What does Dan Gadzuric do on a Sunday afternoon during the NBA
All-Star break?
Averaging a whopping 4.4 points and 4.8 rebounds per game, you
knew he was nowhere near Atlanta.
Instead, he was at the UCLA gymnastics meet helping the Stat
Geek figure out how to break a tie.
On Friday, UCLA and Stanford finished deadlocked at 197.45.
While ties exist in some sports, only gymnastics has no obvious way
to break one.
Basketball has overtime. Baseball has extra innings. The NFL has
the coin flip.
But in gymnastics, nothing of the sort exists.
That’s where I come in.
My idea: Chicken, gymnastics style ““ the battle on the
beam. Instead of having just one gymnast perform on the balance
beam, have one gymnast from each team up there at the same time for
a rousing round of hand-to-hand combat. The one who falls first
loses. The one who remains leads her team to victory.
This could bring a whole new dimension to gymnastics. Would
coaches recruit “enforcers” specifically to win meets
in overtime? Imagine every gymnastics team with a Marty McSorley
sitting at the end of the bench.
Onnie Willis is halfway there, she’s pretty ripped.
You could even sell it on pay-per-view: The Battle on the Beam!
Only $19.95!
I went to Sunday’s meet against Washington to see if my
idea might catch on, but even a venerable wordsmith like Gadzureech
couldn’t provide me any feedback.
Seeing how he made time during his weekend off to go to a
gymnastics meet, I figured he’d have some ideas on a new
tie-breaking system.
Wrong.
“I don’t know much about that stuff,” the
former Bruin center said. “I was in the neighborhood, and
I’ve heard this team is No. 1.”
Sitting next to the Netherlands native was UCLA tennis player
and (ironically) Netherlands Antilles native Jean-Julien Rojer.
The Netherlands Antilles must be a gymnastics hotbed; Rojer
offered a surprisingly intelligent solution.
“Have the best player on each team do their
specialty,” he said. “The best player should finish
it.”
In a real sport, fans are disgusted by ties.
After MLB’s All-Star tie debacle, there was a national
outcry, forcing the rules to be changed to ensure that a tie could
never happen again.
The NHL incorporated the overtime loss = one point rule, so
teams would be more aggressive in overtime and fewer ties would
result.
In gymnastics, ties are accepted.
“Gymnastics isn’t like football,” UCLA student
and gymnastics fan Andy Strauser said. “I just don’t
see how they can do it.”
He’s right. Football is nothing like gymnastics.
In football, players don’t smile for the referees. You
don’t get extra points for an end zone celebration, and you
don’t have to wait 10 minutes after the game to officially
find out who won.
The meet had to have some kind of promotion where little girls
(8-year-olds, not the gymnasts) ran from one end to the other
filling up bags with foam before the scores could be announced.
For the record, UCLA won 198.575-194.8 and went 1-0-1 on the
weekend.
If I was in charge, UCLA could have gone 2-0.
Prior to attending the gymnastics meet, Gadzuric bought orange
chicken at Panda Express. E-mail the Stat Geek at
gquinonez@media.ucla.edu.