Richard Hinds Article Discussion

[Lakey91]

Dream teams suck the life out of footy

A LONG time ago, before the dream team became a popular tool for football marketing men to mine yet another rich vein of cross-promotional opportunities, I was part of what was then called a fantasy football league.

By the standards of today's sophisticated enterprises with their elaborate statistical formats, instant updates and the other bells and whistles of the electric interweb, it was a modest operation. A 10-team league run by an appropriately named fellow, Herbert, on behalf of a group of academics and associated geeks whose obsession with sport was in inverse proportion to their ability.

There was no family sedan up for grabs, just a collection of hand-made trophies. What set our league apart from the officially endorsed money-making exercises now promoted by the major football leagues and media outlets was that it was real.

Rather than spending imaginary salary caps with the click of a mouse we huddled around a table for the draft. We held functions and raised money for charity. We twittered at the bar. We held a presentation night.
And, in the end, we gathered to mourn Herbert, whose death deprived us of the will to keep going (not to mention the only person with the obsessive-compulsive tendencies and lenient office hours required to compile and distribute the statistics).

I was thinking about Herbert and our fantasy football league during a recent AFL game as the television scoreboard flashed up the dream team statistics as if they were now an integral part of the game.

I was thinking that, rather than engaging people in the game by asking them to absorb and analyse its statistical minutiae and making them members of some "virtual football community", mass-entry internet dream teams are another way sport has been dehumanised.

Like the bucket seats that have replaced the terraces where you would wander around and yarn and strike up an acquaintance that could last for a half or for a lifetime, dream teams make you part of a massive crowd with which you have little meaningful interaction.

Which makes the dream team no different than most new forms of communication that sell brief, impersonal encounters as "social networking".

Dream team is just another way you can communicate far more about far less to no one in particular.

Not that dream team competitions are the only example of a game's numerical ephemera becoming more compelling for some than the human contests which created it.

There has long been a vast battalion of brown cardigan-clad cricket-stat geeks for whom the game exists only to produce lists of bespectacled left-handed openers who scored seven on debut, or other such gems they can recite with the satisfaction party bores would once perform the Parrot Shop Sketch.

Americans, the original perpetrators of dream team competitions, are even more obsessive. Indeed, you could be forgiven for thinking that baseball is played only so the trajectory of each pitch, the number of splinters from each broken bat and the chomps taken on each wad of chewing tobacco could be recorded in vast tomes that make Wisden look as meaty as Spot Goes To The Park.

The AFL dream team competition at least gives consequence to statistics that have become relatively meaningless to observers of the games. The endless chipping around the edges is doubtless entertaining if the players waxing the footy are in your dream team.

Happily, not all dream teams are now trapped in cyberspace. A friend runs a traditional fantasy football competition which boasts 32 teams in two divisions. They have a robust draft, very personal head-to-head competition and, if their habit of allowing dream team allegiances to interfere with real matches — "Yeah, I hate him too but I've got him in my dream team" — can be distracting, their fantasy world of one-upmanship and side bets is very real. Very human.

Not just more cross-promotional hits on the electric interweb.

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/ne...fe-out-of-footy/2009/03/06/1235842661811.html

Apparently monty had a dig at him on his site, and now it has mysteriously become unavailable.

I think Hinds fails to acknowledge how DT has evolved - i think he could of made this a great article if he had of gone from his mates playing that traditional fantasy footy, to how it is today and explored how it has come this far, and where it is today.

Not to be.

Thoughts?

 

[Saint KFC]

RIP m0nty

 

[happy_eagle]

A baseless pointless, poorly written article

 

[Ausyid]

A baseless pointless, poorly written article

It really has no point does it?

 

[Lakey91]

Just realised theres sorta another thread on this article, but yeh. A few points:

What set our league apart from the officially endorsed money-making exercises now promoted by the major football leagues and media outlets was that it was real.

While he plays with a group of mates and has a live draft, to be honest i have a league with my mates too - we often sit around and watch the game, and one someone in our DT gets the ball we all let out friends know we just got 3 points for that kick etc. I find this interaction good, and i actually enjoy sitting down with a couple of mates like this.

I was thinking about Herbert and our fantasy football league during a recent AFL game as the television scoreboard flashed up the dream team statistics as if they were now an integral part of the game.

DT is part of our game - FACT. there were about 230k players last year, and i expect that to grow. If it grows to 300k this year, thatd be 1/70th of the population, which is very very high IMO. With the new sponsorships, the new promotions and all DT is now part of our game.

 

[Lakey91]

It really has no point does it?

As i said in the squads thread, i think it couldve been a good article if he had of looked at where it was in his day, and where it is now, and how these changes have occurred (ie rise of statistics through CD etc).

 

[abs_of_STEELE]

That's the best article he can come up with?

 

[CrozaN]

What a crap article....what has DT ever done to him huh?

 

[happy_eagle]

Im still confused as to what his thesis is ?

That Dream Team is ruining football ?
How ?
It is profitable, and makes the game's often more exciting
Perhaps he is saying that Technology is ruining the modern game
Did he expect the globalisation of technology not to impact australia ?
Someone seems to be clinging onto the past

 

[Walshie]

Well, Fanfooty's back up.

