Reminds me of another example of video-game inspired tactics:
Just before he reached the end zone, with 17 seconds remaining, Stokley cut right at 90 degrees and ran across the field. Six seconds drained off the clock before, at last, he meandered across the goal line to score the winning touchdown. For certain football fans, the excitement of a last-minute comeback now commingled with the shock of the familiar: It's hard to think of a better example of a professional athlete doing something so obviously inspired by the tactics of videogame football. When I caught up with Stokley by telephone a few weeks later, I asked him point-blank: "Is that something out of a videogame?" "It definitely is," Stokley said. "I think everybody who's played those games has done that" — run around the field for a while at the end of the game to shave a few precious seconds off the clock. Stokley said he had performed that maneuver in a videogame "probably hundreds of times" before doing it in a real NFL game.
The incentive to pull off this kind of move, running the clock down a bit, that was already present. But there's a certain social expectation that you won't game the rules so blatantly, so that's a disincentive.
What the existence of video games does, is allow people to do things like this in an environment where social expectations and pressure don't really exist. It's like a psychological primer. You do it so many times in the video game, more and more you think, gee, why not do this in real life?
I don’t think it’s the social expectations that are at play here. Instead, it’s that without video game football, the odds of a player ever being in this situation are minuscule — so minuscule that we’re currently commenting on an article written about one time that it happened twelve years ago — and so the correct strategy won’t be something that pops into your head when sprinting for the end zone. But if you play hundreds to thousands of iterated games of video game football where you control the ball on every play, you’re bound to run into the scenario and be detached enough to know what to do. Then that gets burned into your memory for the unlikely event it happens in real life.
> But if you play hundreds to thousands of iterated games of video game football where you control the ball on every play, you’re bound to run into the scenario and be detached enough to know what to do.
Back in the day, the AI for opponents was often fairly stupid. Rather than spreading out intelligently to prevent an opponent from reaching the goal line, they would just sprint towards your current location at all times. So if you run in a bit of a loop from where it makes sense for you to actually go, you can get the opponents to chase you in a long line. Not hard to dodge them almost indefinitely in this case, allowing you to take an arbitrary amount of time off the clock. Real players won't behave like this.
> I don’t think it’s the social expectations that are at play here.
I agree, mostly, but there could be a slight effect here. It's widely known that coaches choose to punt rather than go for it on fourth down (in American football, failing to take the ball past a "first down" marker in five downs results in a turnover) much more often than they should if motivated purely to win the most games. It's speculated that coaches are disincentivized to make high-risk, high-reward choices like going for it, when trying and failing it will result in embarrassment versus taking the safe option.
As a bit of an aside, the past few years have seen a drastic rise in coaches "going for it" on 4th down instead of punting in a lot of situations. This is mainly attributed to the rising use of analytics by coaching staffs.
It can be directly attributed to people studying the stats - but it had been known for years that "going for it on 4th" was statistically better. But coaches were loathe to do it because if they did, and failed, they'd get yelled at for not doing it "normally", and if they succeeded nobody would notice.
reminds me of the claim that the all the young mckinsey consultants fresh out of ivy league schools with no experience that are brought in are used as a way to justify layoffs and other decisions management already want to make, and then they can claim to rely on impartial outside judgement
American football players are often stereotyped as big and dumb but... football is complicated. Often needlessly so. It takes extensive knowledge of the rules of the game in order just to figure out what's going on.
In this case, the rules say that if a kickoff is handled first by a player who has established themselves as out of bounds, a penalty is assessed and the ball moved to the 40 yard line. The intent is for a horribly miskicked ball to be penalized.
What you see is a special teams player knowing the rule, carefully and clearly establishing himself as out of bounds, and turning an excellently kicked ball at the one yard line into a ball 39 yards down field.
I’ve seen the commentators confused by this play before!
> Back in the day, the AI for opponents was often fairly stupid. Rather than spreading out intelligently to prevent an opponent from reaching the goal line, they would just sprint towards your current location at all times. So if you run in a bit of a loop from where it makes sense for you to actually go, you can get the opponents to chase you in a long line. Not hard to dodge them almost indefinitely in this case, allowing you to take an arbitrary amount of time off the clock. Real players won't behave like this.
Imagine seeing someone pull off THAT tactic in a real game!
The penalty for making a mistake is extremely high, too. There are many examples of players easing up as they near the goal line because they think they're in the clear, and then getting hit or stripped at the last second, incurring eternal embarrassment or shame. You not only need to be in a very specific game situation, you also need to be extremely certain that none of the eleven opposing players are going to get a shot at you.
You can see him looking over his shoulder repeatedly, almost panicked, during his run because he's so worried about this actually happening. He had to make himself really sure this wouldn't happen.
> The incentive to pull off this kind of move, running the clock down a bit, that was already present. But there's a certain social expectation that you won't game the rules so blatantly, so that's a disincentive.
Clock management is a pretty big aspect of (American) football strategy and very much expected. I don't think anyone considers it gaming the rules. Just off the top of my head:
- Teams with comfortable leads tend to switch to conservative play calling. This keeps the ball safe and the clock running.
- Inside of 2:00, getting tackled on the field keeps the clock running. But running out of bounds or throwing an incomplete pass will stop the clock. So plays are always chosen to take advantage of this.
- Quarterbacks will spike the ball to quickly the stop the clock (incomplete pass).
- Calling a timeout stops the clock, so teams save these for the 2:00 drill. The 2:00 warning also stops the clocks, teams consider this a free timeout.
- Coaches will call timeout just as a kicker is about to kick a field goal. This is called "freezing the kicker". When timed right, it makes the kicker have to kick it again.
The Super Bowl in 2013 featured an intentional safety. Losing points but running the clock down. The play was predicted by one attendee at the party I was at —- a British gentleman whose introduction to football had been the Madden games.
I was trying to figure out if you meant the SB held for the 2013 season or the SB actually held in 2013 but then I remembered that it happened in both lol
You're obviously very familiar with football but the accuracy here is so high I just had to point out that I've never heard "freezing the kicker". The idiom I hear most often is "icing" the kicker.
Even victory formation, this is an ultra cautious time waste.
It’s also a thing in association football (soccer). Teams are praised for passing the ball around aimlessly denying the opposition possession to defend a lead. It’s boring to watch, unless it’s your team.
An interesting note is that basketball was like this until the introduction of the backcourt violation and shot clock.
The difference, of course, is that basketball is a fast-paced, high-scoring game, and the entertainment value suffers mightily when it is slowed down. Soccer is about deliberately building to a scoring opportunity, so forcibly speeding up the game would simply ruin the structure. Obviously, "turtling" can be a bit of a problem as a result, but it's not hard for a team to sacrifice some defensive structure to press for a turnover.
Fun fact, two of those five things are known to be counterproductive, but coaches still do them, presumably due to social expectation and/or job security.
Conservative play calling with a lead, particularly on defense, is known to reduce your chances of holding the lead. Sticking to more balanced tactics leads to losses that look more spectacular, but fewer of them.
And depending on how you look at the stats, the "icing the kicker" timeout either doesn't really work, or only works if done before the offense is set, which is not when most coaches call it.
I’ve heard for years that, statistically, icing the kicker doesn’t work. But whenever I actually see it happen, it’s in a situation where the defending team has no other productive use for the timeout, which means there’s also no reason not to ice the kicker.
There are books on it - https://johntreed.com/products/football-clock-management-5th... for example, and they're quite worth the read if you're interested in football at all. Some of the clock management tricks are relatively unintuitive - and some only work if you do it most but not all the time.
Football is a really interesting sport above/behind the field.
>I don't think anyone considers it gaming the rules.
Explicit clock management is part of the game.
But if you start messing around when the other team has ended pursuit, you are definitely breaking an "unwritten rule" (of which there are many in sports).
This, and many other "bad sportsmanship" behaviors, are taboo because they are far less likely to affect the result of the game than they are to injure someone.
Behaviors like this will typically result in some variation of an on-field fight, which honestly seems like a pretty fair means of enforcement.
Not to mention that big money sports relies on spectatorship so you'll see adjustments to the rules to encourage exciting and offensive play. The English Premier League has adjusted rules over the years and ONE FC also attempts to encourage offensive action for fights.
One reason you typically don't see really hacky/exploitative stuff in competitive sports is that... these sports are decades or even 100+ years old. Tens of thousands of games have been played by extremely talented and competitive individuals. Thousands of exploits have been tried and written into the rulebooks.
