Ironman92 wrote:

I’m not a soccer guy but England vs Croatia 1st half was really good

Of what I've watched, that game probably ranks tops. The early second half, after England went up 3-2 and was being super-aggressive and the Croatia goalie was diving everywhere to make saves, was pretty electric in a "Huh, this shit is pretty fun when an offensive is actually being aggressive..." sort of way. Number #2 is probably yesterday's Canada-Qatar. Not because of the actual match, but because a dude on Qatar took out a Canadian and broke his leg, they seemed to be playing pretty dirty a good chunk of the game, the benches seemed close to a brawl and Canada just decided to run up the score because they were playing 11-on-9 due to two Qatars being red flagged. 

3 great halves for the us so far

Awesome win today to clinch moving on.

How far can USA go? Round of 16 a 50/50? Elite 8? Farther?

Awesome win by the US!!! 

Pet peeve:

I hate how our media refers to every team by the country’s name with the exception of the US which is the USMNT, 

Of fucking course it’s the “men’s national team”. It’s the men’s World Cup. Every fucking team there is tge “men’s national team” of its respective country. 

Our team is “the United States” or “the US”.

Trivial, but “USMNT” is exceedingly stupid.  

End rant. 

All I’m saying is get on that wagon.

This team can fucking play. 

Ironman92 wrote:

How far can USA go? Round of 16 a 50/50? Elite 8? Farther?

I think quarterfinals is expected anything past that is exceeding expectations. It will depend how the brackets play pht

With Paraguay beating Turkey, the US has now clinched the top spot in the group. Huge because now Pulisic can rest again and the players on yellows can sit and not risk missing the next game. 

Paraguay even played with 10 men for the entire 2nd half because of the stupid nee FIFA rule that you can get a red card if you talk to the other team with your hand over your mouth. 

I don’t hate that rule. The amount of racist shit being spewed was getting out of control. 

Lackluster 2nd half. Poch needed to sub way earlier. The guys were spent and Australia controlled the last 35 minutes of the game. Would’ve liked to see Weah come on and inject some pace for Pepi. 

Ironman92 wrote:

How far can USA go? Round of 16 a 50/50? Elite 8? Farther?

All depends. We now get a 3rd place finisher, so will be favored there in R32. Then we get winner of G 1st (Belgium, Iran, Egypt, or New Zealand) vs 3rd place team in R16. In quarters it would be between three 2nd place teams, or Winner of H (Spain is tops there, but tied the worst team, so need them to drop more points, though I feel unlikely).

Laley, you are our site’s Sports Oracle. 

Not meant to be an insult. I am amazed at your deep knowledge of all sports. 

Did a couple futures parlays

France to the semi finals and Germany to the rd of 16

Other one:

France to quarters

England, Germany, USA, Brazil round of 16

Dr Winston O'Boogie wrote:

Laley, you are our site’s Sports Oracle. 

Not meant to be an insult. I am amazed at your deep knowledge of all sports. 

Lol thanks! Working in it helps. Playing all of them thru high school and beyond also helps. 

Soccer, baseball, basketball, tennis, and golf are the ones I know best. I never played football, so all my knowledge on that is secondary and I admit I do not understand schemes or reading a defense. But I’ve talked to Collinsworth a good bit, and he can break down stuff very well and thus I feel confident in certain things haha.

I also worked years of Blackhawks games. Like, 50+ games a year for almost 5 years. The amount of hockey I learned just from listening to Eddie Olzcyk is crazy. He talks thru commercials and breaks down plays constantly because hockey is tough to get replays in on air.

What kind of work do you do?

Dr Winston O'Boogie wrote:

What kind of work do you do?

Data integration and virtual graphics for sporting networks (we have a product I think with every single national broadcaster. And I would venture we have a hand in 90% of national broadcasts in some capacity). I used to travel to all of the events I worked, for about 7 yrs. Been in client services now for about 7 years -- NBC Sports is my main client (thought not all the properties they have rights too -- that would be too much for just me). 

Messi is inevitable. 

Laley23 wrote:

Data integration and virtual graphics for sporting networks (we have a product I think with every single national broadcaster. And I would venture we have a hand in 90% of national broadcasts in some capacity). I used to travel to all of the events I worked, for about 7 yrs. Been in client services now for about 7 years -- NBC Sports is my main client (thought not all the properties they have rights too -- that would be too much for just me). 

What is data integration and virtual graphics?  Did you study this technology in college?

Dr Winston O'Boogie wrote:

What is data integration and virtual graphics?  Did you study this technology in college?

Data integration I would best describe as stats and scoring systems. But it has evolved into player tracking, etc. Like, we take the Indycar feed for example from the official provider, and parse that raw data and display it graphically on air (the crawl, tickers, etc). We have a central hub for NBC that takes in data from all games of all sports and distributes it to their tickers, touchscreens, etc. 

We also are the official scoring of tennis and golf. So we have the software that people enter the scores in (tennis, the umpire touchscreens -- golf, the volunteers have one with each group). In NHL, we have infrared cameras installed in each arena and provide the pucks that are used (with chips for tracking). Players also have those chips. That is where all that player tracking data in NHL comes from. NFL is similar, we we dont create the tracking data, just injest it. A German company (ZEBRA) does NFL -- but we put their data into graphics (watch the ALT Amazon TNF broadcast for a few plays and it is all my company -- SMT. 

For virtual graphics, famously, we created the yellow first down line. Morphed into telestrators, and other stuff. We provide the scorebug for SNF, NBC CFB, TNF, CBS (this year will be another company). Our telestrators can do a shit ton aside from drawing on. They have the headshots, tracking pointers (horse racing and nascar as well on that), etc. I can keep going, but most people just know the basics lol.