Why do people use The Super bowl as the analogy to this process? It is clearly a golf tournament

[Johnny__Motown]

I have heard M$M pundits compare this to the Super Bowl far to often for my taste. I understood it in January and February when the Super Bowl reference was timely. It no longer is timely, lets move on shall we?



Most golf tournaments will have 72 holes. This process has 56 (including FL and MI) contests.

Any football game only has 4 quarters.



In football your field position is affected by the last possession, this can give you an advantage or put you in a hole every time you get the ball. In golf evey hole is a fresh start with each contestant beginning at the same place and having exactly the same landscape ahead of them (although the landscape may benefit an individuals strengths it is still the same for all). I will admit that previous contests in this process can affect the current one but it is mostly a psychological advantage. In golf your state of mind is important for each hole and flubbing a shot or hitting a great one can also have a psychological effect on the next hole.

In football the landscape is always exactly the same. Every contest in this process is different. In golf evey hole is different. Some are even very short while some are very long. I would suggest that these can be compared to primaries and caucuses. You need to be able to play both of these and you deal with them very differently.


In football you can have a shut out, a contest that is so lopsided that one side never scores any points at all. Proportional allocation of delegates is not like this at all.

In golf most (not all) holes are ties or separated only by one stroke. This is very similar to the proportional way our delegates are apportioned. Many states are ties or the percentage of the delegates won is so small you can easily compare them to golfers where one shots a 5 and the other shots a 4 on the same hole. (most contests are even closer than that)



When you near the end of a golf tournament the score may appear close when it is still an insurmountable lead. Many times if you have a 5 stoke lead after 70 holes the uneducated may say "Look, it is only 5 strokes. That can be made up if my guy/gal hits a hole in one and the leader knocks one in the water". It doesn't happen.

The only similarity I see with football is the fact that when someone commits a penalty on a play where they score points then those points don't count. The people who enforce the rules will tell the people running the scoreboard to take those points down off the board.

Golf also has penalties for mistakes or for mishandling a situation. If you try to pick up your ball to improve your lie you will have penalty strokes added to your score, as well as for hitting out of bounds or into the water etc.


I think the football analogy is clearly misleading. Just my 2 cents. (Damn this is a long winter, I need some spring time weather to get out on the range soon.)


P.S. Anyone remember George Carlin comparing Baseball and Football? God I love that bit.

[H2O Man]

1. All of life

imitates the sport of boxing.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. And we're looking at the 3 knockdown rule.

At the very least, the last in a series of standing 8 counts.

[H2O Man]

12. One corner

needs to throw in the towel.

[Johnny__Motown]

Chuck Todd on Tweety's show just talked about this being a boxing match

winning on points.. etc

[ReadTomPaine]

2. Motorsports are a better analogy...

Right down to the cheating, the grudges, the creative interpretations of the rules and the dominance of money. Political contests are called 'races' for a reason.

[Johnny__Motown]

5. how so? I am not a motor sports guy.. I don't understand the point system.. Can you tie?

[ReadTomPaine]

17. Depends on the form of motorsports. However most of them are overly complex...

subject to arcane interpretations and are heavily influenced by the feelings of the corporate sponsors involved in the race and the strong personalities involved on all sides. Sounds familiar, no? The analogy here is not just to the bizarre scoring used for a season of racing, but to the culture, corruption and personalities that tend to dominate the various forms whether it's NASCAR, F1 and almost everything in between.

It's almost an exact analogy to political elections. The regional contests that stack up wins/points for a certain team, leading to the big nationals where it's usually down to just two teams fighting it out for the few points that put them ahead to win the championship- the other mathematically out of the contest, etc. Even the inter-team bickering is represented - see Alonso and Hamilton's nasty in-fighting for a recent example that's very reminiscent of the Hillary/Obama situation.

Regarding dirty tricks, there's an old saying that arose from the dirt tracks where early moonshine runners turned into racers and it remains popular today : "There are only two kinds of racers, the cheaters and the losers". Political elections are referred to as races for a reason, and people tend to think of them that way, not like a football or golf game. Racing rules, along with the traditional disregard for them whenever favorable, tend to apply. This is much less true of golf and even football, where dirty play is not considered a admirable trait.

Here's an interesting bit of history from the Trans Am series that illustrates this...

This is further outlined in Mark's book "Unfair Advantage"..

During their enormous success in Trans-Am, Roger and Mark would begin to experiment with their Camaros, searching for that all-elusive Unfair Advantage. They discovered that dipping a car's frame in an acid bath would eat away small amounts of metal from the frame, which, in turn made the car incrementally lighter, and allowed it to be driven faster around the track. The 1967 Z-28 won its last race by lapping the entire field of cars, raising eyebrows throughout the paddock. During a post-race inspection, race stewards discovered that the car was 250 pounds lighter than the 2800 pound minimum weight requirement. Donohue was to have his race victory taken away for cheating. But, owing to his keen business sense, Roger Penske stepped in. Penske threatened that any disqualification could potentially lead to Chevrolet pulling all support for the Trans-Am series. After considering the options, the race stewards allowed Donohue's victory to stand, but the rules for the 1968 season incorporated a change where all cars will be weighed during the pre-race technical inspection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Donohue

[Johnny__Motown]

18. I see your point...... excellent analogy. I guess I just want some warm weather so I can go golfing

[islandmkl]

3. is politics, political contests in particular, more similar to...

a nice test of skills and abilities in a natural environment, with both mental and physical challenges presented by the nature of the course and the vagaries of a well- or mis-placed shot...

OR...

a battle, a war if you will, where offense and defense are of essentially equal value, where a minor mistake can not only cause a complete reversal of direction for both teams, but may even cause talented and valuable participants to have to leave the field; where, even if the score is not in doubt, the violence and mayhem does not subside till the winner is declared?

I like the golf example...but I see the football comparison a little more succintly...

[Johnny__Motown]

7. My post is clearly one sided. I admit that

But in football you can throw a hail mary, get an on-sides kick back and throw another hail mary to overturn a huge deficit in almost no time at all.

you can't do that in this process.

[bobbert]

4. really, I thought it was more like cricket

Long, boring, and a lot of Americans don't know the rules

[kevinmc]

6. It's like that "Blood Sport" Curling n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. More like pro-wrestling. The fix is in.

The "not so bad" guy against the "the even worse" guy.

One of them wins. We lose.

[Johnny__Motown]

10. Pro-wrestling has good guys too..

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. I guess that what makes it different than politics.

[Johnny__Motown]

13. hehe, good point

[TheZug]

14. Not a bad analogy, but I'd also suggest the BCS.

Think about it: it was set up to give the country a clear-cut champion, but in the end everything is decided by a bunch of fatcats.

Oh, and the BCS sucks, by the way, just like this process.

Less BCS, more NFL, I say.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

15. Roller derby

Lots of fighting, lots of yelling, and when it's over, lots of beer was drunk!

[TheZug]

16. Or Rollerball.

[John Q. Citizen]

19. It's not like golf. . In golf your score is determined by you

completely. Your opponents game doesn't relate to your personal score. In politics the play and the outcome is often out of your hands.

It's more like pool in that respect. The opponant(s) help shape the table, where the money ball lies or what sort of level of difficulty you are going to encounter when you began take your turn. If your opponent can bury you, you don't get much of a shot.

[Johnny__Motown]

20. That is true, but your opponents score can force you to play more aggressively if you fall behind

or can allow you to play safe if you have a reasonable lead.

Your tactics are effected by the score.