Fairly indifferent, but yes it does feel like more high drama than the NFL playoffs.
Right, its not the fairest criticism, but its still true. There is something thats just infinitely more compelling about a series
Then it would seem like you should oppose playoffs entirely? Why not just use the regular season win loss record to crown the best team?
if all you care about is “best team ships” then yes, playoffs are dumb and just have a lot of regular season games and give it to the top team at the end of the season
if you want something fun and exciting to watch on TV then everyone in a single-elimination bigass bracket is the way to go
Man, anal beads have gotten really fancy
I’d honestly be fine with that but there are some feasibility problems in NFL. In Euro football everybody plays everyone else home and away. Can’t really do that in NFL. They have a tournament as well, but winning that is not as big a deal, but still scratches the playoff itch. Really a great system, imo.
MLB could easily do it. But I don’t watch or care about baseball.
NBA could probably make it work with some tweaking.
Guy has 6 golds and I couldn’t for the life of me tell you who he is. #olympicsrecognizability
Klaebo, he swept cross country and the end of that 50k was absolutely nuts
Didn’t watch, but know his name
That’s because those are Aual beads.
Enjoy the variety that the different sports bring.
I’d say “best team” wins
1 NBA
2 NFL (though there was the Eli era)
3 MLB (the money is making it so)
4 NHL (cause the puck bounces and goalies).
Spent the whole weekend at at a curling camp in Phoenix so haven’t posted any curling takes in a while but my overall take on the USA curling situation is they massively outperformed expectations across the board. Mixed Doubles they were pre-event 4th(betting favorite) finished 2nd, Men’s 4s they were pre-event 9th and finished 5th. Womens 4s they were pre-event 10th and got 4th.
Now is that a fluke or is it a surge in curling interest since the gold in 2018. Not sure. But I’d go with this olympics helping clubs everywhere in the US. If even the most slight amount of serious money comes into curling as a sport in the US it will explode. Now will that happen this olympic cycle? Probably not. But i do think interest in the sport is at an all time high and the accessibility and availability of curling clubs has gone up a ton in the last decade so maybe?
You can literally build a top level North American curling facility for like 5m and that’s chump change compared to the capital investments in most sports on a serious level.
What’s weird is I started watching curling in 2006, because when this stuff was live back then, it was a lot of curling or hockey. The only curling I ended up watching this time was the pre-opening ceremonies stuff.
With the ability to watch and fast forward through replays with no commercials now, I just focused on what I wanted to watch and it usually kept me down to no more than 3 hours a day. If I hadn’t fallen behind I probably could have gotten through all my viewing in 1.5 hours. Curling isn’t a good fast forward or pausing event so I just didn’t make any time for it this time even though it never used to bore me.
So let’s say it was possible to take two of the exact same shots fired by a curling robot.
How much realistically does sweeping change where the rock ends up? A difference of a few feet in length? 6” left or right?
Id say probably 6-10 feet in length and 6-12 inches on line for top level sweepers. They had a smart broom at this camp that measured your sweeping pressure by pounds continuously and mine was like 90 on the brush push and 40 on the brush pull. Top curling sweepers can get a bit less than double that. Meaning their shots have to be a couple feet or so in weight and a couole inches or so less on line less accurate. Long story short sweeping matters.
They need to make some rule changes to 10 end 4s games in the olympics.
Is the first change removing the last two ends? What else?
Most fancy golf clubs in Canada adding curling in the 50s-70s as a way to keep full time staff on the payroll in the Winter when the club wasn’t being used. Now most of them in the Toronto area are getting rid of it since the curlers in the Winter are often only about 30% golfers and 70% curling members and the 90% of golfers that don’t curl don’t want to share the club with curlers who spent 2% what they did to join.
Seems only the curling clubs without kitchens are surviving.
I assume there’s a path forward if Americans want to add it to their golf clubs in the North and allow people to use their facilities for cheap.
