, the engine was of course not running, so the the springs would be back in place and the opening couldn't be seen.

Hihohe
Oct 4, 2008

Fuck you and the sun you live under


Takes No Damage posted:

You think they're out there playing for the love of the game :lol: The :airquote: spirit of all major league sports is to make money, and you do that by winning games.


And you will lose if they catch you sign stealing. So no its not a good tactic.

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.

This guy tells a good story about the time the Nazis were blown the gently caress out in 1935 German Grand Prix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm4TcPsDtRE

Grem
Mar 29, 2004

It's how her species communicates

Sign stealing in baseball is not cheating. Using technology to aid sign stealing is cheating.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

I guess the way I'd see it is in that case someone who was not one of the designated competitors was interfering in the game.

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist

Takes No Damage posted:

You think they're out there playing for the love of the game :lol: The :airquote: spirit of all major league sports is to make money, and you do that by winning games.

Cool? I didn't say anything about "the love of the game". It's pretty clear sign stealing (like the embed here) is cheating and against the spirit of the game. So I don't know what your point is when you're saying, "The only thing that matters is winning, so cheating is fine."

https://twitter.com/Jomboy_/status/1194505021624406016?s=20

Zesty fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Apr 13, 2021

aejix
Sep 18, 2007

It's about finding that next group of core players we can win with in the next 6, 8, 10 years. Let's face it, it's hard for 20-, 21-, 22-year-olds to lead an NHL team. Look at the playoffs.

That quote is from fucking 2018. Fuck you Jim
Pillbug

Platystemon posted:

This guy tells a good story about the time the Nazis were blown the gently caress out in 1935 German Grand Prix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm4TcPsDtRE

This is an extremely cool story. Those rear engine supercharged v16s with the 50 gal fuel tanks :chanpop:

Butterfly Valley
Apr 19, 2007

I am a spectacularly bad poster and everyone in the Schadenfreude thread hates my guts.

mind the walrus posted:

Ok honest US guy asking a question here-- what the hell is the deal with flopping in this game? Like do they train on it, or it just happens based on cultural osmosis?

As an actual British football watcher and regular poster in our dying football subforum I’m very pleased with the way this actually received a number of considered and measured responses and not the usual cavalcade of American chucklefucks climbing over each other to add their own no doubt hilarious and very unique takes on the concept of simulation in football; like the concept of exaggerating or cheating in sport is one unique to dirty Europeans and certainly not something that would ever sully the shores of the great US of A

To add to the other responses: first, the problem is not as prevalent as a few gifs makes it seem, and Americans don’t realise just quite how much football is played across thousands of leagues and levels of football across hundreds of countries. Lower league football is certainly a whole lot less glamorous and at least in the UK has a reputation for being much more ‘honest’ than the top leagues, mainly because as player skill decreases, the chances of being utterly cleaned out by some poo poo clogger who considers ‘booting them up the arse’ as a valid contribution to the game in lieu of actual skilful tackling increases. And then you have amateur football, which for the most part is played by hungover overweight men in their thirties dragging their asses around the pitch on a Saturday morning after one too many the previous evening, where there is a very real risk of being absolutely crunched by some uncoordinated wanker from marketing who thinks lumbering in to challenges two footed and snapping someone’s shins is epic banter.

Football has been resistant to video refereeing (VAR) for a long time, for very valid reasons which are being highlighted now that video referees are being poorly implemented across a number of the biggest leagues. The arguments for and against are a whole separate can of worms but one of the main ‘against’ is that in theory football is at its roots an egalitarian and working class game that can be played to exactly the same rules and standards whether you’re a poo poo Sunday league team or Manchester City, one of the richest clubs on the planet. As long as you have a ball, referee, 2 linesmen and a pitch, you can have a game of football with exactly the same rules and standards, no matter your level or the technology available. There has been a lot of resistance to the idea of VAR for the idea that you create different tiers of officiating standards. I personally don’t think this is the best argument against, but I mention all this to emphasise how important the referee’s word is, and how a lot of the flow of the game is dependent upon their interpretation of the laws. There has always been a very strong feeling that football should be a mostly free flowing, minimally interrupted game, and absolutely all decisions that are made on the pitch should remain on the pitch, respectively to avoid having a disjointed game broken up for the sake of advertising breaks, and to avoid the controversies of retroactively ruling on matches that are finished and done.

All of this means there is a lot of pressure on the referee (who doesn’t have much support, and can’t possibly be expected to see everything happening across the pitch all of the time) to make the right decision in the spur of the moment. They don’t have the benefit of millions of slow motion cameras to pick over every angle of an incident to work out if there was an actual foul or not, they just have to figure it out the best they can from the information available to them. Because of this, they can also tend to err on the side of caution - giving a penalty kick for a foul in the box, or a red card, are huge decisions that have a massive impact on the result of the game. Refereeing standards are different across the world, but generally in the UK penalties don’t get given for fouls in the box unless the fouled player goes down, which creates an awful feedback loop where players are incentivised to dive because they know if they don’t then there’s no chance of a penalty being given even if they were actually fouled. The same applies to players getting hit - if they feel the contact went beyond the ‘normal’ contact to be expected in football (or if they’re a cheating bastard trying to invent something to get an opposing player sent off), they’ve learned the best way of drawing attention to this is by going down clutching whatever body part was struck. This can obviously look ridiculous, but the matter is complicated by the fact that a lot of players do intentionally go out of their way to cause injury when they’re tackling, intentionally swinging an arm when they’re jumping to smash someone in the face or neck or otherwise trying to physically gently caress up the other team in a way they can claim was an innocent challenge.