That was a neat "exploit" and much respect to him for trying it, but it was outlawed literally the next day.
The incentive to pull off this kind of move,
running the clock down a bit, that was already
present. But there's a certain social
expectation that you won't game the rules so
blatantly, so that's a disincentive.
While a fun thought, I cannot understate how incorrect this is.
In basketball, football, or basically any sport with a time limit there is absolutely zero stigma or shame with regards to running out the clock if it benefits your team.
In fact, that guy would have been raked over the coals if he didn't run out the clock.
I also assure you his coach was exhorting the team to win the game by running out the clock rather than scoring with time remaining on the clock which would have given the other team another chance to score and perhaps tie/win.
I'm sure that player definitely did pull that move off in a video game, but so has everybody else, because it's also super basic football strategy!
I'm not a football person, but my understanding from the article is that this wasn't something that people were doing until after it became popular in the video game?
I'm not sure the Wired writer is a football person either.
I can probably best explain it this way: that play does not have a name, because it's pretty basic and that guy didn't invent it. Clock management is so integral to gridiron football.
You probably see that move a little bit more in video games. In real life there's more that can go wrong; you have eleven guys chasing you and you do not have 360-degree awareness. The ball could be knocked away from you, etc. Worst case scenario you hurt your teammates, lose your job, etc. So you will be more conservative.
I think video games have influenced football in a lot of ways, just not that one. Particularly TV coverage - the "sky cams" on high tension wires crisscrossing the arenas, mimicking the unfettered virtual cameras in video games. Also, the superimposed CGI first down lines on the field.
Huh! It seems so. The TV technology debuted in 1998. I was certain that games were doing it before that, but I couldn't find any evidence. I must have been mistaken - I guess TV did it first.
Do you remember the glowing puck from 1996? For some viewers it was difficult to see where the puck was, so Fox made the puck look like a red comet on TV when someone took a shot.
Leveraging loopholes in the rules, using the clock and gambits where you bet on the refs officials missing a call are as old as the game in most sports. Every year, there are new rules added to the books to cover all the edge cases that were discovered during the last season.
> an environment where social expectations and pressure don't really exist.
It’s almost inverted. The expectation is often for gamers to be as exploitative as possible. There is a lot of hilarity to be had by all with a play that gets a win in ann unexpected way, and it has quite a culture around it. It can go too far to be sure, but in good measure it’s often what is best about multiplayer games.
That's only in multiplayer games, which are basically destined to become not fun at all. It's the competition that sucks out the fun. Players optimize for winning, cheaters optimize further more, devs optimize for getting rid of cheaters and for "maximizing engagement" of the rest.
In single-player games, given the opportunity, gamers will optimize for all kinds of cheese and hilarity never expected by the designers. Doubly so with the modern Internet, where sharing videos of your silly play confers social status in relevant on-line groups.
I think this is true of all games, where you don't specifically seek out other players choosing to be purposefully weaker.
The transition from elementary school sports to middle school sports is pretty jarring. By the time you get to high school they've started weeding out anyone who enjoys the game versus dominating other people in preparation for college and the few who become pros.
Video games just make this obvious to kids who don't like sports.
Yep, 'speed runs' are all about optimizing whatever you can optimize and are mostly single-player.
The only real distinction between single-player games and multiplayer games in this manor is that in single-player games players can choose the 'category' they are currently playing, whereas in multiplayer it is chosen for them. This let's them pick the categories with environments that are most fun optimized which is where the hilarity comes.
But that was my point: speed runs are fun and often cheesy and score social karma. But only for people who care about them. Every other player can ignore them and focus on their own fun.
> The only real distinction between single-player games and multiplayer games in this manor is that in single-player games players can choose the 'category' they are currently playing, whereas in multiplayer it is chosen for them.
Certainly not true, it's a game design issue that comes up all the time. Even in the context of casual solo play, players will generally be driven by the very human instincts of risk aversion, resource accumulation, and seeking efficiency. It takes good design to make this behaviour be in line with having fun.
If anything, it's multiplayer environments that are easier to steer towards that, and also allow room for just horsing around.
I can agree that multiplayer isn't forever but all of the longest lasting games are multiplayer and thriving, most because of the competition. WoW, CSGO (very competitive, ~1 million players daily), LoL (competitive).
That has little to do with fun, and everything to do with recurring revenue. Multiplayer aligns itself nicely with subscriptions, in a way singleplayer doesn't.
Don't know about current state of WoW, but the other two games you mention, and games like Overwatch or even StarCraft 2, are hollowed out and devoid of substance, because the competitive multiplayer makes everyone focused on meta.
Not really; at the peak of competition, emergent mechanics and exploits are celebrated by some communities: e.g. wavedashing in Melee, K-style in GunZ, not to mention speedrunning.
It's not about manipulation. It's that if you die in football, you die in real life. If you do stupid stuff, players can get hurt. Whereas in video games, all that can really happen is a win or a loss. A bizarre play where someone gets hurt is funny in a simulation, and tragic in meatspace.
This is part of why the NASCAR move is so interesting. The driver himself notes that he was putting himself in real actual danger of crashing his car and possibly hurting himself, but he was willing to take that risk.
I would not be surprised to see this outlawed in the very near future before someone can cause a major crash trying it.
Of course they do, things like juking, tricking other players, etc are well accepted
The problem is that these kinds of strategies are boring to watch, have little counter play, and only interesting the first time around — as soon as it enters the meta, it’s just boring. In this case it’d probably be fine, but if you spent two minutes doing it? It’d be awful.
Exactly the same as it goes in video games — it’s fun to see people exploiting elements the game, when it adds complexity to the match. When it reduces it, like an infinite combo, regardless of how mechanically complex or novel a puzzle solution it might be, it just detracts.
Yeah, for game exploits "haha I can't believe you can do that, that's hilarious, now let's patch it out" is the norm. Exploits that make the game richer and gain wide acceptance are very much the exception.
> Live sports are with people and people don't like watching others be manipulated.
I'm pretty sure I've seen lots of deceptive and misleading strategies and tactics in football and other sports, not to mention multiple forms of "faking." Also a core part of sports like football seems to be putting pressure on the person with the ball - up to and including physical tackling.
I love this comment and want to add another perspective.
The existence of video games brings people together on a level playing field where they are free to explore their ideas and refine strategies over a length of time far longer than anyone can actually play the game in reality.
You see it to a more immediate effect in games such as Dota2, League, etc. Professional level players regularly play with amateurs and non-professionals and you notice that ideas propagate throughout the community readily.
Obviously there is a certain barrier to entry for physical sports and the online equivalent to share in ideas, but with how far sports-based games will go striving for realism (all the iterations of Football Manager come to mind), it wouldn't be hard to imagine that in the future strategies will be tested virtually before being employed in real.
> it wouldn't be hard to imagine that in the future strategies will be tested virtually before being employed in real.
Meet Max Verstappen[0], current reigning 2-time F1 world champion, who credits a lot of his success to how much time he spends playing racing simulators online. Seen here[1] doing something ridiculous, which works in the sim; he hasn't pulled this move on-track yet, but if he does it won't suprise me. Incidentally, most of the current generation of F1 drivers are also sim racers.
I think what these people are doing is creating goals for themselves in virtual spaces, to strive for in real space. The OP video couldn't have happened except in the exact situation that driver was in, his mind was habituated to trying to make that move, and he knew his car and track enough to make the correct call re: risk. The video game experience is only one part of that, but it's a crucial part. The rest came from real world racing experience.
The streamer who is recording is close enough to the car ahead (Max Verstappen) that he gets pulled along by the slipstream effect (caused by the vacuum created behind the car ahead as it cuts through the air). This reduces the aerodynamic drag on the streamer's car, and allows him to accelerate more than the car ahead.
Normally (i.e. in meatspace racing), in this situation, the following car would wait as long as possible in the slipstream, until right before the next braking zone, then take a sharp turn out from behind the leading car, pass them (with the faster acceleration), and then try to brake later than the leading car before turning into the next corner, ensuring they'd go into the corner first, and thus come out of the corner first.
In this clip, Max anticipated all of the above, moved out from in front of the following car (breaking the slipstream himself), braked much earlier than a racing driver normally would (allowing the streamer's car to temporarily pass him), and used the time he lost to assess the streamer's racing line (read: vector) into the corner. Then he aimed his own car into the gap between that line and the corner of the track, and used the extra space to accelerate earlier than the streamer. By doing this, he negated every advantage the streamer had gained from the slipstream, and stayed ahead.
