Thoughts on new rules?

[MAGfan]

I was watching figure skating, which I love but do not understand the scoring at all. They have a cool way of showing scores, and if you watched you have seen it. They list the skills and the value of the skill as the routine is going on. So you know what the difficulty score is as it is going. I have found that super helpful.

I disagree with “scoring is too hard” argument. I think that is an excuse MAG is using. Really, I think they need to do more marketing. First we have to get people to come to the meets. TV will follow that. So…Theme nights, giveaways, make the meets FUN. TV is not going to show the meets until there are crowds at the meets. JMO.

 

[MensGym]

I’m so tired of this subject of the 10. They haven’t tried marketing, but they keep trying to make men’s gym something it isn’t.

 

[MAGfan]

EXACTLY!!!

 

[OnoNoKomachi]

Men’s college gymnastics should strive to be the best version of itself it can be, but accept that men’s gymnastics will be a niche sport in the foreseeable future.

With the steadily increasing visibility of women’s NCAA gymnastics, expect to see many push even harder for the 10.0 to come back to men’s NCAA gymnastics. Never mind that even at the elite level when both use open ended scoring, in the USA women’s gymnastics is far more popular than men’s.

Some of the movement is being driven by people who spent 30 years watching under the 10 and got disoriented by the change. They conflate this with the scoring itself being “too confusing”.

There is this fixation on the numbers in the scoring being “too confusing” for people to understand.
What is hard to understand (at least for beginners) is the code of points. Even if someone scored a 1 for their team, casual fans wouldn’t understand how the athlete got it.

For example, if Blake Sun went up against a Cal guy in head to head, and Blake got 15.7 and the Cal guy got 13.5 - which set of numbers gives more information?

1 and 0 or 15.7 and 13.5 (with D and E scores displayed)?

I’m not great with the code but when Sun got 15.7 with a 6.5 D score I know it’s Worlds/Olympics level.

I’ve watched enough gymnastics to probably figure out what he did was pretty good, but the numbers tell the story.

 

[MAGfan]

SO, if men are goign to remain a niche sport regardless, and as long as we can keep them in NCAA, why change?

I agree with you that the numbers tell the story most of the time. That is important.

But with all the discussion this year of overscoring in women’s and how the “perfect 10” is not perfect anymore, I would hate to water down the scoring to the point that it does not really mean that much anymore (as I perceive it in women’s. It seems like scores are usually between 9.9 and 10, and really, that tells you very little!)

But back to the new rules…Still HATE the no one-touch. That is the main thing that I think needs to go. The level of competition would improve with that simple change. And, 2nd, I would love to go back to 6 up 5 count at the beginning of the season for the same reason.

 

[MAGfan]

The duals were fun today! I still do like the head to head format.

 

[MensGym]

Today was fun! It was a lot closer today than it has been, which makes it more exciting. But isn’t it interesting that really none have come down to the last 2 routines as it has in the previous years with the old format?

 

[MensGym]

All of this.

 

[OnoNoKomachi]

There should still be meets that come down to the last 2 routines with head to head.

 

[MensGym]

Honestly, the Penn State/ Illinois meet was the only dual meet that went to the last routines. And then, that meet had a scoring error from the 1st event, which altered the win. All the other meets were pretty much decided by the time HB came around. When you are 5-7 points back, unless there are a lot of falls, the behind team can never catch up.
Watching the Michigan/ Ohio State meet, the Michigan team was 7.7 points behind Ohio State. A few Michigan gymnasts did their routine but an easy dismount because there was no way they would have won.

 

[OnoNoKomachi]

I’m not sure why it would make a difference. It’s just rearranging the apparatus.

Teams can be so far behind the could never catch up in the side by side format.

It might though from a psychological standpoint. I’ve never seen gymnasts water down no matter how far behind the team was if their team was competing on a different event.

 

[MensGym]

Because when it was PB/HB, it was more exciting with the scores and the volley with mismatched events. They went for their routines to the end… in head to head, it’s a totally different strategy.
Once you are going into HB and one team is so far behind, the behind teams have said they’ve watered down routines, changed routines, subbed other gymnasts, and so on. The gymnasts have even commented on this, so I know it’s true. This is one of the 2 things they do not like about head to head. No one touch and the lack of energy going into HB.

 

[MAGfan]

Watching the Ill/Penn state meet seemed exciting go into HB. It was close, and each routine counted. Even the announcers were getting into it.