Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Sport

I can't believe there's no app for that!

Silky Slim — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:48:46 -0800

Could I possibly use my iPhone as a bike computer? Yes, there are some biking-related apps for the iPhone, but they all seem to rely on GPS. Mine is a 1st gen iPhone, so I can't use those. But even when I eventually upgrade to a 3G S, it just seems slow, inaccurate and wasteful (not to mention silly) to rely on satellites in outer space in order to track the speed and distance travelled on my bicycle.
A Google search reveals that some genius in Japan created a hack for this last year, but alas, it hasn't evolved into a consumer product to the best of my knowledge.
I'm sure there's a simpler way to achieve this using Apple's Nike + iPod doohickey. It's a physical accessory that wirelessly counts clicks from your running shoe. Couldn't it be modified to count blips from a wheel-mounted magnet? Has anyone tried it?
Or will I have to... gasp! ...buy an actual bike computer and use two devices where one might have sufficed?
Thanks in advance for any further info.

Help me determine rate of imprement for my players!

TheManticore — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:28:55 -0800

I coach a high school soccer team. Each practice we go through a routine which involves repetitions of various skills. The number of repetitions accomplished by a player for each skill is recorded in an excel spreadsheet for ranking purposes. I want to determine the rate of improvement so the players can see their progress and who's improving most. Is there a simple excel function that would help me do this?

Where should I buy a ticket for in Camp Nou?

ascullion — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:05:38 -0800

I'm going to Barcelona in October and am going to take in a football match at Camp Nou. Tickets are currently freely available in the stadium - is there a particuarly good or bad place for a neutral/tourist to sit?

Recent trends in high school marketing and education methods?

zaebiz — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:32:19 -0800

What are the trends around the world underlying the most successful (I guess I am talking financially mostly) high schools around the world these days? What are the marketing buzzwords driving the race for students? My old high school is in trouble and I'd like to help if I can. After a recent visit to my old high school, I discovered it was in serious financial difficulty. It had been a traditionally strong sporting school but could hold its own academically until recently. It's not clear that the substantial drop in academic results are tied to its financial difficulty. There may be other factors. In response they have decided to focus on their traditional strengths as a sporting school and have cut all academic scholarships so as to boost sporting scholarships. I found this somewhat disturbing. I would be interested to know any thoughts people had about this move, especially stories from experience about trends in the area.

Horse riding event with car driving?

markturner — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:31:38 -0800

Some time ago I remember seeing an event on TV that involved horse riding and car driving in the same event. Does anyone know about this? The format was something like this:

There was a muddy sort of arena that formed a ring in an elongated circle (similar to an 800m athletics track, but much smaller), and the competitors had to ride a horse around, then dismount, get into a car and drive that around it as well.

I can't remember if this was a real sport or if it was some sort of crazy gameshow or something.

This would have been seen on UK TV, possibly on satellite channels, like sky sports or something, but I can't remember the channel.

Please explain "Friday Night Lights" to me, specifically, the college football part.

AmbroseChapel — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:04:20 -0800

Please explain "Friday Night Lights" to me, specifically, the college football part. I'm watching "Friday Night Lights", and although I love the show, I'm realising I don't understand much about American football.*

Specifically, the guys in the show are good enough to win the state high-school championship. But the main tension and drama on the show is about whether they will get to go to college.

This may well be a dumb question, but why do they have to go to college? Why can't they just sign up with a team, leave school and start playing football professionally?

The only vaguely similar sport I know about is soccer. Kids can sign with big-league teams at any time, so if they're good players and not particularly academic, they just leave school and start playing.

Obviously, bulk and physical strength play more of a part in American football, and the average seventeen-year-old probably isn't up to playing against people in their twenties. But if you were signed up by a team at seventeen, they could develop you in any way they wanted, without the distraction of having to study at the same time.

The show may be harping on the point about going to college because of the kids' blue-collar/disadvantaged backgrounds, but please explain to me how the system works. It seems like the pro teams use the college teams as a free training program.

* people who've avoided the show because they don't like, or don't understand, American football, should think again.

where can I watch televised Rugby League in Melbourne?

UbuRoivas — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:23:58 -0800

MelbourneFilter: where can I watch televised Rugby League in Melbourne? yep, i'm in town again, and the mighty South Sydney Rabbitohs are playing tonight. so, i'm wondering if there's any known pub (preferably in the CBD, Carlton, Fitzroy or Collingwood areas) where people might gather to watch Rugby League...?

bonus points if the place is a regular pub, not some kind of horrific sports bar.

as an example of what i'm looking for, the grungy, hipsterish Courthouse Hotel in Newtown (Sydney) is well known as an AFL pub, for aerial pingpong fans needing a sporting fix.

What music keeps you going and going and going asking for another hill to come?

mathiu — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:20:28 -0800

[exhausted-athlete-music-filter] What songs will carry you up any hill? I am part of a university sports team that is to compete in a one day, 18 leg, relay race over 45 minute distances in running/inline-skating/street-biking and mountain-biking.