 

[Saint KFC]

Im still confused as to what his thesis is ?

That Dream Team is ruining football ?
How ?
It is profitable, and makes the game's often more exciting
Perhaps he is saying that Technology is ruining the modern game
Did he expect the globalisation of technology not to impact australia ?
Someone seems to be clinging onto the past

Yep, it's called a biased, nostalgic old-timer being reminiscint about the 'good ol' days', a time when this new fangled 'technology' fad didn't exist.

I mean really, it's just another child of the past clinging to the days of yore, unwilling to adapt and embrace the technological advances of society. To them, they look at the discourses that were prevalent during their childhood as the pinnacle of social interaction, and anything that deviates from this (ie - the rise of the Internet) is ignorantly labelled as 'anti-social' or 'detrimental to society'.

/sophisticated rant

 

[lifelike_]

It's definitely poorly written, and as a result his point's been conveyed equally poorly.

However...

Not that dream team competitions are the only example of a game's numerical ephemera becoming more compelling for some than the human contests which created it.

There needed to be more written about this point, because I reckon it's the key part of the article, and to be honest I agree with him. It won't happen, but hypothetically, the day Dream Team, for me, becomes anywhere near as important as the competition as a whole, I'll give it up.

There's definitely a sense of nostalgia in the article, and it does give off the impression that he just wants to tell everyone that he was a part of it before it became popular.

Again, poorly written article, but it does make a point.

 

[the_insid3r]

Yep, it's called a biased, nostalgic old-timer being reminiscint about the 'good ol' days', a time when this new fangled 'technology' fad didn't exist.

I mean really, it's just another child of the past clinging to the days of yore, unwilling to adapt and embrace the technological advances of society. To them, they look at the discourses that were prevalent during their childhood as the pinnacle of social interaction, and anything that deviates from this (ie - the rise of the Internet) is ignorantly labelled as 'anti-social' or 'detrimental to society'.

/sophisticated rant

spot on.... very well said mate

 

[bones25]

A baseless pointless, poorly written article

Yeah I was waiting for a punch line, really have no idea what he is on about.
I bet my left boobie that he has teams in every DT site thats up and running.

 

[Lakey91]

Yes i think he does make some valid points:

...mass-entry internet dream teams are another way sport has been dehumanised.

I think he could of based his article on this - on how DT is contributing to the dehumanisation of sport. Give other examples, and build his thesis on this. This also would of been a very good article IMO...

 

[Lakey91]

Monty's view:

http://www.fanfooty.com.au/blog/2009/03/07/dream-team-richard-hinds/

 

[abs_of_STEELE]

Thank god FF is back.

 

[happy_eagle]

The way he chose to base the article was poor (ie not follow up on any of his decent points)
Had've he elaborated on some of the points pointed out more, then it would have been a good article

 

[Lakey91]

Also, can anyone confirm that this is what monty originally posted?

My suspicion is, he posted his response, got a call, then he edited it and toned it down a bit, and then reposted the edited version.

 

[Walshy_The_Goat]

As i posted in another thread:

I kind of understand what Hinds was alluding to - ie. that DT is ruining the spectacle of the AFL by turning it into a sport driven by stats - although found that overall it was quite poorly researched and, apart from his own example, lacked any real substance to back up and consolidate his arguments. If he took a look at sites such as FanFooty, BigFooty and DT Talk, observing the interactions between people as well as the amount of traffic they amount he'd see it isn't in any way inhibiting social interactions between football fans. It actually does quite the opposite and generates discussion, thus greater interaction.

 

[Saint KFC]

Also, can anyone confirm that this is what monty originally posted?

My suspicion is, he posted his response, got a call, then he edited it and toned it down a bit, and then reposted the edited version.

Seems the same to me.

 

[Walshie]

monty Says: 12:47 am, March 8th, 2009
No, Mr Hinds wasn’t to blame for FanFooty’s downtime this evening. Unfortunately my Web host had its first major outage for two years, timed extremely poorly.

Well, I guess it's case closed

 

[m0nty]

I didn't change the article. I also don't think the article is "very spiteful and angry" as Saint KFC said in the squads thread. I am conscious of being in an unique position in the industry in that I am not tied to any media company or any other fantasy provider, or indeed the AFL, so I am free to say what I think on matters such as this. There's no one else to stick up for fantasy footy. VirtualSports don't want to put anyone offside for obvious reasons. Champion Data, while they probably have the aggression, don't want to bite a Fairfax journo when their commercial arrangements with Fairfax are so delicate (FFX only recently returned to Champion after a year with Prowess). Other bloggers don't have the audience I do, so putting Hinds' face next to a big FAIL sign won't mean as much on an underappreciated site like AFL Insider or Dream Team Hero.

Put it this way: my article defending Dream Team needed to be written, and I'm one of the few who is in a position to write it.

 

[Saint KFC]

I didn't change the article. I also don't think the article is "very spiteful and angry" as Saint KFC said in the squads thread.

Ok ok, maybe I included a bit of hyperbole.

 

[bigburger]

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/ne...fe-out-of-footy/2009/03/06/1235842661811.html

Cool story Hansel.