Have I mentioned before how ridiculous these are? How irrational it is to devote so much time and energy to willingly place yourself at the mercy of (depending on your competition level) harried volunteers or power-mad incompetents?
(The three obvious examples are gymnastics, figure skating, and debate. Maybe there are others I'm not thinking of.)
So when "judges" (as they're called) flagrantly fail to apply any rhyme or reason to their scoring, I lack the capacity to be surprised (yet apparently I still have the capacity to be angry, who knew?).
UPDATE: ESPN.com seems to be a few minutes ahead of our local NBC affiliate, the upper right corner "LIVE" graphic notwithstanding.
Posted by Matt Bruce at August 15, 2008 12:27 AM["Nate, this is too obvious to post." "Well, who knows."]
So all that sucks, it really does, but what if the sport you love to do happens to be gymnastics? How close to the Platonic ideal of a sport does a thing have to be to not be "ridiculous?" (Variance and competing against addicts aren't what I'd choose, but what can you do when the competitive sub-psyche finds its fit?)
Posted by: Nate at August 15, 2008 10:27 PM