UnNews:Scientists complain that they don't understand sports

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Scientists who attend local sporting events often feel like they are left out of the excitement. Americans need to do something about this.

WASHINGTON, DC: Scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science are currently holding a massive public demonstration, loudly demanding that national sport organizations try to make popular sports (such as baseball, football, basketball, and hockey) more understandable to the scientific community at large.

"Every single day, we American scientists are bamboozled and perplexed by the incomprehensible jargon that floods the sports section of your typical newspaper", whined Dr Emmet J Schwartzfeld (PhD), a noted theoretical physicist at Carnegie, who dropped the microphone when we threw it to him. "If the sports world really wants us scientists to care more about such things, it behooves them to make at least some effort to explain basic sports terms to us in plain English."

"How can I possibly get enthused about how our local sports teams are doing," moaned Professor Andrew J Knaughtwurst, a teacher of advanced mathematics at the University of Maryland, "when all I keep hearing during major televized events is strange and meaningless expressions like 'ERA' or 'off-sides' or 'power-plays' or 'John 3:16,' which no sports commentator ever bothers to explain in detail?" After a few shuddering sobs, Knaughtwurst added "Maybe us scientists want in, too! It's not like I'm stupid or something, or I don't care; just tell me what's it all about, dammit!"

Sports in general are often quite puzzling to the average scientist, partly because of illogical combinations of team strategies, goals, accomplishments, and awards; but mostly because of the bizarre terminology that each sport normally uses (in reference to scoring, field positioning, sporting equipment, uniform gear, etc.) on a regular basis. Unfortunately, most major sporting events take it as granted that the audience are able to figure out the fundamental dynamics of a game as it unfolds, so that they know at what points it is appropriate to cheer, boo, or fling sundry items of uneaten food onto the playing field.

At this time, various sports institutions such as the NBA and the NFL are taking the protests into due consideration. However, they are on record that it is the scientists's fundamental responsibility to learn at least some basic sports-interpreting skills themselves, so that they don't feel so left out of the crowd. Yesterday afternoon, Adam Silver (commissioner of the National Basketball Association (NBA)) patiently announced to a gathering of sports journalists that "It's really the scientists fault that they want everything handed to them on a silver platter. They probably should have paid more attention while in their school's basic PhysEd classes, instead of burying their heads in science textbooks and playing with their calculators and whatnot." Silver later begrudgingly acknowledged that schools are also partly to blame, especially when they fail to encourage their students in basic sports abilities.

Even so, there are some rays of hope out there. Many scientists (if not most) do in fact have access to general online encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia or Uncyclopedia, which contain much detailed peer-reviewed information about the finer (and often unspoken) minutiae of sports phenomena. One of the often unheralded purposes of these reputable websites is to aid in filling the enormous gaps of knowledge of sports-deprived people, no matter what level of scientific education impedes them. However, there is probably no really good substitute for simply immersing oneself into the culture of sports at large, assuming that, of course, they have the basic desire for it.

Sources

• Typical Science Journalist "It's not OUR FAULT that we are ignorant!" Washington Post, April 22, 2017