The Storm of Fair-Play

There is a storm raging that undermines the experience of our most popular team sports. It's sweeps in over the participants, over the game officials, over the spectators, over and through the structures that provide space for the game. It's a storm that many fear to acknowledge, because in doing so one is thought to challenge the vary nature of the sport and in someway diminish the visceral thrill of the game.

This storm is the storm of "fair-play". In the basic understand of a game, the players expect to abide by a standard set of unbiased rules that allow each team to compete on a equal terms. And where winning is desired each team will bring forth it's best players. I was at attendance at the Sporting KC game (11-2-11) against Colorado and while sitting in the pouring rain, blasting wind in my face, 40 degree temperature and huddling with my family, I began to make a connection between little problems with the sport and the storm sweeping over us.

Why in the world would a family brave such weather to watch a game an cheer for a team on the field? It's really based on a love of the game. And where does that come from? The love comes from the various positive experiences one has with the game. We all have our limits, but in this case there is a something significant about a player's and a fan's dedication. The American Football affection-ado would not get as much out of a viewing of such a game as I would, being that I have a long history of soccer involvement.

So we have the players and we have the fans all enjoying the sport and this plays out in different ways for different sports. But who is missing from the picture? Yes, that would be the coach. In team sports, the coach is just as significant as the players and spectators, playing the arbitrator and coordinator for the team's strategy for winning. And the relationship between winning and how the coach builds a starting line-up for competitive play is critical. At the professional level there is money on the line and politics at play that factor into the dynamic which creates a bit of a mystique about what is going on. At the youth level, things are simpler with learning and skill building being the focus. But considering the youth levels for sports for a minute, are things really simpler and more clear cut?

The sad truth is that in competitive youth sports things aren't any simpler and the learning and skill building that a child and parent expect to happen is cast aside as something of a noble pursuit, but not reality. Also, as a sport program develops and becomes more competitive, money becomes part of the picture and now people pay for their aspiring players to be a part of an elite team that competes at higher levels. It's here that the role of coach in elite sport programs becomes a part of a career (coach's career and career aspirations)... And unfortunately the performance of the player (and team) is thought to be an indication of the coaches ability. All these variables work to erode the the fundamental value to the person playing and loving the game. 

Kids want to play and learn how they can get better and work toward winning games. The determination and work ethic required for competitive sports like soccer is certainly something parents hold in high regard when comes to providing character building opportunities. What parent does not want to provide the right challenges for their child so that they can grow, become stronger and more focused on long range, hard to attain goals? This is essentially the proving ground for a person's character.

Fair-play is what makes this all possible. This is not the same fair-play that a referee must maintain during a match, but rather fair-play in terms of a coach's behavior towards a youth player. Each player is different and develops at a rate that is unique to that player. There will likely be plateaus that are difficult to work through.  And playing time during games is essential for practicing the game related skills under pressure (in the clutch) with spectators watching.

And this is the foundational problem for so many people who love the game. A Fair-Play promise must be maintained by a coach in his management of game-time provided to youth players. Some coaches choose to see talent where they see it and mix the metrics of talent, skill, and work ethic into something they consider the criteria for playing-time (starter-criteria). It's completely subjective and typically tainted by familiarity biases or political factors. What happens in most cases is that kids who are considered unfit or not as fit as they should be (performance and ability) are given less playing time at the exact time when they need it most and kids who are considered to be fit and competitive are given added time when they do not need it.

Simple rules could correct this so that it would never become and issue and development of youth players would be grounded in the promise of fair-play. Adding this law to the game would establish real-fair play at all developmental levels: "During matches involving players under the age  18... the game will be divided into equal quarters and all players must play at least 2 quarters of the game, unless injury prevents the players from playing". Make the team and you will play.

Why even bring young players onto a team if they are considered to only be filler for what is considered better players (given the preferred player a chance to rest). The coach has too much control of the game results and in may cases use methods that destroy the confidence and skill of aspiring players. Coaches should not be allowed to carry youth players on a team when the coach does not believe the player is fit enough to compete... it's demeaning and insulting. Youth coaches should be more focused on the practice and teaching aspects of the role rather than the command & control approach. In the case of the proposed campball game from my previous blog entry... the time could be measured other ways... simple timers on the wrist. But there should quarterly durations of play so that the player can sync with the rhythm of the game.

Any sport involves risk and each child that steps up to play competitive sports should be celebrated and nurtured toward a love of the game. The coaches role should never stand in the way of that. Not all players will play in high school, college, Olympics, or professional, but some will go that far... even the kids that as some point in their gaming career fell below what the coach may have though was acceptable.

