Sports and the Narrative Fallacy

On the evening of Sunday, July 14th, 2019, in London, two of the world’s highest-profile sporting events were simultaneously coming to a close: a nerve-shredding Wimbledon final, contested between all-time greats Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, and a scarcely believable finale of the Cricket World Cup between England and New Zealand. Both matches ended up being absolute thrillers that could have easily gone the other way. Federer was statistically better than Djokovic in their classic five-set encounter — which was eventually decided 13–12 in favor of the Serb following a fifth-set tiebreak — and even held two championship points at 8–7, 40–15 in the fifth which he couldn’t convert. Meanwhile, at Lord’s, England seemed to be facing long odds after Ben Stokes smacked a Trent Boult full toss to midwicket for two runs, only for the ball to miraculously go for four overthrows off Stokes’s bat inadvertently, leaving England needing 3 (as opposed to 7) off 2 balls. The Poms would go on to win the World Cup thanks to a tied Super Over (following a tied match), leaving New Zealand in complete and utter agony.

In the aftermath of the two matches, the news media will initially write stories that describe the great contest between the two players or teams, praising all parties for their hard work, competitiveness, fighting spirit, and outstanding standard of play. But slowly, yet unmistakably, something will happen to these stories over time. They will normalize the result of the match by repeating it, highlighting key moments and turning points again and again until one would almost believe the result was inevitable, destined to happen all along. Don’t get me wrong — there is no question that momentum and turning points are real and important aspects of sporting contests — the pressure shifts, one side grows in belief, and other psychological factors come into play. But the analysis of sports suffers from such an extreme narrative fallacy (that is, we are unable to reflect on the facts of a game without assigning a story or an explanation to it) that it blinds us to the reality of the ebbs and flows of a contest.

Let’s flashback to February 1st, 2015. It’s the Super Bowl, the most watched sporting event in America. The New England Patriots, a perennial powerhouse led by quarterback Tom Brady, are battling the defending champion Seattle Seahawks in an enthralling, back-and-forth encounter. The Seahawks tighten their grip on the game late in the third quarter, taking a 24–14 lead into the fourth. There are whispers that it’s just not meant to be for Brady; after winning three championships in his first four years, he hasn’t been able to win another one since and equal the record for most Super Bowl victories by a quarterback. The Seahawks fans are cautiously optimistic about back-to-back championships, when Brady rages against the dying of the light and engineers a sparkling comeback. He picks apart the vaunted Seattle defense with surgical precision and ice in his veins. Two touchdown drives in the fourth quarter make it 28–24 New England, but the Seahawks still fancy their chances after the moving the ball to the one-yard line with 26 seconds remaining. A touchdown would all but win the game for them, and Brady can only watch from the sidelines and hope for the best. Everyone expects a running play, but instead Russell Wilson takes the snap and fires a pass at Tyler Lockette, who runs a quick slant. One moment the ball is soaring into Lockette’s hands and the Seahawks have won, the next he is on the ground, in agony. Malcolm Butler has snatched it away from Seattle in the end zone, and the Patriots are the champions.

The postgame analysts discuss the thrilling nature of the contest, before delving into Brady’s legacy. Suddenly, it looks significantly better than it did just a quarter ago, heck, better than just minutes ago. Rather than being the superstar who could never replicate his early days, he is now the comeback kid, a legend, the ageless one, maybe even the GOAT. But is Brady really any better or worse of a quarterback because Malcolm Butler made a great play? And conversely, is the Seattle defense any worse because their offense threw an interception in the dying moments of the game, costing them a Super Bowl?

Of course not. The history of sports is littered with close plays and tense moments that could have gone either way, making chokers of heroes and vice versa. If the Red Sox hold on to their lead in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series, Bill Buckner’s gaffe is forgotten, and he is remembered as the solid first basemen who helped them to the title. If South Africans Lance Klusener and Allan Donald run the single in the 1999 World Cup semi-final, Steve Waugh is remembered as a great Australian captain, though perhaps not a legend. If a gust of wind pushes Djokovic’s passing shot wide in the Wimbledon final, Federer wins his 21st major title and cements his legacy as the GOAT. We tend to greatly underestimate the situational factors that influence the outcome of a game, and overestimate the intrinsic ones. To put it in simpler terms: in sports, the best team doesn’t always win, because of important factors like randomness and luck (even in tennis, which is not a team sport, this is applicable, albeit to a lesser degree). This leads the media to often draw stronger conclusions than are warranted about players and teams, based on the result of a game.

But what’s wrong with creating a narrative, you might ask? Doesn’t it make the events unfolding before our eyes more compelling, amplifying the human drama of sports?

Well, one problem with thinking this way is that it emphasizes the outcome of a game as opposed to the process, which is unduly harsh on the loser. By creating a story complete with a fated resolution (the victory of one side), we don’t really do the losing side justice for their fight and effort. We dismiss the sheer suspense that they helped to create during the match, that feeling of nervous energy when we truly have no idea what will happen next. It is foolish to try to fit that feeling into a story, or explain it away by saying that one side had it in the bag all along. And it corrupts the ideal of healthy competition that we ought to strive for as a culture when we talk about sports. Unhealthy competition comes about when people focus on the outcome to such a degree that winning becomes more important than playing well, playing fairly, and honoring mutually held values (such as perseverance and grit). Unfortunately, the media feeds into this negative culture surrounding sports by repeatedly, persistently emphasizing the result of a game rather than the process. For the ancient Greek Olympians who represented their city-states at the Olympic Games, doing their best was more important than coming away with a medal. Both athletes and spectators alike realized that the games were taking place in service of a higher ideal, which allowed the athletes to compete with more freedom, and ensuring that spectators were more appreciative of all participants, regardless of the result.

Of course, one of the goals in sports is to win, there’s no question about that. But it’s simply dishonest to write stories that start from the result of a match and work backwards, rather than the other way around. Because here’s the truth about athletic competition, especially at the highest levels of any sport: two sides that have trained hard, worked hard, and played well up to a certain point go against each other, leaving it all on the line. They each try to dominate and impose their will on the opposition, winning some battles and losing others. Each has their own game plans, but generally, the one who executes better on the day of the encounter wins. Occasionally, however, we are treated to a contest where both sides are firing on all cylinders, and it simply feels unfair to say that one side deserved it more than the other in the aftermath. More often than we might suspect, it comes down to the rub of the green.

The great NFL head coach Vince Lombardi is oft-quoted, but perhaps none of his quotes are so misinterpreted as this one: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” Later in his life, Lombardi would clarify what he meant by the statement: “If you go out on a football field… and leave every fiber of what you have on that field when the game finally ends, then you’ve won. And to me that means a lot more than the final score.”