This is all to say that referees have a thankless task, but they also don’t make it easy on themselves by not punishing fouls as they see them and instead relying too much on the reaction of the players. As a non football watcher you might think the solution is blindingly obvious, and that we should just accept technology and move with the times - except we now do have video refereeing, and the vast majority of incidents that happen on the pitch are nowhere near as cut and dry as the ridiculous examples in those gifs posted. If all of the pundits can argue over whether something was a foul or a dive or not for hours after the game, how can you expect the referee to make their mind up within a few seconds of watching a replay on the side of the pitch?

Again I can’t speak for other countries, but for the most part the problem with egregious diving in the UK leagues deals with itself. If you start to develop a reputation as someone who simulates contact or dives too much, you’ll constantly catch poo poo for it from opposing fans, your own fans might even start to turn on you, and most importantly referees will now feel emboldened to never give you the benefit of the doubt and you’ll likely end up eating poo poo from some genuinely awful challenges where the ref just assumes you’re faking it.

So the poster that said it’s tolerated wasn’t totally wrong, but nor were they 100% right either. With the nature of the game it’s always going to be impossible to get everything right all the time, and there is always going to be some grey area when it comes to interpreting what are illegal fouls and not. The bigger leagues with more scrutiny inevitably result in higher profile mistakes, but it also works both ways: think of that thread favourite video from the Turkish league where Zokora and his team kicked the poo poo out of Emre Belözoğlu for being racist for 90 minutes and the ref mostly ignored it, or Nigel De Jong karate kicking Xabi Alonso in the solar plexus in the middle of the World Cup final, and getting away with a yellow.

https://i.imgur.com/LZCkkuO.mp4

Butterfly Valley fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Apr 13, 2021

Chef Boyardeez Nuts
Sep 9, 2011

The more you kick against the pricks, the more you suffer.
You misspelled "Soccer."

VanSandman
Feb 16, 2011
SWAP.AVI EXCHANGER

Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:

You misspelled "Soccer."

Aramoro
Jun 1, 2012




On the deliberate cheating front people always hold Rugby up as an example of a fair game but in reality it's absolutely full of what are called 'professional fouls', i.e. doing something massively illegal because the penalty for it is not as bad as what might happen otherwise, and milking penalties like holding people into rucks and complaining they're not getting out of the way. They really for the same reason as you get them in football, they might be to your advantage. In football you'll see Cristiano Ronaldo, someone famous for falling over, riding a really hard challenge if he thinks he can make the ball, if not might as well go down you weren't going to get the ball anyway. Same in rugby, got slow ball in a ruck? Complain to the ref about them not rolling away or sealing off or whatever.

The best cheating in recent years was to do with blood replacements in Rugby. So some background in Rugby you have 6 replacements and you can bring them on whenever but once you've used all 6 that's you done. Unless you're bleeding, in which case you have to go off to get patched up and you're allowed to bring someone who went off earlier back on. An English team Harlequins were found to be using fake blood capsules to fake blood injuries to make tactical substitutions late on in game.

LifeSunDeath
Jan 4, 2007

still gay rights and smoke weed every day
Here's a professional foul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBForKcFWoA
do whatever it takes to win, to hell with the team.

Toaster Beef
Jan 23, 2007

that's not nature's way

The Lone Badger posted:

I guess the way I'd see it is in that case someone who was not one of the designated competitors was interfering in the game.

Think more along the lines of "someone was using illegal equipment to directly influence the outcome of the game." As others have pointed out, it's not actually illegal to steal signs. It happens all the time, because it's an extremely helpful thing for a batter to know the type (or even just the speed) of the pitch about to come across the plate. And pitchers and catchers guard against this by switching up their signs, using different patterns, etc., to confuse whomever is stealing signals (typically it's a runner who gets on base and has the opportunity to peek in at the catcher when the signs are being made).

Where the Astros' case takes a hard left into illegality is the use of a camera and monitor system to grab those signs and immediately transmit them into the dugout, where teammates would then signal the batter. It's an enormous advantage to be able to steal signs in such a quick and easily hidden way, and it relies on outside equipment. If you want to draw a line between it and other instances of the league banning equipment or material that gives players an unfair advantage, you can compare it to the arm brace that Barry Bonds used to wear, or pine tar above a certain point on the bat, or sandpaper/pine tar/other substances in the pitcher's glove. Those are things external to the game that give a player an unfair advantage (arguable in the case of the Bonds brace, I guess), and they've been banned.

