The Myth of Momentum

The Kicker and I are sitting around in my dingy college apartment today watching college basketball: Minnesota at Indiana. With about five seconds left until halftime, Indiana has the ball. The point guard dribbles out to half court and chucks up a prayer of a shot.

Shtoink. Nothin’ but net. The Indiana fans go crazy as the game heads into halftime. The Hoosiers are still down by one, but that shot has got to count for something right?

It is at this point that I turn to The Kicker and say "I guarantee at least one person in that stadium just made a comment about Indiana having the momentum going into halftime."

Sure enough, the announcer makes the requisite "listen to this crowd, Indiana now has some momentum for the second half" comment.

Ugh.

Was the shot impressive? Yes. Did it give them any momentum? No. Are they still losing? Yes. Do you want me to stop answering my own questions? Okay, sorry. Enough of that.

My point is, momentum is one of the most overrated sports clichés; in this instance especially. Granted teams do feed off the energy from their crowd, and the joint was undoubtedly bumpin, if you will, but I guarantee they didn't keep up that energy through halftime. Particularly when you consider their halftime show probably involved their sweater wearing cheerleaders. Really? Cheerleaders wearing sweaters? It's not 1958; I mean, come on people. That would suck the life out of everyone.

The lack of the so-called "momentum" was evident at the outset of the second half. The fans were sweatered (you'll notice I like to make up words) back down from their high, to the normal noise level, while the Indiana players were far from firing on all cylinders. They kept it close, but were unable to capitalize on some key Gopher mistakes.

If "momentum" truly existed, the Hosiers would have run up a huge lead at the outset of the second half, and gone on to complete the upset of #20 Minnesota. As it turned out, they were unable to do so, the half court shot proved moot, and they ended up losing the game.

Now pro-momentumists (I’m working on my own dictionary) will argue that there must have been some sort of "momentum shift" in favor of the Gophers. Some big play that cancelled out the half court prayer. Well, there wasn't; just a lot of sloppy basketball, in which the better team eked out a win. But, more importantly, how can you even claim momentum shifts exist? Isn’t this just the back-and-forth nature of sports? Isn’t that what makes them interesting?

Every big play doesn’t have to be a momentum creator or killer. People just like to make up terms for things because sports are dominated by clichés.

If you want to make the momentum argument, then every time some big play happens, like the half court shot, you might as well stop watching, because the game is over. If games were really only about momentum, one big play would end the game. One big win would decide the championship.

Well, one big play doesn't always follow another, and one big win doesn't guarantee ten more. Sports, are all about unpredictability. We should all just enjoy that fact, and realize result A doesn't always lead to result B.

So how bout, instead of creating terms for everything, we just watch the games and enjoy the highs and lows? There are wins and there are loses. There are highlights and there are lowlights. There are winning streaks and there are losing streaks.

There are ups and there are downs; and, usually, they are completely unrelated.

So let’s all just learn enjoy sports, without having to categorize everything.

But most importantly, let’s put an end to cheerleaders wearing sweaters. I mean, seriously…

-Juice