Choke (sports)

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In sports, an individual athlete, or, more commonly, an athletic team collectively, is often said to have choked when failing to win a tournament or league championship and if certain other criteria are also met, especially if the player or team had been favored to win, or had squandered a large lead in the late stages of an event. The usage of the word "choke" in this sense is generally treated as slang.

Generally, if postseason play is involved, the further a team progresses without actually winning the championship, the more likely that the team will be accused of choking (a team that gets eliminated in the early rounds will usually escape the stigma). Also, whether or not the team was favored by the oddsmakers and/or had home-field advantage can be a key issue, and if a team fades in the late stages of a postseason contest or playoff series, that fact is quite often treated as evidence that the club choked.

The term may originate from the Salem witch trials. One test used to expose a witch required the woman in question to simply swallow one communion wafer. It was thought that if she were in fact a witch this task would be impossible. Countless women choked under the pressure.[citation needed]

The opposite of choking is being "Clutch," or rising to the occasion under pressure rather than collapsing under it.

Contents

[edit] Use in the USA

[edit] National Football League

Use of the term "choke" in this context is most frequently encountered in the United States, and appears to be of relatively recent origin, not becoming reasonably widespread until well into the 1960s. Since then, NFL teams popularly labeled chokers (or often, "choke artists") have included the Minnesota Vikings more or less throughout the 1970s, the San Diego Chargers in the late 1970s and early 1980s,the Pittsburgh Steelers of the mid-late 1990's and early 2000's, the Buffalo Bills in the 1990s for their 4 straight Super Bowl losses and, most recently, the Philadelphia Eagles in the early 2000s, the Green Bay Packers in the 2008 NFC title game, and the San Diego Chargers in the mid 2000s [1]. In all instances the respective quarterbacks for these teams — Fran Tarkenton, Dan Fouts, Jim Kelly, Donovan McNabb and Tony Romo[citation needed]; have also been stereotyped personally along with the entire teams themselves,[citation needed] McNabb adding to his reputation for choking with three interceptions in the Eagles' 24-21 loss to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX after having been intercepted only eight times during the entire 2004 regular season.

Marty Schottenheimer has also been seen as a choker (as well as cursed) due to his 5-13 playoff record, which include losses to the Denver Broncos in the 1986 and 1987 AFC Championship Games as head coach of the Cleveland Browns, thanks to The Drive and The Fumble respectively, losing in 1995 as the top seed in the AFC to the Colts when he coached the Kansas City Chiefs, and as head coach of the Chargers, his loss as top seed again in the AFC to the Patriots in 2006, leading to loss of assistants, and ultimately, his firing less than 45 days after the game.

The modern epitomy of clutch performance, the New England Patriots had dubbed a dynasty after winning three Super Bowls in four seasons (XXXVI, XXXVIII and XXXIX) {see also - Spygate}. However, two high-profile losses have brought them into debates about the team choking. In the 2006 AFC Championship Game, the Patriots led their bitter rivals, the Indianapolis Colts (who in recent years considered chokers as contrasted to the clutch Patriots), 21-6 after halftime. They would end up losing the game 38-34, in the largest collapse by a team in an AFC Championship. The following 2007 season, the Patriots had a perfect 16-0 regular season, and had set many individual and team records. Then in Super Bowl XLII, as the favored team to beat the NFC Champion New York Giants, the Patriots scored only 14 points, their lowest total of the season, and their defense allowed Giants quarterback Eli Manning to lead his team to victory with a game-winning touchdown drive in the final minutes of the 4th quarter.