The only way to weather this storm is to think a little harder about not only the rules of play on the field for youth players, but also the rules of fair-play that nurtures these little wonders and protects them from the biases of coaches who do not appreciate the broader aspects of the game. In the end the games we play are systems and systems require feedback loops to fix problems... this problem seems obvious and something that is not hard to correct.

Understanding Flow - Simple and Complex

It's easy to get caught up in complexity especially when you are peering into a system that has a dynamic flow. Each system has rules that structure the related activities or functions of the system and these rules can be hard or soft. For physical systems like transportation and athletic events the nature of physical form that is built into the players, agents or vehicles make what we know about the system understandable and give it meaning.

I was recently in Costa Rica and was captivated by the amount of activity around my feet produced by the common leafcutter ants (Acromyrmex). The traffic flow patterns for these ants are quite organized and efficient. Even in places where opposing ant traffic would seem to product conflicts or backups, the system seems to flow in an optimal way. I've read that these leafcutter ants have highly complex societies similar to humans and so would seem that there are things we could learn from them.

For one thing the physicality of the players in the system are easily perceived... they are ants carrying leaves to the nest or waste from the nest. The transport system they have is elegant and oriented toward the needs of the system rather than the individual, so ants bringing back food material have priority in the flow. And although there is physical contact between moving ants... this is not really the informational system that balances the related traffic flows. The ants use pheromone based chemical messaging to transfer relevant information about direction and flow. Not being the expert on this topic I have to assume that each ant is a message sender and receiver in the broader leafcutter communication network (some colonies have as may as 2 to 3 million members). 

So the number of connections in the system that allow for input and output is potentially massive. When I compare this to human systems related to team based organization it appears to be on a parallel with emerging social media tools where individuals become part of a collaborative dynamic rather than soloists. Thinking about how humans respond to new obstacles or challenges (business, athletic, societal), there are hints found in the leafcutter's system that could be of help. The primary hint from the leafcutter ant is that the quantity of informational inputs, the number of individual agents sensing conditions in the real world and channeling this data into the system, is a critical component that shapes the strength of the system. 

In our attempts to grapple with complexity in the human space... we should be open to include elegant solutions found in nature that are the product of millions of years of evolution. The leafcutter's systems are collaborative and its solutions are symbiotic; our efforts to open input channels and share data through made-made systems should incorporate some of this thinking. At the very least, if we use examples like the leafcutter ant where nature has been busy working to refine how things fit together it can help reduce the complexities we come across everyday.

If car drivers on roadways could share relevant travel data... our roads would become safer and more efficient. We simply are not all rushing to the hospital with an emergency and we are not all late for work so why not somehow share this data. In sporting event, teams are working together and officials (referees) are working to uphold the rules and so why not begin integrating communication technology into these activity to make the experience richer. Constraining officials to only work from what their vision can identify is too limiting... and I would suggest the same is the case for performing athletes like soccer players who must shout or see each other to work together (why not allow them to have a small ear-piece and small microphone to chat while playing as way to elevate game strategy :)) And as we are seeing with the emerging popularity of collaborative media within organizations there is much opportunity to open the channels of communication such that individuals can make more timely and relevant contributions to the success of the operation or established objectives. This doesn't have to twitter or facebook, any practical collaboration tool can be useful.

References:

http://bss.sfsu.edu/geog/bholzman/courses/fall99projects/lcants.htm

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/anttraffic/

Re-Designing the World's Game

If I had a dollar for every complaint I heard about soccer and football I'd be a rich man. Don't get me wrong... these are great games and I have a lot of respect for FIFA, IRB and the NFL, but why not consider another option. Amazingly I've never heard anyone propose a new game that could potentially reduce the problems that are evident and the current list of football flavors. Let's take the soccer as the design focus. It's a game that does not allow hands to be used... but there is one player on the team that can use hands and anyone can use hands for a throw in. Why not be be bold enough to suggest no hands at all... that way we don't end up with goalies who have to stand around in the net all day and not get the same time of game experience as everyone else. 

In soccer there is the persistent complaint about the offside rule... what is it and why does it exist? The flow of soccer although more organic and distributed compared to American football... is still linear and predictably forces play to a single goal per side. Better tactical flow could happen on a circular field (similar to Australian Rules Football) with dual goals... mimicking decision making that compares to real-life scenarios with optional variables. Defenders cannot game the play by favoring one goal or the other and would have to defend two goals without goalies.