That social expectation isn't really present in american football: teams will do lots of different things to manipulate the game clock toward the end (choose to run vs pass because the clock stops on incomplete passes or if the ball goes out of bounds, taking a knee, spiking the ball).
I think it is also common in basketball for a team to intentionally manage their fouls, right? And hockey had goons for quite a while (I think they've been trying to prevent that sort of thing lately). Perhaps we should change the meaning of the expression "sportsmanlike behavior."
Gaming the rules is part of the game in most American team sports. The culture of consistency in rule enforcement regardless of context enables this, and it dovetails nicely with deception being celebrated as a tactic (hidden ball tricks in baseball, and deceptions like this play[0] in football) which also depends on rules being enforced.
Another way to put it is that in American sports like baseball, basketball, and football, the rules are considered part of the game, and using the rules to your advantage shows respect for the game. With soccer, by contrast, people often talk about an essence of the game that transcends the rules, which the rules only approximate, and it seems like there is a different relationship to the rules as a result. Rules are a necessary evil that serve the higher essence of the game, and if you are too concerned with the rules people might feel like you are disrespecting the higher essence that they serve. At least that has been my impression from spectators and amateurs, in my experience. Competitors at higher levels of play might approach it differently.
>But there's a certain social expectation that you won't game the rules so blatantly, so that's a disincentive.
There's also the concept of good sportsmanship. Doing this kind of "move" could be considered disrespectful and a show of bad sportsmanship.
The other football has its time honored ways of wasting time, keeping the ball in the opponent's corner, the keeper waiting until the last second to pick up a ball, someone getting "hurt", nobody open on a throw-in, walking off for a sub, etc. Then there's the sportsmanship thing of kicking the ball out of play for an opposing player to receive treatment. How much of the time wasting is good/bad sportsmanship vs good stratechery?
This is the right answer. There have been running backs, kick returners and pass receivers who thought they had outrun the opponents and slowed down towards the end zone to gawk and show off, and wound up getting tackled short of what should have been an easy touchdown by people that caught up to them. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in at least one of those cases, the defense then showed up and forced a turnover after a three-and-out on a first and goal.
I don't think its from video games, tbh, its just not a situation that comes up very often. Similar things happen IRL on rare occasions and doing weird things to game the rules are common when they do.
For example, if its 4th down and you are leading by more than 2 points with very little time left on the clock, what do you do? One option is to punt and have the punter run out of the back of his own endzone. It gives the opponent 2 points, but is a very safe play.
I've also seen teams run a punt play, but the offensive linemen intentionally commit holding to maximize the amount of time that the punter (or qb) holds onto the ball in the backfield while the clock runs. The clock doesn't stop until the ball hits the ground if a qb throws, so a high long pass just out of bounds can burn a few seconds too.
Hmm, lets see... also letting an opponent score a TD happens somewhat regularly. And often the player will slide instead of scoring. Video game players do that, but the idea didn't start there.
At least this is open play with ball in hand, and there is danger there. I fully admit I am not very familiar with American football, but the completely accepted "taking a knee" to run down as much as two minutes of the clock at the end of the game strikes me as far more cynical.
It’s not cynical at all - clock management is recognized and even appreciated as an important part of the game. Teams routinely practice how best to take advantage of the last 2 minutes of the game, and if they misuse even a few seconds of game time the coach gets roasted by the media.
When coaches are able to find a loophole to burn additional seconds off the clock, they are celebrated for it [1], and the rules are typically amended for the following year to prevent similar abuses.
Though there is the threat of rules being made to govern "unsportsman-like" behavior that dissuades this kind of thing. If the powers that govern the sport determine they don't want this to be a mainstay, they can rule it out. The videogame exists in a realm of concrete and unchanging rules, theres no threat of making anyone mad, besides the person at the other end of the couch of course.
The incentive to pull off this kind of move, running the clock down a bit
Having spent several years playing amateur football in my youth, I can attest that the game would be vastly improved if the clock never stopped and the teams had set time limits between the end of one play the beginning of the next. Christ I got so tired of the dicking around.
> But there's a certain social expectation that you won't game the rules so blatantly, so that's a disincentive.
I’ve watched the QB take a knee hundreds of times to run down the clock. The difference here is his play was riskier because it would have been easier to lose possession.
Yeah breaking the unwritten rules of the game, like not often seen is basketballers under-arming free-throws. It's unsporting, not even Michael Jordan did it (ooff, he took that personally...).
Under-arming was done in modern international cricket once and ruined sporting careers.
As it should... 40 years later and we're still talking about it.
Rolling the ball along the ground when a six was required to win made what was an exciting game into a farce. You want your team to win, but not like that. You have to question whether there wa some money put down on the side...
Same can be said for the batsman who walks. It's the right decision when you consider you want to win with no doubt as to the validity of the result. Maybe if sponsors required sportsmanship as part of their contracts you might see less of ball tampering and other dubious practices in the name of winning.
Yes there is social pressure not to try anything so unorthodox. If you fail the social / reputational fallout will be greater than it you failed the old fashioned way.
Yeah, I don't think it is social expectation... in fact, some common game clock management choices (like taking a knee) are frowned on much more in video games than real life.
Football coaches, especially college coaches and high school coaches, have made comments regarding how Madden has changed the game in some ways, but it's mainly due to increasing the baseline knowledge of the game. Your typical new player might have watched some football games, and most of their coaching would involve a position coach teaching the specific position. There aren't that many coaching hours that aren't dedicated to the physical part of the sport, so it wasn't uncommon to find players with the right physiques for a position, and decent knowledge of how they had to play, but short in general "Football IQ".
As the games have become closer to a simulation, kids that are football fans get a lot free time where they control both the offense and the defense. They get to make calls, and see how every player in the team should move, and how it makes a difference. It in no way replaces actual football practice, but it boosts a lot of what you can ask a middling high school team to do.
Even in the pros, you'll hear people talk about how so-and-so is "like another coach, but on the field", because knowledge of the game overall, and the system they play in, matters. Years of videogame football, instead of having to learn even the very basics from scratch, makes things easier.
For what it's worth, I learnt to play basketball in Eastern Europe about 25 years ago, and there was a much bigger emphasis on 3 pointers back then. Pretty much everyone was able to make 3 point shots regardless of their main position.
When I came to the US, I was surprised that people were amazed that "the big guy can shoot 3s". I played center, but it was normal for me to work on free throws, 3 point shots, and also take the shots in the game. I couldn't really understand why players like Shaq were not able to make even free throws, nevermind 3 point shots.
I'm not saying we were all shooting as well as Curry, just that I feel like the emphasis on 3 point shots came very late to the US. It took someone like Curry for people to really internalize just how hard it is to catch up with an offense that consistently gets 3 points when they attack the basket and that yes, it's OK for all your players on the team to be good at shooting the ball.
There’s some justification for this. There are maybe 2000-3000 people in the world who are seven feet tall, and traditionally you would prioritize footwork, physical strength, rebounding, and defense over shooting for those players. Steph Curry is 6’2”, which is a much more common height so you can be a lot more selective about whether or not a 6’2” point guard can shoot as opposed to a 7’ center. Now we do have lots of big guys who can shoot, but not all of them can do the other things well enough.
Good point. Mike D'Antoni credits his experience in Italy for the offenses he implemented in the NBA. To your point, while video games may not have originated these ideas, they provide both a creative space to try wild ideas as well as help change the culture to become receptive to these sorts of experiments.
Do Nascar drivers develop neck problems? I know it's a joke that all they do is turn left and that racing is in general tough on the neck, but it does seem like they'd almost always been veering their head to the left over hours long races.
Some tracks are more hard on them than others, but I haven't heard much about any negative affects in NASCAR besides feeling dizzy or off balance for several hours after a race. Open wheel drivers commonly pull over 5 G's though in corners. Their heads are supported, but I would think your brain getting pulled to one side with that much force for over an hour can't be a net positive.
Not speaking negatively about it of course - to each their own. I raced Superbikes for eight years and you might as well throw risk tolerance completely out the window with that kind of racing.
Most are ovals, yes, but in those there's also banking involved, 30+ degrees in corners, so the idea of just turning left is missing a very important nuance to it. Outer tires are inflated more, usually 10+ PSI.
I have noticed other analogies between computer behavior and real life.
Basically security and similar attacks that were practical on computers have now become practical in real life.