I am in the process of pimping our tour bus with a sound system. I hope that music will lift our athletes' up-hill spirits throughout their gigs.

What music keeps you going and going and going asking for another hill to come?

when to promote sport.

wilful — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:30:55 -0800

When should one attempt to promote team sports to a boy? Of course, every child is different, and you are not my son’s parent, and only I (and the missus) can really tell, but, disclaimers aside, what’s your experience been with starting team sports for your son, or daughter? What are the development milestones I should look for that means he’ll more likely enjoy it? Did you try too early, and have to give it another go later? Any anecdotes welcome (or hey, links to research good too).

Can I take up a team sport at my age?

ascullion — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:37:41 -0800

I'm 30 years old, in the UK, and I want to start playing a team sport. Probably rugby. I haven't kicked a ball in anger since I was 15, and I wasn't very good at it even then. (I am reasonably fit though - I jog.) How does someone like me get (back) into team sport, and am I likely to enjoy it, or will I just find myself frustrated?

What kind of sport involves roller shoes ridden like a longboard?

optimuscrime — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:04:50 -0800

It's sport identification time, hive mind. There's a kid I see around campus who travels using... well, they're sort of like roller skates. Except where roller skates' wheels are fixed and point forward, these are pivoting and are ridden sideways, as if you're riding a longboard without the board. He seems to basically just 'surf', leaning into curves, etc. It's quite amazing to watch, but I can't find any information about this sport/mode of conveyance.

Muscle building for the lazy home body

zaebiz — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 06:11:58 -0800

What is the best way for a fairly unmotivated but still moderately fit guy with a lot of time on his hands to build upper body mass in the comfort of his own home?

Is there an aquatic sport called zapping?

ninebelow — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:43:34 -0800

Is there an aquatic sport called zapping? My girlfriend was watching the Olympics in a bar in Ljubljana last week. She swears that one of the events was called zapping and consisted of a sort of aquatic leapfrog with one person swimming over three others in the pool before somersaulting off the back of the final one. Now, obviously this isn't an Olympic sport but she is adamant she wasn't drunk. So what did she see? Was this part of the Olympic synchronised swimming? Or some crazy Slovenian sport?

"Spanish Lice"?

Third — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:46:47 -0800

What exactly is wrong with this Spanish advertisement in which the Spanish basketball teams are slanting their eyes so as to appear stereotypically Asian? My friend, who is Spanish and just spent five weeks in Spain, and I were discussing this picture earlier this evening. We had just seen Tropic Thunder, where Robert Downey Jr.'s blackface performance and the derogatory nature with which mentally disabled people are depicted has drawn some criticism.

I asked my friend, N, what he thought about the teams' photograph. I was joking of course, but he seemed to take it seriously. He told me that there was hardly a reaction in Spain and that it's the rest of the world that is up in arms about the situation. He failed to see what exactly was wrong with the picture.

My other (American) friends in the car thought, like me, that the picture was racist. N said it would be the same thing if Spanish teams put on flat caps and held cups of tea at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Everyone else argued that it would only be on the same level as "slant eyes" if they put in nasty fake teeth. Then more examples came up:

What if the Spanish football team put on dark makeup at the World Cup in 2012?
What if a future set of Olympic Games were held in Munich, and they put on small dark mustaches?
What if the women's basketball team put on full burkas if the Games were held in Baku?

N realized that we thought the picture of the basketball teams was offensive, and asked why it was OK for Downey Jr. to get away with Tropic Thunder, and we responded that Downey Jr. is not representing his country in a worldwide sporting event.

The argument ended in a stalemate, with N calling bullshit on me when I told him that, regardless of the intended meaning of the picture (which he claims is innocuous), it's the perceived sentiment that matters.

When I got inside and sat down, I couldn't really think of a good reason as to why that picture is inappropriate. It's insensitive, sure, but what are the actual complaints being lodged against Spanish athletics? Does it have something to do with Aragonés and Spain's recent bouts of perceived racism in sport? Where is the line drawn between humorous cultural ribbing and outright racism? Would it be OK if, at the fictional Munich games mentioned above, they had mugs of beer and were eating sausages?

Sorry for such a long-winded explanation to a hard-to-answer question, but I happened to start seeing N's side of the story and I wanted to hear what the hive mind thinks.

Weeing and cycling - what up?

mooza — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:21:23 -0800

What happens when marathon cyclists need to urinate during a race? Multi-part question follows. Watching the men's marathon race in Beijing yesterday and knowing very little about the sport, I saw a bunch of male cyclists stop for a wizz on the side of the road at one point. Google also tells me that cyclists may also just wet themselves while riding, which is not fun for the people riding behind them. A friend told me that good riders know how to pee without getting their bike wet, which is apparently a bad thing to do (wetting the bike that is). My questions are:

1. Is it more common for riders to stop for a wee or just do it on the fly?
2. Where does weeing on the fly sit in the realm of okay-ness? What are the rules of etiquette in a marathon race situation?
3. If some riders stop but others wet themselves, how is this fair in the race?
4. When a bunch of riders do stop for it, how to they maintain their racing order? How do they all decide they're going to do it?
5. This is the most important question: what happens for female riders? How would they be able to stop and go on the roadside? How would they wet themselves while riding without getting the bike funky?
6. What sort of damage, if any, is done to a urine soaked bike?