Campball Field 2010

Other drags in soccer are the throw-in and substitution activities. The substitution should be handled like Australian Rules Football... with a open bench with a set number of players on the field that can interchange without game stoppage. And as far as throw-ins go... lets ditch them and go with something that allows the game play to continue. How about letting the first player to the ball past the touch line have the ball without pressure and 5 seconds to bring it back into play? We want to design a game that keep the pace moving along and so we have to work in design concepts that work to make this happen. 

And finally how about a name for this game and a diagram of this circular field I'm proposing. Originally all of these games came from a game called Campball... that used a town's border as the touch line and citizens fought to move the ball to one side or the other. So as a suggestion... we can call the game Campball in line with the history of our football games.

Here is the PDF diagram and supporting details. This is all of course a prototype at this point, so if you have feedback or ideas - post a comment.

Collision of Innovations and Ideals

This article by Paul McNamara at Network World clarifies how creative innovations collide, when the effort to address human desires eclipse human factors, planning and safety. In the article, data from Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) – illustrates how laws and regulations (designed in good faith) established after conflicting innovations are deployed in the market place, can sometimes backfire. In this case the ban of texting while driving... is somehow increasing the rate of accidents related to the banned texting behavior after the law is established. And the article notes that the culprit is the associated action of drivers attempting to hide the fact that they are texting while driving (hiding the phone from the view of other cars or law officials).

The problems run deeper that texting or hiding the texting. In a culture of conspicuous consumption... Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is inverted and runs in this order: actualization, status-belonging, love-belonging, safety, physical-needs. So we are taking for granted what should be the lower level functions (physical needs and safety) to the point where they fall off the radar. Actualization, status and belonging are the prevalent themes in the current American culture and have become the gateway to the Brain-Body complex. The problem with this is that although it many be unfashionable to think and plan for the physical and for safety, it is and will always be the base or core of the human experience... we are just wired that way. The mind and body work together interacting with an real world environment - that offers a overwhelming range of sensory feedback. This feedback and the somatic nervous system baked in the physical body helps us to do things like stand up straight, keep our balance, walk, run, jump, clap, sing, dance, etc. 

In the design of personal vehicles... we have ultimately built a system that relies primarily on visual feedback to make things work. It is successful in terms of being a way to execute short-range logistic activities, although statistically speaking... it is something of a failure producing over 30K fatalities, 2 million injuries, 5 million accidents in the US every year. These accidents have a total cost of over $150 billion each year in the US. I won't dive into the various details related to this data... but simply note that the composite view of the system is not desirable.

Cell phones and or smartphones are designed to be a visual and auditory device, but in the context of current social interaction and with the popularity of texting... visual sensory information becomes the primary form of feedback in the smartphone activity. The device is capable of working through auditory means and or hand-free modes of interaction, yet users are preferring the text and visual means of communication on the device. It's something of an unexpected contradiction in terms of the design of the device and affordances built into it. I have not spend much time looking into all the variables leading up to the reason people choose to text over calling... but I would imagine it comes down to fear. We all know calls can be disruptive to the receiving party and we know that emails can get lost in the avalanche of spam floating in cyberspace... so SMS text messages like twitter messages allow for a message to move directly to the receiving party without the possibility of disrupting the receiver's current activity. In addition to this this fear factor... there are also reasons like the person sending the message not having time for a long talk... so she just pushes out a text (quick, painless, respectful and sophisticated).

As these two popular innovations, vehicles (along with built environments) and smartphones (with hidden infrastructures), gain mindshare and dominance in the human experience there is a spectacular collision of innovation happening where what should be technical parallels run counter to what is expected and explode before our eyes at a speed that we can not resist. Human vision limits the angle of focused sight to 3 degrees (about the width of your thumb - if you hold you arm out horizontally) and although saccadic movements of the eye work broaden the input of data... the task of reading, typing, driving, steering, scanning the road, reading road signs, observing other drivers and navigational aids is beyond what humans can do in any reasonable estimation. Recent research in the Naturalistic Driving Study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute support these point in a way that hard to challenge. 

Neither the marketplace nor the federal government can solve the problem working independently... and engineering new features that will potentially wash away the irrational behavior of humans is simply myopic. I think a better solution would to study people more and find convergence between transportation needs and communication needs. Authorities can then be established (blending the best of industry and government) to provide new certified methods to address the needs and dangers. I don't know what this would be... perhaps a combination car-phones... or something like that or authenticated non-visual telematics. To continue with the prevailing innovations, that are aimed into a "head-on collision", guided by a "live and let die" mentality is deplorable.