Think of one person annoying a business. But now what the same person annoys a business repeatedly? Or someone and all his friends annoy a business repeatedly? attack, denial of service attack, distributed denial of service attack.
And before video games… Senna ‘91 win in brazil F1… 7 laps stuck on the 6th gear https://www.ayrton-senna-dasilva.com/brazil-1991/ on the «Senna» documentary he even says that on the last laps he had an out of the body experience, watching himself and the car from the top.
In the Euro 2004, Denmark and Sweden would both go on to qualify at Italy's expense if the result of the game was 2-2.
Of course, the score ended up being just that towards the end of the game, and then the players on both teams just stood still and passed the ball between themselves running down the last 8 minutes or so of the clock.
I was going to say, if you're not at risk of getting tackled and you're ahead it makes sense to stall.
I do believe in football (soccer for americans) a referee will intervene if players are obviously stalling (e.g. by not playing, or the goalkeeper just holding onto the ball) but they can just go back and forth for a bit.
Probably also happens in boxing and other time related sports.
The NFL has rules to try make this ineffective: for one, taking two delay of game penalties in a row is an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. There's also various rules that try to eliminate strategic use of penalties to run down the clock by making the clock stop on penalties at the ends of the halves.
You still see delay of game penalties by teams running down the clock fairly regularly, but it's more to just use every available second of the play clock up, typically in a situation where the distance loss isn't very important (like right before a punt).
Furthermore, sometimes you want to lose the distance so that the punter doesn't have to struggle with a punt that's on the short end of his comfortable range.
Interesting, why is it that it's "so obviously inspired by the tactics of videogame football"? It sounds like a pretty good (albeit annoying) tactic for a real game. In European football it's actually very common for players to use stall tactics, and they don't even gain as much because there's no hard limit on how long the game lasts.
Clock management in football is incredibly important - the last 17 seconds can take multiple minutes to play if the team has timeouts, throws out of bounds, all sorts of things.
You want to burn the clock if you have the ball and 17 seconds remaining, because you don't want the other team to have a chance to retaliate.
It's a very delicate balance and one of the most difficult "coach" decisions football has, and it applies throughout the game, and changes based on how your offense and defense are doing vs theirs (do you score fast and hope to defend and score again, or do you score slow and hope to defend only, etc).
This is one of those events that I'm of several minds about:
1) This is what keeps people outside the scene interested and taking note - NASCAR absolutely should publicize and play up this moment, it brings a lot of folks to the sport. It was incredibly awesome.
2) A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.
3) The best course forward is to leave it alone and legal in this moment, publicize it, but also treat it as the formation of some new rules.
Side note, Nascar 2005, which he referenced as one of his inspirations for this, is one of my favorite gamecube games. I remember picking it up and playing it for hours on end, the soundtrack was awesome, and it didn't feel like an EA cash-grab at the time. Man how times have changed...
Edit: Extra info - the 11 of Hamlin has previously made it into the chase for the champion ship by _intentionally wrecking drivers_ , so by and large a huge part of the fan base believes he got what was coming to him.
> 2) A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.
I don't watch Nascar, but as from comments from other places, there is nothing new with it. It has been known and attempted by others now and then [1]. It is a high risk high reward move and this time it turned out good.
If it wasn't regulated so far, I don't think it will be.
I have some family members that are huge fans, so I follow somewhat. It should be noted with your link that Darlington is a much faster and lengthier track than Martinsville. At Darlington, Larson was very close to Hamlin when he initiated the wall ride halfway through the corner - he may have gained a half second or so, not several, like at Martinsville. I see this as more of a Richmond/Martinsville short track strategy. So now that we know it's possible at Martinsville, it'll be great to see what happens next time they visit or on the next short track race.
I personally don't see this happening a lot. I raced motorcycles at the professional level for several years. If someone had continued doing something that gave them a 3 to 5 second advantage on the last lap, the rest of the paddock would have gotten tired of it pretty quickly. Although I think it's a hilarious situation, I would imagine if it continues to happen that the drivers doing it will start to feel pressure from the other drivers.
If it gets to where this is happening all the time, I don't see the series not making a rule against it, but they are probably gladly accepting the needed publicity at this point.
I think you’ll see the defensive line move up the track to block this on exit, which will open up the possibility for someone to get under the defending car, which should make the racing tactics more interesting in the last lap.
This tactic will wear the car out far too much to be used on multiple laps, so it may just get race fans to experience more excitement and interest on the last lap.
Sure, but a driver isn't blocking the guys right behind them. Someone isn't going to win the race from 10 cars back, but anyone three seconds behind the leader can pull it off. From what I saw, a driver would easily be able to pass the driver one to three cars in front. So blocking the outside on exit might work for the guy coming from 5 to 10 spots back, but the leader will lose every time to the guys directly behind. And if the driver directly in front goes to the outside on entry to block, then a dive bomb from the person behind on the inside will work just fine too. I'm not sure why anyone should take the regular line at that point. What's stopping every car in the top 10 from going around the outside bouncing off the wall, especially when there is money on the line?
At the moment I'm looking forward to the last corner/last lap of one of these short track races with a lot of money or championship at stake. I picture it playing out exactly like the first corner in a Forza online multiplayer race. One or two players staying in the race line, two other drivers dive bombing, four others bouncing off the wall on the outside, resulting in a mess of fiberglass, tears, and mad drivers. I just hope a fan in the stands doesn't catch a loose part.
> What's stopping every car in the top 10 from going around the outside bouncing off the wall, especially when there is money on the line?
Nothing at all. Everyone will end up doing it on the last half lap at short tracks and no one will have an advantage, lots of cars will get torn up, and owners will ask NASCAR to stop making them tear up a $250K racecar every short track race.
I also wonder when someone who might normally qualify at the end of the field will do this in qualifying, essentially trading extra repair work on the car for a spot at the front of the field.
Interestingly, this weekend's wall ride had a similar result - a car ahead stayed high, forcing him to slow down and preventing the pass. The difference is that in this case, he had already passed five cars, and passing the sixth was irrelevant in the standings result.
There was the 3" fuel line issue a decade or more ago.
When limiting the size of the fuel cell to x gallons, they neglected to specify the size of the fuel line. More fuel capacity is an advantage late in the race, allowing for the potential to not have to pit for a splash of gas or have to drive as conservatively.
Well, a 3" line has a couple of gallon capacity if it extends the length of the car, and at one point, someone won because of it, and then had it discovered in the technical inspection.
You're thinking of Smokey Yunick, and that's just a taste of his antics
Check out the "reverse torque special" where he reversed the direction of his engine, so the tq pull would naturally turn him in the correct direction for nascar
Or when he modified the roof and raised the floor to get a more aerodynamic car
Or when he qualified with wheel covers, and cut them out before the race ( rules didn't stipulate you had to cut them before qualifying )
The guy was a legend, and I think racing would be much more interesting if we had more of him
Or placed an inflated basketball in the fuel tank when it was going to be measured for capacity, only to deflate the basketball for the race.
Or load the car with cold (more dense) fuel.
Or (allegedly) race a 15/16ths scale car with a matching 15/16ths scale street car strategically parked in the track parking lot so the scrutineers could compare against a stock car and see that it matched.
Or built a race engine with the correct size cylinder in the easiest to measure location and oversized cylinders in every other position.
Other racers had special lead-filled radios and overweight helmets that would be in the car for tech, then get changed out before qualifying. Or lead shot filled in the frame rails and a wax seal or threaded fitting to keep it in. Darrell Waltrip tells a hilarious story where the threaded seal was in the jack point and NASCAR jacked the car to go look for it. Moving bars of Mallory (tungsten, basically) from the right to left after passing tech. Another racer was caught with a 22 gallon tank (20 was the limit at the time), apologized and agreed to change it. (He changed it to a 28 gallon tank.)
Definitely a Smokey Yunick special there. That whole idea is so iconic / infamous in racing that it's directly referenced in the movie Days of Thunder in a scene where Harry Hogge is talking to the car he's started building and says something like "I'm going to give you a fuel line that will hold an extra gallon of fuel".
They didn't mention Smokey by name, but it was clearly an allusion to that.
It's definitely being played up so I think they did something right. My friends (who aren't Nascar fans) sent it to me, it was all over Twitter and Facebook, and now here in the #1 spot on the site I least expected it to show up.
> A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.
Reminds me of an England v Italy rugby match a few years back where Italy completely abused the offside rule that resulted in England, seemingly, wanting the rules changed after that match (though Eng still won).
Yes, and if you are an actual motorsport fan creating a 'mario kart boost' mode makes your sport look dumb.
