Ratings don't matter!

I'm a huge sports fan. Football most of all, but really any kind of quality competition can draw my interest. Baseball, Basketball, Golf, occasionally Soccer, Hockey, Iron Chef, whatever. High school, college, pro, international, I'll probably find a reason to watch or at least check out the highlights. As a sports fan and consumer of sports culture, I'm exposed to a large number of viewpoints about athletes and teams. Opinions about their talent, place in the sport, their deviant sexuality, or whether or not an indictment on spousal battery charges should disqualify them from sainthood.

I accept all these opinions and viewpoints as part of being as sports fan. Its fun to discuss the game, the players, to trash talk a bit after your team came out on top. But there's part of this discourse I've grown to truly hate, the go-to insult from message boards to the corner bar: "he's overrated".

Calling an athlete or team "overrated" is boring and meaningless. It is the hollowest of critiques. "Ratings" don't really exist in sports, with a handful of exceptions. College football has its polls. But they only ever really matter for 1 game a year. Usually its pretty easy to figure out which two teams should be chosen for that game, and when its not easy then there is really no solution in which someone doesn't get shafted. Some tournaments have seedings which are subjective, though still based in the reality of past results. That is to say, a #1 and # 2 seed may be interchangeable, but there are no #13 seeds which, pre-tourney, can really gripe about not being a #1. Boxing has "rankings", but pro boxing has long been a corrupt circus. The point is, even in these areas in which rankings are important, the games still have to be played, so the rankings are eventually meaningless as the results sort things out.

Teams and athletes are what they are. Any "rating" they have are the result of media and fan perception. Change the "rating" all you want, it won't make them any better or worse. The true, underlying value of each player or team is unaffected. Furthermore, "overrated" doesn't necessarily mean they aren't still awesome. For example, recently a poll of MLB players asked them what players were the most overrated in their sport. # 1 was Derek Jeter. # 2 was A-Rod. That's right, two guys who are already practicing their speeches for Cooperstown are "overrated". I hate the Yankees, and even I'll concede that Jeter is a great SS and A-Rod is perhaps the best baseball player in the entire world.

So please, find a better criticism of those athletes you hate. Cite their spotty defense. The high strikeout rate. Or poor turnover/assist ratio. Or the fact that their rap sheet is longer than "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner". But let's can that over hyped, overexposed and overused cliche once and for all.