Game, set and match

jontyjago — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:47:47 -0800

Serving an ace aside, what are the advantages of serving in tennis? Why is it so hard to break a serve? Being a tennis noob and having watched a few games at Wimbledon this year, I'm wondering why most players hold their service game. Aside from scoring an ace, there is clearly some tactical advantage in serving even when a rally starts. Given the speed, returning a serve must be harder than a ball in a rally but what is happens once the rally starts, that servers generally win their serve?

Why do female olympic swimmers have the body type they do?

true — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:00:19 -0800

Why do even olympic level swimmers (especially women) appear to have a "thin layer of fat over muscle" look rather than having the extreme muscle definition of say, sprinters? Mrs. True and I are watching the US Olympic Trials and it seems to a consistent body type. Clearly they are in peak physical condition but even the short distance sprint swimmers seem to be be a little 'thicker' than other athletes at that level (especially in the torso and arms). Is there something about swimming that makes this the ideal body type for women, or is it a side effect of swimming itself?

Sports summary: does it exist?

Towelie — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:36:47 -0800

Is there a sports summary website? Where I can get quickly and simply up to date on any team? I don't want to be an expert in sports (in general.) But when I go to an event (like my local baseball/football game with friends), I'd like to have some general 'home team' and 'competitor team' knowledge; who is playing really well, things to watch for....etc.

Is there anything like this on the net; Ideally, I'm looking to read 2-3 paragraphs of where a team is right now (and possible a separate 2-3 paragraph 'summary' of any current crises/problems.)

Tell me what year my bike was made

nanhey — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:15:09 -0800

Can you tell me what year my bike was made? it's a specialized allez sport but i don't know what year it's from. here is a photo

i can post other photos if that will help you identify the year.

thanks!

Where can I find footage of the New Zealand America's Cup "Loyal" campaign ad?

media_itoku — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:31:52 -0800

I'm looking for a video clip of the "Loyal" TV ad campaign that ran in New Zealand during the America's Cup against Alinghi last year. There are plenty of copies of the original Dave Dobbyn version but I'm looking for the one with NZ'ers holding hands across the nation etc. YouTube and Goo have failed me. Any clues?

How to watch the SuperBowl online?

dcrocha — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:14:14 -0800

How can I watch the SuperBowl XLII online? Neither of cable channels here in my country will air it (ESPN aired everything BUT the SuperBowl) so I need to try the Internet!

Rucking and Scrumming off Season

chase — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:54:18 -0800

What can an extremely novice, woman rugby player do during the off season to improve her skills? This fall was my very first experience and instruction with rugby. [Women's Union; I played tight prop]. Previously, I had never watched nor played the game. I just jumped right in after attending a clinic a couple months ago. I've had tons of fun and a multitude of bruises. Over the last few weeks I've increased my physical endurance and learned a great deal about how to play the game. However, during the off season, I am wanting to know what can I do, as an individual, to improve my skills. Obviously, group training is best for a team sport. Obviously cardio improvement. Yet, my question is... What drills and physical training, can I do alone, that would be best for preparing me for the spring season? How would I go about creating an inexpensive ruck/tackle scenario in my basement or garage for snow covered days this winter? [This thread was extremely helpful, just looking for more advice.]

ADD-friendly physical activity advice needed

Baud — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:22:20 -0800

Help me find an ADD-friendly physical activity. Looks like there's Here are the two halves of the problem :

Part One : I have ADD. Repetitive activities bore me to death. Going to a gym or a sport center or a tennis club or whatever every wednesday at 10 is a repetitive activity. I will get bored an un-motivated around week 3.

Part Two : A little exercice resulting in a few pounds less would start a pleasant virtuous circle in my life.

So the big question is : what kind of exercice, sport, preferably outdoor physical activity or whatever will allow me to use my muscles to burn some fat while not becoming bored to death by the repetition of it all ?

Useful details :

- I own a bike. I'm looking for something gentle at the start (closer to yoga than squash) but that's negotiable.

- mid-thirties, single I live in Brussels (Belgium).

Free Falling

C17H19NO3 — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 01:45:46 -0800

Looking for a decent (used) sport parachute. I currently have just three AFF (Accelerated Free Fall) jumps under my belt, and I want to become a licensed skydiver. I want to purchase a decent parachute (full rig), preferrably with a main canopy somewhere in the ballpark of 190 square feet. Where is the best place to look? I have tried ebay, but there really isn't much there.

Should I stretch after judo?

amusem — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:56:44 -0800

There is no stretching at my judo dojo. Shouldn't there be any, especially at the end of an intense session? After each tri-weekly 1.5-hour session, we salute the instructor and then the dojo is closed off and we all head immediately to the changing-room. Nobody stretches. The day after, I feel rigid and lacking flexibility.

Is it important to stretch after judo?

Should I consider finding a dojo that leaves time for some stretching at the end of each session?