At least the way F1 does KERS is more controlled and logical (maximum amount of charge = maximum amount of additional horsepower you can deploy per lap)
DRS is a bit more of a parallel since when you're allowed to use it is completely artificial to create competition. But still in that case it's at least all decided on the track. Having drivers get a boost based on fan voting is stupid and does indeed cost the sport credibility.
everyone has the same additional power allocation and everyone has to go through attack mode twice in a race -- it's a strategic call of when you want to use the additional power, and when you can stand to lose a second or two going far off the optimal line to activate it. this is essentially similar to the overtake system in indycar or super formula. it's certainly not much worse than DRS.
now, the "fanboost" which gave certain drivers (almost always the same handful for years one end) an additional "push to pass" option based on social media voting -- that shit sucked. it's also gone next season.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean super un safe cross country races? Its called rallying.
Do you mean impractically long drag races where lol turns out I wasn't flooring it and now I'm really flooring it? That aspect of redline doesn't make any sense.
Or maybe just the competitors build their own cars and anything goes? I could get behind that. Racing seemed more pure back when it was dudes who built their own cars in their own garage.
That’s not too far off from how Darlington and a few other tracks work. If you “ride the cushion” of air between the car and the wall you can drive faster than being a few inches away from the wall or rubbing the wall.
I definitely don't think you want people doing this every race, but you could leave it alone for now and see if that becomes an issue before worrying about it too much. It's possible that now that people know it's a possibility, they'll simply defend the outside line out of the last corner, which could shut it down fairly effectively.
Running the cushion is not what Ross Chastain did. At Darlington and a few other tracks you ride as close as you can to the wall without much more than the occasional tap. If your paint is scraped up but the body panels aren’t bent you did it correctly. Many years ago they used to put 2x4s in the fender walls to protect them but now this requires car control.
While they could argue it's a safety issue, at the same time it's a risky move, and it could end up in the car crashing and being out of the race entirely, so it's a bit self-managing.
I mean if they start equipping cars with side wheels then it becomes a different matter, but I'm pretty sure the cars are already tightly regulated.
> A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.
That's exactly what happened in the cycling world when UCI decided they needed to ban the "supertuck"[1]
This has actually happened - pro road cyclist Matej Mohorič won Milan-San Remo in 2022 with a dropper post [1]. Apparently it was a standard round post, though.
oh yeah sorry I should have mentioned that this incident inspired the theory. Only round dropper posts currently exist and are made by third parties, but I could see frame builders making proprietary aero ones.
You could penalize it but if he had to do it on the next turn his sidewalls would have blown out. It’s definitely something to add to the end of race all-chips-in bag of tricks.
Of all the forms of immortality, my favorite is participating in a competition in such a brilliant, incorrect way that a rule is permanently added just for you.
When I was in high school a local science museum had an annual paper airplane contest. One of the events was duration of flight. The launch platform was a second-story landing. One year I won with a simple piece of paper the size of a dollar bill that was bent into a S-shape profile so that it would twirl as it fell. It turns out this is actually a legitimate way to produce lift, and actual human-carrying aircraft have been built with wings that use this principle, but I didn't know that at the time, and neither did the competition organizers. They thought I was cheating, and so did I. So the next year they tried to change the rules in a way that would disqualify my design but they couldn't come up with a legitimate way to phrase such a rule, so in the end they decided on a very clever solution: all entries in the duration-of-flight event had to carry a penny as a payload.
So I built a very large version of the same design out of computer punch cards taped together, and won again. I'm still proud of that.
That reminds me of when I carefully built a "lightbulb drop" challenge container that looked like the moon lander in high school art. We were given two pieces of construction paper, two straws and two large rubber bands. I spent a week I think building and testing my design so that it would use the straws and rubber bands like springs and the paper like fins to ensure it landed in the right position and prevent the lightbulb from breaking.
Cue "demo day": my friend forgot about the project and took the straws and wrapped them around the bulb and then crinkled up the construction paper roughly and wrapped it around the straws and bulb and then took the rubber bands and secured the paper. I think he spent maybe a minute on it.
I think you maybe know how this ends. The teacher sneered at his design but then proceeded to drop it several times from the top of a ladder and the bulb never broke. He then took my design and dropped it upside down (springs pointing up) and the bulb shattered. I still think about that and laugh 30+ years later.
It depends on what you consider "similar", but no, the rotation of the paper has nothing to do with the rotation of helicopter blades during autorotation. In that case, the blades act like ordinary wings and they do an ordinary glide, albeit in a circular direction because the blades are fixed at one end. What happens with the paper is different. The axis of rotation is horizontal rather than vertical.
However, there is a sort of rotation about a horizontal axis in an ordinary wing because a wing produces vortices, and this is a necessary part of the process of producing lift [1]. In heavy aircraft these vortices can be surprisingly powerful and long-lasting, to the point where they can cause smaller aircraft to lose control and even crash if they get caught in one [2].
That first reference has an excellent description of what was going on in my design [3].
It depends on how you interpret the parent comment, but my guess is no. The autorotation you're speaking of happens in a plane roughly parallel to the ground. This is a very powerful and stable way for a wing to generate lift: https://www.av8n.com/how/htm/spins.html#sec-samara
There's another option, which is counter-rotation along an axis parallel to the ground, and orthogonal to the direction of travel. This mechanically induces circulation, which produces lift (by the same principle that a curveball produces sideways lift.) Here's more information on this funky phenomenon: https://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#sec-spinners
Actually in this case he’s using an airfoil spinning on a horizontal axis perpendicular to the direction of flight.
But yes, helicopters can be safely landed this way without power (not crash landed, but actually landed, though crashing is always an option lol)
Also, gyrocopters use the same principle for all phases of controlled flight, by simply using a traction engine to move the aircraft foreword, with a free spinning, unpowered, typically fixed pitch or no cyclic control rotor providing the lift.
When I was trying to get a helicopter license (pre-pandemic), I did one of these as part of training (the instructor had me actually complete the landing... he was a little crazy) and I wouldn't exactly consider it a typical landing, but the helicopter and its occupants were indeed in working order.
My favourite of these is probably Graeme Obree[1] who managed to get not one, but two very different bike positions banned in the ’90s after setting the hour record using one of them and winning the world championship using the other.
Planking is how the kids here race 70cc Honda cub motorcycles. They shift with their hands and have specially modified seats to support the prone riding position.
while this is of course very cool, I was always convinced that it also included a motor. The acceleration seems too abrupt for just a Cd advantage, and that was right around the time of the big motor in chassis scandals
He's riding a fixie (presumably it's a fixie race). On a downhill, your legs are slowing you down; presumably he would have gained some advantage just by taking his feet off the pedals, but this would give a bit more advantage.
And it's interesting how long some of these GameCube moves/bike positions can leave a mark on a sport. Just three weeks ago Filippo Ganna broke the Boardman's superman position record (from 1996), finally topping the last of the hour record tricks [1].
It’s not likely that will make you immortal. Being forbidden, your technique will not be used, so your name won’t be mentioned, and it will be forgotten (You might get famous if your technique keeps getting used by accident)
For example, there’s “Félix Erausquín”, who invented a javelin throwing technique you probably never heard of.
However the true revolution of javelin throw came in 1956 when a 49 year old spaniard, Félix Erausquín, invented what came to be called the “spanish style”. Erausquín was a specialist of shot put and discus throw (with several national titles and records) but also of the “barra vasca” which consists in throwing a heavy rod using a rotational technique. Erausquín adapted the style of the barra to javelin throw with a greased hand and managed a throw of 83.40 m at a few centimetres of the world record.
[…]
Could the spaniards have won the 1956 Olympic javelin title? Yes and no. Had they kept the style secret till Melbourne they would certainly have taken the javelin world by surprise. However at the beginning of October, a month and a half before the Games, Salcedo used the new style during a competition in Paris. This opened the way for experimentation with the new technique to non-spanish athletes but also alerted the instances of the international federation who by the end of the month had modified the rules so as to ban the rotational technique. However, even if they had kept the secret, the athletes from Spain would not have had the occasion to throw at Melbourne since Franco’s government had, at the last moment, decided to boycott the Games.
The immortality comes from the fact that anyone who is reading the rulebook, and gets curious about the origin of the rule created to forbid your actions, will research that†, and learn your story.
Sometimes, the rule itself is even named after the person — so your name is right there in the rulebook forevermore. They might not know who you were or what you did, but they know you did something stupid enough to require a change to the sport.