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1381691088319156226?s=20

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 20 hours!
A page late but I just love the world's worst case of bad breath


Also I hope that Weinstein's body is decomposing before our very eyes.

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.


Ok, but when are the rest of his teeth getting removed?

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 20 hours!

Bird in a Blender posted:

Ok, but when are the rest of his teeth getting removed?

Dentist's reply: "You want it so bad then you go get it! I got a rusty pair of pliers you can borrow"

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.

He hammed it up with a walker at court.

I simply don’t believe him.

Platystemon fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Apr 13, 2021

Cartoon Man
Jan 31, 2004


Old people end up needing teeth removed all the time for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with him being a rapist scumbag in prison.

Dik Hz
Feb 22, 2004

Fun with Science

Wingnut Ninja posted:

Not quite as dramatic as in soccer, but in football it's pretty common for every false start/offsides to have one or both teams immediately start pointing fingers to try and lay blame. Seems like kind of a similar principle.

In general there's not as much incentive to fake injuries in football because getting hit and getting injured is an expected part of the game, and even a completely legal hit can cause an injury that takes a player out of the game, or the season, or the sport, or life. Plus with instant replay the refs can just go look at the tape if there's any question about it.

And in baseball contact of any kind is so rare that there's not a lot of opportunity for it.
Don't forget about the Minnesota Twins who played in a domed station and would turn on the blowers in the outfield when the opposing team was at bat and the blowers behind the batter when the Twins were at bat. The difference in air flow meant a foot or two of travel on a deep fly ball. Doesn't sound like much, but that was the margin on Kirby Puckett's dramatic leaping catch at the wall to save game 6 of the 1987 world series.

LifeSunDeath
Jan 4, 2007

still gay rights and smoke weed every day

not even close to enough

Malachite_Dragon
Mar 31, 2010

Weaving Merry Christmas magic
The Flop Defender has logged on

If there is a kind god, this mans deterioration will accelerate just enough to cause him immense pain, but not enough to kill him before he is officially convicted.

Butterfly Valley
Apr 19, 2007

I am a spectacularly bad poster and everyone in the Schadenfreude thread hates my guts.

Malachite_Dragon posted:

The Flop Defender has logged on

I wasn't defending it in the slightest, just explaining why it happens and putting it into context in the wider game. Would you rather I posted some gifs of fat american football players bouncing off each other and post about how they're weak sissies compared to rugby players if you think that sort of level of critical analysis of sports we have no idea about is interesting?

ZombieLenin
Sep 6, 2009

"Democracy for the insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society." VI Lenin


[/quote]

CaptainSarcastic posted:

In pretty much every sport?

I'm hard-pressed to think of an example of this from say football or baseball. Is it rife in cricket? I bet it's rife in cricket.

What do you mean? It happens all the time in football. Just look at the Patriots filming opponents practices, or deflate gate. Hell offensive players faking injuries to stop the clock was such an endemic problem, they literally had to change the rules.

And baseball? There are tons of examples of pitchers—Michael Pineda comes to mind—who get caught altering balls they are pitching; and the whole MLB world—there were almost lifetime bans handed out—just had the whole Astros sign stealing thing happen.

And that’s not even counting how individual players in those sports try to circumvent banned substances and steroid use.

Humphreys
Jan 26, 2013

We conceived a way to use my mother as a porn mule


Butterfly Valley posted:

I wasn't defending it in the slightest, just explaining why it happens and putting it into context in the wider game. Would you rather I posted some gifs of fat american football players bouncing off each other and post about how they're weak sissies compared to rugby players if you think that sort of level of critical analysis of sports we have no idea about is interesting?

As someone who believes this, please go ahead - I love compilations.

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib

Grem posted:

Sign stealing in baseball is not cheating. Using technology to aid sign stealing is cheating.


https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sign-stealing/

quote:

Frick said publicly that he would overturn any game if it was proven the winning team had stolen signs using mechanical means, like a camera or a buzzer system, or even binoculars. This was the line in the sand, in terms of baseball ethics. Players were allowed to steal with their eyes because that was considered a skill. But they couldn’t steal signs using technology.

gently caress the Astros, by the way.

Seth Pecksniff
May 27, 2004

can't believe shrek is fucking dead. rip to a real one.

I mean how are you going to regulate sign stealing with eyes? "Oh I was watching the pitcher not the catcher!"

Also sign stealing with eyes is good and cool, sign stealing with technology is dumb as poo poo and offenders should be executed

Cartoon Man
Jan 31, 2004


HelloIAmYourHeart posted:

gently caress the Astros, by the way.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Aerdan
Apr 14, 2012

Not Dennis NEDry

Malachite_Dragon posted:

If there is a kind god, this mans deterioration will accelerate just enough to cause him immense pain, but not enough to kill him before he is officially convicted.

if there were a kind god, his victims would be beating his rear end. this, however, is what prison does to people. and there are thousands of people in jail who can't afford bail, many for offenses that white people would not have been jailed for or would have gotten a slap on the wrist at most.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply