What's in a nickname?
One of my first exposures to casual sports gambling was an episode of Cheers where bar staff and regulars had a football pool. What made the episode funny, was that Diane, the artsy-fartsy non-sportsy barmaid, had won the pool that particular week and had shown a certain level of dominance over the course of the season. Norm asked her how she had known to pick the underdog Chicago to beat the powerhouse Miami. She looked at him and said, "Now Norman, come on, a bear and dolphin? That's hardly even a fight!" She suggested that the next week she would test her theory on dominance of state flowers. So in her folly was the comedy of the show, right? In my case, I later realized the wisdom of her external source of sports entropy. In my current pick-em pools (where you have to say who will cover the spread, the spread dictates how much the favourite should win by) I always strive to keep ahead of either 50% correct, or all home teams covering, which isn't as easy as it sounds. In a grade 8 in-class stock market contest held in conjunction with a newspaper contest, I lost to the monkey who's only tool was a rolodex with the stock names. In a pool this year where we had to guess who would win the various US college football bowl games, John, a professional pool prognosticator in his own right, came third out of 11 by picking the alphabetically first team in each game. So again I got to wondering about Miss Chambers' selection method. I took the four big North American leagues and classified their various mascots. Together with a friend I determined that the minimal expectation is that it at least is human. While not all "People" names do not convey the same level of strands, intimidation, etc (Cowboys, Warriors, Athletics, canoe's), they at least are not a step down in power. Other categories of power included "Mammals" (Panthers, Tigers), "Machines" (Jets, Pistons), "Predatory Birds" (Eagles, Blackhawks) [I refused to classify Mighty Ducks with Hawks], and "Weather" (Hurricanes, Heat). I also had "Symbolic" (Nets, Capitals) and "Weak" (Cardinals, Maple Leafs) whose strength was minimal at best. There other debatable categories, such as "Mythical" where such a creature doesn't exist in a physical enough sense to adequately debate the possibility of such a battle (Titans, Devils), and "Other Strong Animals" who are mighty in their own right but their are limitations as well (Sharks, Hornets, Raptors). So when you remove all People and Weak teams, the NFL, with it's high number of Mammal teams wins the strongest and coolest names contest, and while the NHL could make a case for the invinsibility of Hurricanes, Avalanches and Lightning, a league with Mighty Ducks, Penguins and Blues loses it's case for strength pretty quickly. My ranking is NFL, NBA, MLB then NHL. Your rankings and comments are welcome.

   [ posted by William @ 12:10 AM ]