Yeah the Brady rule (made an angry face at Brady, 5 yards) is such a wonky thing that can be misused. Horsecollar in the other hand…I think I’ve seen a couple guys thrown down by jersey alone so yeah no need to grab pads in that battle. At the time though when I saw it live, I would say “you test Roy downfield…”
>For example, there’s “Félix Erausquín”, who invented a javelin throwing technique you probably never heard of.
But who's infinitely more known than his contemporaries who didn't do some interesting footnote-worthy thing like that and therefore get mentioned far less.
Exactly. I have, as of a moment ago, read exactly one article about javelin throwing in my life, and it was about that guy and the throwing technique he invented.
> Of all the forms of immortality, my favorite is participating in a competition in such a brilliant, incorrect way that a rule is permanently added just for you.
That's precisely why car races are boring these days. Everything is forbidden and over-regulated so there's no space for innovation anymore. Look at F1 and its bloat of regulations.
But in F1 it's exciting because you never know what rules they are gonna enforce this time and for whom. /s
Edit: on a more serious note: The regulations are so tight to keep it exciting. Frustratingly, if the regulations are more open, one of the better funded teams will just run away with the best car. That already happened in some seasons, but would be even worse without tight regulations.
I think many of the regulations in F1 are because people generally don’t like to watch other people die. F1 drivers killing themselves all over the track is bad for business.
That's definitely another source of regulations. Many of the very specific regulations that dictate minute details are about more competitive races though. For example the current regulation changes that called in effect in 2022 were all about aero that allows for better following and thus wheel-to-wheel racing. Mercedes' wing that flexed a few microns too much had nothing to do with safety
I have a historic car that ended up banned at Le Mans over rules and caused Lotus to stop competing while at the same Ferrari did not get banned from the same race despite also falling afoul of some different rules. at least according to legend, anyway.
According to Adrian Newey's book it came out in 2015 that Ferrari had a secret deal with the FIA that allowed Ferrari to veto any regulation changes. It also is interesting how cars in the early 90s started to have more advanced electronics like active suspension which Ferrari never got to work and then those things got banned.
There is definitely precedent. In ‘62 Ferrari threatened to pull all their cars from Le Mans over some ruling they disagreed with. Lotus went home and didn’t go back to LM for many, many years.
(Reading the Wikipedia article, looks like they only mention two Lotus 23s going but I think there were more)
With the cost cap these days, I wish they would let up on so many of the 'this is to expensive to develop for everyone' regulations.
Give us back mass dampers, active suspension, flexi-wings, dual-axis steering, and similar things. None of these are driver aids, and they aren't inherently unsafe (flexi wings might be more fragile). They were banned because it would be too expensive for everyone to have to develop it.
But the cost cap solves the problem of 'too expensive for everyone to develop it'. Everyone gets the same choice, and if a properly tuned mass-damper takes 30 million to get right, and 10 million to sort-of-work. Then people get to pick where the best cost-benefit trade-off lies.
Motorsports are different than other sports because the drivers' lives are under very real risk. A lot of the regulation is to keep the drivers alive. It comes at the expense of excitement but we would all agree it's necessary.
Motorsports are not unique in this regard. John Delamere pioneered the forward somersault long jump technique [0], which was then banned for fear that athletes might break their necks.
I don’t disagree that the racing itself could be more exciting in that scenario, but without the human element, I just don’t think people would stay interested
> That's precisely why car races are boring these days. Everything is forbidden and over-regulated so there's no space for innovation anymore. Look at F1 and its bloat of regulations.
Rally is just going to be another example. As of this year, all the cars are econobox facades over space frames. No trickle-down innovation or 'win on Sunday sell on Monday'.
Probably don’t paint the entire sport with one brush. Lots of racing is very exciting, especially to the people who are doing it (the vast majority of racing is amateur/club/etc.)
Bergmeister vs Magnussen wasn’t that long ago…
have you tried watching BTCC/British Touring Car Championship? it's a lot of inches-apart racing with a lot of actual contact and some incredibly skilled drivers. can be quite thrilling!
There was a rule added to baseball about making a "mockery of the game" for sending a midget in to pinch-hit, and having nearly no strike zone, he walked on four balls.
> American League president Will Harridge, saying Veeck was making a mockery of the game, voided Gaedel's contract the next day. In response, Veeck threatened to request an official ruling on whether Yankees shortstop and reigning American League MVP Phil Rizzuto, who stood 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m), was a short ballplayer or a tall dwarf.
> He received confirmation of his qualification for the games while working as a plasterer and temporarily residing in a Finnish mental hospital, due to lack of funds for alternative accommodation rather than as a patient.
But that's not an illegal move - interestingly, ICC (the body which regulates Cricket) has always recognized the move as official - specifically confirming it as such after the recent incident involving the women's teams of India & England.
Surprised Smokey Yunick's name isn't mentioned anywhere.
Reminds me of this entertaining seminar[1] of a bunch of old school IMSA racers describing how they got "creative" racing around the rules to gain an unfair advantage.
It always makes me happy to see Smokey Yunick's name come up on HN. It doesn't happen very often[1], but he was clearly a "hacker" as much as any programmer or computer science guy was!
Sports don’t generally work that way, especially in the US. If it’s not specifically against the rules but clearly should be, you get the old “great job! Never do it again!”
Motorsports generally have a rule like, "safety violation deemed at official's discretion". The wikipage on NASCAR rules looks like it has just such a rule.
This is also the shortest short track NASCAR races, its in Martinsville, VA. Known as "The paperclip".
This was a lot fun to watch. #1 Ross Chastain had to get more points than #11 Denny Hamlin to qualify. He was in 10th I think when he went full send with the wall, putting an arms length in front of Denny at the very last second to finish #5th.
Short track races are fun because the do have a lot of rubbing, but they dont nearly go as fast as the super-speedways. And just generally you dont see something like this. I understand NASCAR is gonna make a rule to prevent it, but you know they are gonna promote the heck outta this clip.
I'm 99% sure that it originated in climbing - it's been a term since the 80s at least (short for ascend - to 'send' a climbing route is to climb it successfully without falling or weighting the rope). Outside climbing I first noticed its use in the mid/late '00s in mountain biking (which has a fair bit of overlapping user base), and then in other extreme sports. In the jump from climbing to other extreme sports it became a shorthand for 'commit and do something difficult/risky successfully' (similar in spirit to its meaning in climbing if not literally given the etymology).
I think it has to be mountain biking. It's the perfect thought to have in your head when you're looking at something that is potentially crazy, but you know the laws of physics are almost certainly going to have your back as long as your technique is good.
First time I heard it I was near the bottom of the UC Santa Cruz trails into Highway 9 contemplating this section called "the poop chute" which gets steeper and rockier until you hit a 2-3 foot drop among boulders and the only solution is to have enough speed that you end up in the road. And by "the road" I mean the apex of a blind hairpin turn of Highway 9.
I had been out of the sport for 20 years but kept riding road and my buddy got me back in with a sweet deal on a YT Jeffsy we kitted up with spare parts from all his friends. Carbon everything. A bike that did not exist in any dimension when I stopped riding.
Well, this was probably my seventh or eighth weekend trying to negotiate this chute and there are these 17-20 year old kids at the top and I ask them how to do this. And this guy, with all the confidence of Santa Cruz and youth says, with a big, easy grin, "Yeah, it's just hang way back and full send." And I looked at him. And I looked at the chute. And back at him. And my brain, married with two kids, was like "I see. Ok." And I did it.
Full send. Was exactly what my brain needed to think. It works weirdly well.
That's well and good, but the term comes from climbing. To ascend. You send a route. Skiiers and eventually mountain bikers started to use it as well. I think it's just a ubiquitous extreme sports term at this point.
in climbing "send" is used in other forms... sending temps = cold enough for the rubber to stick well, usually below 50°F. getting sendy = eager, anxious to climb. sending shoes = aggressive pair of climbing shoes with downturned toes.
"[I'm still going to|You know I'm just gonna] Send it" originated with Larry (the) Enticer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzOUgwsQ_hM I'm pretty sure "full send" evolved out of this. He's a brilliant nut job. :)
The proximal cause for a lot of people is military in origin ("send it" as slang for "fire", especially in a pseudo sniper context), and military usage probably derives from crossover with extreme sports community. "Military in origin" at this point also encompasses secondary media like COD.
