The Peak-End Rule and the NFL Playoffs

That's so true! I think it's even more true in basketball games, which is more prone to momentum swings. Thanks!

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I used to watch the Patriots do their summer practices at the athletic field of the University of Massachusetts, at Amherst. My father went to harvard. My brother went to BU. So I am a strong Pats fan. I have New England friends over to watch their games on the big screen. Last night was worse than a disappointment, as you say.

Excerpt from a comment I recently posted on Good Math Bad Math:

I was disappointed by the result of the much-hyped Indianapolis (having snuck away years ago from Baltimore so egregiously that science fiction bestselling author Harry Turtledove complained in the LA Times Sport section this past week) Colts versus New England Patriots rivalry, where
(from my biased view) the wrong team won, and is going to the Superbowl. Yet I acknowledge the game as exciting, a victory for the Colt's quaterback who is famous for never winning the big game, and that for
the first time the superbowl pits two African American coaches against each other.

Perhaps few you reading this comment care about football. It isn't even the big game to me, who grew up with baseball as
THE American game, and football being dominated by college football, even though the NFL goes back to the early 1930s. TV changed everything in sports, not
necessessarily for the better.

Had you heard that Caltech's bastketball team won about a week ago? No joke. They snapped a 207-game losing streak.

For perhaps a majority of people in the world, sports substitutes for what we
get from science and literature. Style, excitement, a kind of certainty comingled with uncertainty.

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Looking at the bright side, you will have 2 fewer weeks of emotional investment, before your pathetic hopes were dashed to the ground by the dominating Bears defense.

Would you rather have a disappointed Tom Brady, that is ready for another march to the playoffs in 2007, or a shell-shocked, deer-in-the-headlights, totally ruined, confidence destroyed Tom Brady, that would look and play like Tony Eason after facing the Beloved Bear in the SuperBowl?

I think you came out ahead after all, because a rematch of the Bears Pats, would have been Bears 46, Pats 3. A lot of the '85 Bears and fans are still PO's that Ditka subbed on defense, letting the Pats score a meaningless late touchdown, ruining the Bears no touchdown performance in the playoffs that year.

Okay, I am just kidding. The Pats would have been a very tough opponent for the Bears, and Tom Brady is no Tony Eason or Steve Grogan! You had another good year, and I am sure the Pats will be back.

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My father went to Harvard, but remained a New York Yankees fan while there, a locally unpopular position.

Late in life, when he retired to Rhode Island, he switched allegience to the Red Sox. At his funeral, when I quoted Yankee manager Yogi Berra in my oration, locals seemed uneasy.

Sports are related to gambling as an addiction. Neurological scanning will probably reveal this someday. Hypothetical headline: "Scientists discover Cubs Center in brain, near Pain Center, in Chicago patients."

Sports events are like artistic performances, concerts and operas, in terms of copyright law, with, for instance, Major League Baseball insisting that their baseball games are entirely their intellectual property, and cannot be covered as if they were news events. If they are not news, they are de facto declared to not be in the real world. Isaw a book review some months ago about a book that critiqued Aristotle's thoery of art in claiming that sports events can, rarely, rise to the level of art.

Sports events are like war. George Carlin has a wonderful monologue where he compares peaceful rural baseball ("the sacrifice", "the playing field") with the urban military football ("the blitz", "throwing the long bomb", played on a "gridiron").

Another suggestion goes deeper. Sports events are like symbols of war that channel aggression without real death. That would make them akin to animal displays, deer antlers, and other symbolic aggression in mammals particularly which establish
dominance for sexual selection and territorial demarcation. Does natural Selection lead to sports?

Sports are a prime source of metaphors in the American workplace. It behooves people in the corporate world to learn at least enough about sports to fit in, as protective coloration.

My interest in sports probably comes from my father, who was, in high school, simultaneously Captain of the Baseball team, Captain of the Basketball team, Captain of the Football team, and Valedictorian. When he got to Harvard, it must have been a blow when he found that he wasn't good enough to start in any of those sports. THE game to him was the annual Harvard - Yale football game, and secondarily the Army - Navy game.

Does it puzzle some of my friends to see me and some of my colleagues so passionate about sports without diminution of our geekiness? By the way, the geek take on sports is often focused on their statistics, which are huge in database, and very sophisticated these days. Google "sabermetrics" and "The Pythagorean Theorem of Baseball."

My wife, a Physics professor born and breought up in Edinburgh, Scotland, has essentially no interest in any American
sports but, by repeated exposure through me and the media, is able to answer some sports questions in local crossword puzzles.

Traditional question in L.A.: the professional basketball team here, the L.A. Lakers -- what Lake are they named after?

Also consider: Dubya's father was a sports hero at Yale, and founded the PGA. George H. W. Bush was the Yale baseball pitcher. Dubya was a cheerleader. Dubya is deeply screwed up over trying to beat his own father, redeem him, be appreciated by him, and ignore him all at the same time. If only Dubya had gotten his original wish, and ended his career as Commissioner of Major League baseball. The world would be a much better place.

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Second try: this seems not to have been posted since I submitted it as:
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | January 22, 2007 03:13 PM

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