It's a complex problem made possible by complex systems, but even so... knowing that the problem is complex does little to comfort the pain experienced by people like the Renolds' family in Omaha Nebraska... when Caty Renolds was killed my a teen who was texting and driving. we have to be willing to go deeper and work harder and willing to deal with the messy world of ordinary people, their lives along with their attitudes and work to understand how these things dovetail into design solutions that work and somehow resist the errors of human judgement. One of the occluded factors in all of this is that America prides itself on being a culture of innovation and we have a range of cultural reservations related to anything that may blocking new inventions and products that remove old obstacles... especially in the area of mobility. Combine this thinking with our passion for freedom and ownership (especially for cars and mobile gadgets as a form of status or prestige) and you end with something that smells like rotten leftovers in the back of the fridge. What was once something that worked to serve our society – maybe not work today and we have to carefully balance the trade offs that are a result of conflicting innovations and our hidden ideals. We will get there and eventually handle this problem more intelligently, but right now the question is essentially about understanding what is really going on out there (at an experiential level), not just how do I change a little of this or that thing on the surface to try and make things superficially better.

Wrong Entrance in Vancouver

Although there is a long list of potential reasons for a driver to be disoriented... whatever the cause we have to understand that whether the impaired vision due to age,  due to limited visibility, or related to alcohol there will be situations where the operator of a vehicle makes errors or is distracted at critical times. According to TMC News, Sheila Walls fell into this unlikely situation of being a driver confused enough to obviously overlook the wrong way signage near Esther Short Park. And this unfortunately resulted in tragedy on Sept 12. Link to the story.

My heart goes out to the injured and deceased in this situation. In a quick review of the exits from Highway 14 near Esther Short Park the C St. and 6th Street exits appear to be troublesome for a impaired or distracted driver. The map view of the end the new two-way addition to C St. is linked here. Notice that the striping on the roadway is new and if you try to see this in street level view... the new two-way additions are not visible (due to older Google Street View Image). Also the 6th St exit is troublesome, marked only with wrong signs and not special arrows markings on the pavement.

It's good that the news article does mention the renovations on C St. and related work that the city is initiating to resolve the problem. It's sad that alcohol is the contributing factor in these accidents on Highway 14... but regardless of the problem - where transportation system provide a small potential for failure, it eventually happens. I imagine another thing to consider is that because this exit ramp runs adjacent Interstate 5 (in such a way that might seem like an on ramp based on the angle of roads and the direction, etc. I do think the proposed LED signage is a good option in these areas where the existing wrong way signs are located. Also if alcohol was served at a celebration Miss Walls attended it seems like some sort of awareness on the part of the party throwers should be considered... not sure what that might be, maybe a sobriety checking like a coat check in before you depart. Let me know if you have ideas.

Edges of the System

The built environment and it's larger systems or meta systems are often more fragile that expected and small problems at the periphery can easily run out of control. Multiplying stress factors in a troubled economy can spell trouble on highways and what should be routine in terms of highway patrol interaction can turn deadly when anger, rage are part of the picture.

Take at look at this story http://tiny.cc/bjdog out of UK (Londonderry). The driver is operating as if law enforcement is irrelevant and not part of a support system design to make the transportation system safe. In this story the officer involved was simply directing traffic outside busy amusement park and the angered driver chose to loop around and pull up to the office and begin shouting obscenities at him. What does all this screaming a ranting achieve? The car in this case also is catalyst for conflict that being a special protective and proprietary barrier for the public service worker to have to deal with. It's strange that law enforcement and government organizations do not have a electronic governor control/kill switch that can be operated remotely by an approaching officer - that kills power to the car engine... essentially eliminating the threat of a drive off, hit and run or dragging (as it was in this case). How many time have you heard of this happening to law enforcement officers? Drivers extend the feeling of private ownership from the car to the road and misperceive the basic functions of the roadway - thinking it is their space... their road and right to plunder through others would get in the way.

We all have frustrations... but will this behavior result in with young kids in the car. Did this officer deserve to be treated this way or for that matter be dragged by this driver along the roadway. We have to keep in mind that our roads (in any country) are a system designed to accommodate all types of drivers and some patience is required -even when the system is overloaded - which I guess it was in this case. There are so many alternative ways to deal with the anger... one of them potentially being a change of plans if in fact the family was headed to a crowded amusement park and instead find a quite camp ground or seaside park.