Full send comes from extreme sports-style events originally, basically meaning "go 100% with no fear of the repercussions". In racing, it usually means going into a corner so fast you're basically risking or guaranteeing you won't make the turn safely.
> Nelk is known for popularizing and later trademarking the slang term "Full Send" (stylized as FULL SEND) which Forgeard defined as meaning "any activity you do, give it your absolute best".
A point of note: the phrase was popular in the climbing/skiing/snowboarding/mountain biking communities years and years before the frat boys appropriated it for activities mostly pertaining to drinking a lot and being a degenerate.
Full Send predates them by at least a decade. It’s a very short walk from “send it”, as in I’m going to send it, which has been part of that culture since at least 2000.
This term was used well before 2010... that person might have the trademark but it was used in extreme sports (e.g. skateboarding type events) since the 1990s.
To add to the other replies, there's two etymologies that I know of.
The first and most common explanation, is that when a film crew working with an extreme sports athlete would successfully capture a moment on film, they would mail the tape in to the film editor or marketing department - literally send the tape. So when they were doing lots of takes, before rolling the cameras everyone would encourage each other to "send it this time".
(The term "beta" referring to detailed description of a location or technique, came about similarly, as it refers to passing around a literal Betamax tape of another person performing that stunt or rock climb)
The alternate explanation is that it is simply short for "ascend", as in exhorting a rock climber to "ascend it".
"Send it" has been in use in sports for awhile, and the usage is literal: cause the thing to go, and from that point it's between physics and whatever god(s) you pray to. Typically used for the act of passing/shooting.
"Full <thing> mode" has also been in use for awhile, meaning an extreme or complete version of a tactic or state of being.
Combine the two, and you get "full send mode", where you make a move that completely removes your control from that point forward.
Then you drop the last word for brevity, and you have people going full send.
It was one of those things that after hearing it, it just made sense. I probably heard it elsewhere before that, but I just always remember Larry Enticer cementing it. (I'm not sure about the date on that video. I remember seeing it a long time ago.)
It was used sporadically in sports contexts, usually the kind of sports where you go flying and get injured if you F-up (skiing, skateboarding, etc). It gained mainstream popularity when a dude with a snowmobile used the phrase in a viral video in the 2010s.
I think I heard it from the Sky F1 commentators first. It’s making its way through the rest of Motorsport from there I’d guess. Netflix’s Drive to Survive series has had a really profound effect on Formula 1 in the US.
Well...I'd say the LA Coliseum has it beat out for the shortest track now :-) But I guess I wouldn't really count that one either, for reasons.
Incredibly fun to watch. I work for the #11 (and others) so this was very disappointing from that angle (particularly since his record at Phoenix is pretty good) but overall it was such a fun move that highlights a good attitude for drivers & teams to have, but is also just plain entertaining.
at 3:15 "I can't believe what I just saw... that's literally the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life... that was straight video game but hey man, way to never quit."
Do you see how fast he is going compared to the other cars? They are going as fast as they can without losing grip and spinning out as they go round the corner. He has the wall supporting him around the corner and could floor the accelerator in top gear.
These cars don't seem to stick to the ground like they do in F1, so I guess they need to slow down a lot for the corner just like regular cars. Except for the guy who uses the wall to push him through the corner.
I get that he’s not going to slide off the track, but I don’t understand how he wouldn’t be slowed by the friction of the side of his car against the wall, though
During the course of the race bits of rubber come off the tires and form what is basically a rubbery gravel. The racing line is cleared of it by the passage of the cars. Get down too low or up too high and you start sliding like you would on gravel. So he went high, accepted the slippery-ness and used the wall to keep him going the right direction as he kept the pedal down.
On the racing line, even with a clean track, they still need grip to turn -- he didn't.
Also to note that as it is the end of the race, they aren't on fresh tires and probably most/all of the field didn't have the full grip they would during other portions of the race.
Speed through the turn is limited by lateral forces. The wall can provide more lateral force than the tires can. Yes, there's friction, but the cars are fiberglass, it's pretty slippery against a smooth painted wall (and they have a ton of power).
He is slowed down by the friction of the side of his car against the wall. And probably by bits of his car being torn away as it slowly disintegrates. But the engines on these cars are powerful and can easily overcome those effects.
I'm not sure small wheels would really be an improvement, and large wheels would weigh a lot. So it's entirely possible that a smooth surface is actually the best approach here.
Its insanely dangerous. Really just neigh-criminally stupid.
Any little lip in the siding on the wall could have caused him to flip or twirl about or get speared or launched his engine all over the place. The walls are designed to keep people safe, including the fans. They are fantastically well engineered and made. But, if he had caught the wall wrong and was catapulted into the stands, he may have killed a lot of people, let alone the danger to other drivers, let alone to himself. The various safety systems, of which the wall was but one, aren't made for that move and could very easily have been compromised in very bad ways.
I mean, it was awesome to watch, just incredibly cool. I'm glad it worked for him, he's in the history books for that move for sure. I can totally see NASCAR evolving to utilize that move in the future.
But he put many lives at more risk than anyone was expecting in such a kinetic sport.
I think just this year the body design on the cars became strong enough to try this. He also risked a yellow flag being thrown which would have disqualified any passing afterward. But they weren't quick enough with that lol.
The obvious one is that it ruins the car, at the end of the video you see his car is stopped on the track, presumably he broke some control arms and can't drive it back to the pits.
So it works once, then you're out, and you have to hope you pull it off safely. It was a massive risk, not all courses have a wall that wouldn't have wrecked the car. He mentions that part in the video.
That is pretty crazy. I can't imagine he kept his wheel alignment which would have been impactful if he had to keep racing, but it's impressive the suspension arms survived that. Maybe the new gen cage contacts before the wheels and they took most of the force?
I wonder if they modified the car for this at all? I've gotta imagine that he at least discussed the possibility of doing this with his crew before he went and did it.
The 2022 “NextGen” cars are significantly stiffer than prior cars; it’s possible that they are stiff enough to be better able to run the full half lap without getting stuck, but I more suspect no one seriously considered it.
Even with Nextgen cars, it’s a last half-lap move at most.
I also suspect nobody seriously considered it or thought they could get away with it. If they don't add rules to stop it, you will see people welding bumpers or even wheels to the sides of their cars to take advantage.
Getting into the wall usually means a flat tire or at least being slowed down considerably. I don’t think you could do this on a superspeedway track because the forces and friction would just destroy the car before the turn was over. On a short track it looks to be a different story.
It was the last corner of the last lap - hugging the wall damages your car but because he didn't actually need to tap the brakes he just kept on going, round the wall faster than the others.
The real answer is it only makes for good entertainment once, so it gets banned immediately.
If it had a real potential to spice the game (like allowing foot hits in volleyball) it would be integrated in the rules with some limitation (for instance you can only do it if you’re way behind)
I considered this first. But I imagine the camber change would ruin the insides of the tires so fast that it wouldn't be worth the wall rolling benefits...
Perhaps a better idea would be some kind of aerodynamic change which would result in a trapped pressure area on the right side when it is close to the wall. Maybe some kind of concave side.
I know you're joking, but Nascar actually uses some cool tech [1] to make a 3D model of each car on-site to ensure they're in spec with regulations for size, aero, etc... Here [2] it is in action at the last Daytona 500
That was my first thought, but that whole wall should be able to sustain a full on impact from multiple cars in a wreck if there are loose panels or gates it is already a serious failure.
Not to say it couldn’t happen, just that it’s reasonable to assume the wall is designed to support more force than this.
I scrolled all the way down, collapsing all the top level comments just to find your question, so thanks for posting it!!! This part of the discussion is what interests me the most.
My TKD teacher once told us that he always looks for "cheaters" within the rules or out-of-the-box thinkers, because that's the right mindset to be succesful at competitions.
When you play by the rules, you are limited to your abilities. But if you can squeeze advantages here and there, you can climb some extra spots, maybe to the top.
Hey! Fellow TKD practitioner here. I'm just curious if you found ways to "cheat the rules" so to speak. Mind sharing them?
I know that with the direction the sport has taken in the last decade or so, there are probably a hell lot of hacks right now. I even heard that players would change tactics (ie., rely on certain kicks/strikes more) depending on the hogu brand in use.
But I competed before the advent of e-hogus and the one trick I found is punching just at the upper edge of the chest part of the hogu. That's where the rubber padding ends which transitions to the mere "cotton" padding that fluffs the straps. This meant that my opponent might actually hurt from my punch, while plainly making contact with the protective gear. In an era where punches rarely scored points if at all, this was useful. I felt like I could punish people for clinching too much.
