Which is more complex?

[Phong]

[quote="LQDMTL";p="696709"][quote="Phong";p="696706"][quote="wocket";p="696701"]I asked my dad, who played both in high school and college. He also used to be an umpire. And he was a coach for both games.

"Oh, football, hands down. What a stupid debate. "[/quote]

That's good enough for me. I've said repeatedly that I don't have the knowledge of football, but those arguing against me clearly knew exactly jack shit about baseball. I'd be interested to hear more of what your dad has to say on the matter. When I played football very briefly I was just told to hit people, which is why I quit.[/quote]

Actually, no. Deacon and I both provided links that, had you bothered to read them, would have taught you a hell of a lot about the game of football. You just chose to take the quick route. I know about baseball. I just hate the sport. I personally found my little derrogatory descriptions of it to be quite humorous, which was the reason I posted in this thread to begin with... to find humor. You assumption that I was getting pissy over this thread was equally amusing.[/quote]

Your posts, and your attitude do not tell me that you were just here for humor, or that you have any understanding of the game of baseball.

[LQDMTL]

And your posts and your attitude tell me that you don't see any need to know what your talking about before you argue, nor are you willing to learn. We gave you what you needed to make an informed decision. Instead, you chose to go all kung-fu on how we were saying what we said, rather than what we were saying.

[Phong]

[quote="LQDMTL";p="696711"][quote="Phong";p="696710"]Everything is up for debate Deacon, even though I accept Wocket's dad's opinion because of his experiance, I still have questions, because the people arguing FOR football have provided little by way of explanation, they simply keep repeating 'It's not up for debate!"[/quote]
Do you practice this shit? Even I told Deacon that his "not up for debate" stance wasn't helping him. Hell, it was my first post in this thread. And I have never taken that stance in any thread on any forum ever, let alone here. Put on some glasses, or something.[/quote]

I was addressing Deacon, I apologize if I did not word that accuratly. The same thing can essentially be said about you though if I replace "It's not up for debate" with continued harping on strategy, which I conceded a long time ago, was clearly more present in Football, since baseball is an inherently Tactical, not strategic game.

Posted Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:11 pm:

[quote="LQDMTL";p="696714"]And your posts and your attitude tell me that you don't see any need to know what your talking about before you argue, nor are you willing to learn. We gave you what you needed to make an informed decision. Instead, you chose to go all kung-fu on how we were saying what we said, rather than what we were saying.[/quote]

I didn't argue based on semantics. You kept repeating your arguement that the strategy was more complex, and I kept saying "Yes, it is." and trying to move the discussion forward.

[LQDMTL]

I also find your dismissal of strategy as part of a game's complexity to be amusing.

[Phong]

I believe that a game which cannot be summed up in strategy, which must inherently be decided with tactical decisions by players in-game is a somewhat more complex system, which requires better training and more intelligence to be carried out on the playing field. When each player must make his own decisions rather than being a piece in the puzzle. I don't dismiss the importance of strategy, it simply isn't a piece of the puzzle in baseball. Memorization of plays is not inherently "complicated" no matter how many there are, it's just difficult.

I didn't even get into the complexities of running a game through non-verbal communications, but it's really not that important. You know, I've conceded your point, and for someone that supposedly is not worked up, and just here for a laugh, I find it odd that you're still here trying to make some kind of point.

[wocket]

Phong: It's not just running the plays. The other side has a strategy for almost every play you can think of, and they will do everything in their power to stop that play as soon as possible, so you do have to switch up your routine at least a little bit for just about every single play.
And then the team and the coach have to watch the videos over and over and over and over again in order to see what they did wrong, when it happened, and what they can learn. It's a bit like what you said earlier about going over every possible detail with someone else, except in baseball it's not like you go back to footage of past games.

If you want more detail (since you did say you were interested in what my dad has to say), I'll talk to him about it when he comes home from work today.

[Phong]

I really don't want to argue this anymore, but in baseball, you definatly go over footage. You go over footage to see where you ought to try to hit the ball, you watch the pitcher so closely the see how he modifies his arm angle when he's throwing x or y pitch, or to see how his wind-up is different if he's throwing a curve or a fastball. Pitchers watch footage of batters to see which parts of the strike zone they're vulnerable in. Catchers especially must know not only every pitch that every pitcher on their staff can throw, but usually he also aids in knowing what the OTHER team is throwing too, to help the batters, adittionally it's his responsibility to know all that detail about the other teams batters so that he can call the right pitches, and he must modify he approach continually throughout the game.

[wocket]

Dude, did I SAY I was arguing you? No. I was going into the explanation you said you were interested in hearing. Those are my dad's words, which YOU said you were interested in.

[LQDMTL]

I think the amount of game film they pour over in a single week is lost in your description, though. There are people on staff on every team whos exclusive job it is to help gather, review and prepare game film. The coaching staff spends hundreds of hours per week pouring over every possible stitch of game film that might give them a clue. Each of the units on the team go over dozens of hours of footage specifically prepared for them to analyze, reanalyze and re-reanalyze over and over until they get it. And many of the players take personal time to go over game footage. I believe it was Tom Brady who I read routinely viewed over 100 hours of game footage per week in preparing for games... as one example.

Phong, I wasn't trying to talk strategy with you. I was trying to talk about the complexity behind that strategy. And the underlying fact that every bit of that strategy is regulated by rules, procedures and penalties.

In every single aspect of strategy that I mentioned there are rules for what you can and can't do, what penalties will result if you break those rules, and what those penalties mean (lost yardage, lost downs, etc).

There are rules for how you can contact a quarterback. Rules for what you can do to break away from coverage as you run a route. Rules for who's allowed to touch a ball first. Rules for how you can tackle. Rules for how you can avoid a tackle. Rules for how you can cover someone. Rules for how you're allowed to line up, how you're allowed to motion before a snap, what you can yell out as a QB prior to the snap, how long you have to snap the ball, how the ball can be snapped, what the ball can touch while it's being snapped, how the QB can move his arm and whether or not it constitutes a forward pass attempt... the list goes on and on and on and on. It's actually kind of rediculous just how many rules there are in football if you honestly sit down and think about it.

Every single play is the culmination of hundreds of hours of preparation, strategic playcalling by both offense and defense, the individual and combined mental and physical skills of 22 players, and more. You say the size of the playbook doesn't matter... to whom? Matters to the officials. Every single play in the book has to fit pre-approved molds. Illegal formation is a penalty. Illegal motion is a penalty. I've seen guys penalized because they ran too far, stopped too short or didn't stop motioning by the time the QB snapped the ball. Every play has to be perfectly orchestrated both for strategy and to fit within the confines of the rules.

Seriously, this is why Deacon wondered why anyone could argue the point. To anyone who's actually spent time learning about football this is a dumb question.

[wocket]

Heh. Dad's exact words when we talked about it tonight:
"Well, they both have their complexities, I'll give you that. But football's complexities are complexier than baseball's complexities. I know complexier isn't a word. We're talking sports, kiddo, not English."

[jimkatai]

For reference, does Baseball have rules and regulations regarding game tape, because I know Football does.

P.S. And they are quite teh insane about it too. :p

[adciv]

Not that I know of, but there is "The Strike Zone" in baseball.