(Needless to say, this was in high school competitions. I dunno if it would've been as useful in higher tiers.)
Nothing serious. We were training combat and we were given a small set of rules to get points which included (in hindsight) obvious holes. The smart guys quickly detected and exploited the holes, to the dismay of their opponents, some of whom got very angry. This was maybe 10 years ago, so one I remember: the rule was "a point if you slap your opponent shoulder with your hand", demonstrated as trying to hit the further shoulder of the opponent. It was a game of reflexes, keep the distance, quick entry and blocking, but also it was too easy to hit the closest shoulder, something someone noticed after a good two minutes into the exercise.
Before the e-hogus a fellow competitor used to punch in a way that was not damage effective, but made a lot of noise and looked like a real punch (almost like a backhand slap), scoring a lot of points. Their opponents claimed that they weren't even hit. Another guy used to launch kicks in the last possible moment of a clinch (almost always a jump-turning-and-back-kick, tuio mondollyo tuit chagi, don't know the name in english), just when he noticed in the corner of the eye the referee intended to break the clinch.
I had one coach who was super into what could most charitably called "gamesmanship."
Just one example:
He noticed one ref gave verbal warnings only the first two times someone stepped out of bounds, so he had me bait the opponent into throwing a bunch of kicks as I retreated until I had two verbal warnings. My opponent was rather pissed off before I threw a single kick, upped the aggression and fell right into a counter.
He was good at all the regular tactics too; my only TKO was accomplished by starting out round 2 with exactly what he told me to do.
Re: the hogu thing, I did see someone do a push-kick on the hogu, then drag the foot down, pulling the hogu with it until there was no padding over the collar bone and punch there. He broke two people's collar bones and the ref was oblivious. The second opponent retaliated and it escalated with the match ending -3 to -2 (yes negative for both people). The guy who initiated the dirty stuff won, but had a broken instep (his opponent caught a roundhouse by raising his thigh and dropped an elbow directly onto the instep).
To be clear that wasn't just stupid. It took a lot of work to get into a place where it's worth having a go, and a heaping measure of luck to pull it off.
It’s banned now, but that patch is very rough and that is a steep incline. It is amazing he made it. I will dig out some video from one of my own race is from the cockpit and you can see how tough that pass really is
Can someone please explain what happened. I've seen the video a few times now, so I saw what happened but I am completely ignorant of either regs or etiquettes that allowed it to happen. It's a race right? I would assume grinding your car up against a wall would slow it down somewhat. Why were all the cars in the lower part of the screen going so much slower in a still live race that something like what happened could work?
The cars inside are going as fast as they can, with only the grip of their tires keeping them in the race line. The car along the wall can go much faster, as fast as it engine can push it because the wall keeps the car in the track. The grip of the tires is not the limit anymore.
Unfortunately the wall also destroys the car so this is a trick that can't be done more than once per race. If they don't agree not to do it again everybody will have to race like that on the last lap of those short tracks, to defend from the drivers behind. The costs for the car and maybe for the track (restoring the walls?) will be substantial. Check the pictures of the right side of the #1 car.
Funny enough I feel like only older “less realistic” driving games would let this be an advantage, Forza for instance realllly slows you down from the friction of hugging a wall
Wall riders are a perpetual bane in multiplayer races. Perhaps Forza and GT finally added measures against that, but among e.g. videos on the ‘Super GT’ simmer channel, you can see plenty of riders, especially in Forza Horizon.
A friend told me once he lost control of his car while driving. In that moment, he spontaneously reacted doing the same thing he did when that happened in Gran Turismo. That saved his life.
I wish I could tell what parts of such games were realistic, and then be able to practice emergency maneuvers - e.g. at 70 mph, cargo falls off the back of a pickup I'm following - just how sharply can I swerve my Toyota Corolla without going into a roll?
Gran Turismo has cartoon physics (or at least the first 4 or 5 did) not the best one to translate from.
That said, you probably won't roll a Corolla (low center of mass and relatively low grip tires) without hitting something like a curb or a surface change. You are more likely to just uncontrollably drive in to an obstacle.
Crazy. It used to work in many old games; it was a routine trick in Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. But it was a game physics quirk that propelled you forward with much more power than your engine was capable of.
Martinsville has a SAFER Barrier, which "consists of a high-strength, tubular steel skin that distributes the impact load to energy-absorbing foam cartridges", installed along the outside of the track: https://galvanizeit.org/project-gallery/nascar-safer-barrier
Still a risky move for a number of reasons, but wrecks are expected and happen all the time in NASCAR races.
That is so not true. The spirit of motorsport across so so many forms is poking and prodding at the limits of the rules.
From "$500" 24 Hours of Lemons racers that intentionally start with negative laps to go over $500 to most banned F1 tech (99% of it was stuff that wasn't explicitly against the rules when created: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/10-craziest-technologies-...)
Once the tech is banned sometimes clever cheats show up to keep using it, but that's not what happened here.
Explain why NASCAR drivers are retaliating by completely crashing into each other, is that poking at the limits when it's so blatant?
F1 and NASCAR are not comparable. In F1 teams get applauded for cheating with tech, which is completely different, and arguably more boring, from NASCAR where excitement mostly comes from danger.
The other guys aren't limited by power, they're limited by grip. The wall adds lots of friction, sure, but he also now has unlimited grip and therefore full power.
He went about 110 km/h faster than the other cars around that turn, pretty sure he also set a lap record by doing that move. The fact that the finish line comes up right at the end of the turn also likely helped him, as it didn't allow his competitors to gain too much speed between exiting the turn and finishing.
I don't think you can ride the wall in the old Nascar video games cause it slows you down too much, plus there's no nitro, but it's definitely a thing in other car games.
I worked at Papyrus (maker of Indycar and NASCAR games in the mid-late 90s and several alumni founded iRacing).
I’d introduced arcade mode and double-tap-hold to do a burnout (intended to make tight pit-out and 180° turns after wreck easier) to the Playstation version.
Inadvertently, I neglected to reduce forward traction during the burnout, so a burnout was the fastest way to do a standing start (by virtue of getting into the higher power RPM band). Made for interesting standing start races. Burnout made it into our “Hawaii” multiplayer code and NASCAR2 code; I don’t remember if Arcade mode (looser but more catchable cars and much better brakes) did or not.
I left just as we were developing GPL. Even with a good force-feedback setup, pedals, and a high frame rate, that game drove home* just how hard those GP cars were to drive.
Not knowing much about nascar or that GameCube game, I watched the video hoping to see someone fire a blue shell or get a star boost or something. Slightly disappointed.
That's cute, but I suspect that kind of boldly foolish move would not be the kind of thing a team would appreciate, since it implies they can never count on what their driver will do.
It was basically a Happy Gilmore hockey golf swing (which outperforms a regular golf swing when it works, but unfortunately is enough less reliable that it's not worth doing).
This is a one off thing. NASCAR is 100% gonna rule it out. And getting the car chewed up is pretty routine in NASCAR. I mean, it's not good to do it unnecessarily but this won't really raise eyebrows. The car was still driving and tracking fine afterwards, so it's probably just mangled body work.
The team was clearly celebrating in the pits. Their driver just put them back in the hunt to win the championship when they were otherwise a half-lap from being eliminated.
I think they’ll be plenty happy to put a new right side on it.
Sounds like the can count on their driver to understand a bit a damage to their car is well worth the championship points and press that comes from such a bold move.
Competitive motor sports are all about winning. There are so many rules and regulations and inspections, and cheating is. . . well, not condoned exactly, but part of the game. If someone else does it it’s an outrage, but if your driver does it and wins, ok.
Just before he reached the end zone, with 17 seconds remaining, Stokley cut right at 90 degrees and ran across the field. Six seconds drained off the clock before, at last, he meandered across the goal line to score the winning touchdown. For certain football fans, the excitement of a last-minute comeback now commingled with the shock of the familiar: It's hard to think of a better example of a professional athlete doing something so obviously inspired by the tactics of videogame football. When I caught up with Stokley by telephone a few weeks later, I asked him point-blank: "Is that something out of a videogame?" "It definitely is," Stokley said. "I think everybody who's played those games has done that" — run around the field for a while at the end of the game to shave a few precious seconds off the clock. Stokley said he had performed that maneuver in a videogame "probably hundreds of times" before doing it in a real NFL game.
https://www.wired.com/2010/01/ff-gamechanger/