[edit] Major League Baseball

Fewer teams qualify for postseason play in Major League Baseball than in the NFL, so the "choke" label in baseball is more frequently appended to a team that blows a substantial lead late in a pennant race. Probably the two most prominent examples of this have been the Chicago Cubs (most notably in 1969, 1973, 1984 and 2003) and the Boston Red Sox (most notably in 1978, when they relinquished a 14-game lead in their division, ultimately losing a one-game playoff for the division title to the New York Yankees after they and the Yankees had ended the regular season tied for first place). The plight of both the Cubs and Red Sox has often been attributed to a "curse" — the Curse of the Billy Goat in the former team's case and the Curse of the Bambino in the latter, although the Curse of the Bambino is widely regarded as having been broken in 2004, when the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 1918; The Boston Red Sox were also involved in another heartbreaking choke in 1986, when they lost a 2 run lead in the 10th inning of Game 6 (with the Sox leading 3 games to 2) when there were 2 men out and no one on base. The New York Mets rallied to win Game 6 (with help from Bill Buckner) and then went on to win Game 7 and take their first World Series title since 1969. Conversely, the Boston Red Sox benefitted greatly in 2004, when their archrival the New York Yankees blew a 3-0 series lead in the 2004 American League Championship Series, which the Red Sox came back to win with four straight victories, the first time in Major League Baseball history that has happened. It was a major choke for the Yankees and the Red Sox finally won the long-awaited World Series title. The New York Mets completed a historic choke during the 2007 season, as they blew a 7 game lead in the NL East on September 12th and lost the division to the Philadelphia Phillies. Also the Cleveland Indians blew a 3-1 series lead on the Boston Red Sox in the 2007 American League Championship Series and the Red Sox went on to win the 2007 World Series. Also in baseball, notably, Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees is generally called a choker because, despite being one of the top players in the game, he is perceived as underperforming in close or late game situations, although his actual statistics do not bear this theory out.

[edit] Individual sports

Athletes in individual sports have not been immune either, particularly in tennis (Virginia Wade, dubbed "The Queen of the Centre Court Choke" by the British tabloid press[citation needed] due to her long string of late-round defeats at Wimbledon — a tournament she did eventually win) and golf (Phil Mickelson until he finally won a "major" golf tournament in 2004 — specifically, The Masters — after a host of second- and third-place finishes in such events). Greg Norman and Jean van de Velde also have been labeled "choke artists."[citation needed] In 1996, Norman took a six-shot lead into the final round of The Masters, but ballooned to a 78, losing to Nick Faldo by five. Three years later, van de Velde had a three-shot lead going into the final hole of The Open Championship, needing only a double-bogey 6 to win. He proceeded to shoot a 7 and eventually lost in a playoff. In bowling, the Area 4 3rd Watch RBT was set to win another trophy in 2008 but lost 3 straight games, one in which they were crushed by the 2nd watch team.

[edit] Recidivism

Recidivism — that is to say, the same player or team coming close to winning the championship repeatedly without ever actually succeeding in doing so — is another aggravating factor, and indeed this condition is present in virtually all of the most proverbial examples of those castigated as chokers, notably British tennis player Tim Henman, a perennial semi-finalist at Wimbledon. However, once the competitor does win a title, the "choke" tag is typically not reapplied even if the prior pattern of falling short resurfaces: For example, baseball's Atlanta Braves are rarely characterized as chokers despite a lengthy overall record of futility in the postseason during the 1990s and early 2000s, because of one World Series championship in 1995 unlike the Buffalo Bills in football who went to four straight Super Bowls without being able to win one. Golfer Phil Mickelson regularly choked away Major Championships before his victories at the 2004 Masters, 2005 PGA Championship, and 2006 Masters, but when he blew the 2006 U.S. Open, the "choker" label was not applied nearly as liberally as it had been before he won his first Major.

The Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA were also regularly accused of choking, reaching the playoffs every year from 1981 to 2003 without winning a championship. This included losses in the 1990 and 1992 NBA Finals, as well as a collapse in the 4th quarter of the deciding 7th game of the 2000 Western Conference finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, in which they squandered a 15 point lead and lost the game by 5. [2]

On a more recent basketball example, the University of California, Los Angeles' basketball team failed to win a national title after reaching the NCAA Tournament's Final Four teams for the third consecutive year on April 5th, 2008. The choking label can be attached to the individual players on the team, many of whom have been varsity starters for three consecutive years.

Another recent example could be seen in the West Virginia Mountaineers losing to the struggling Pittsburgh Panthers on December 1, 2007, on their home field, with a birth to the BCS National Championship on the line. West Virginia remains the most winning team in NCAA history without a National Championship. West Virginia still, however, finished the season as co-champions with Connecticut in the Big East Conference and, because of West Virginia's 66-21 victory over Connecticut on November 24, 2007, has played in a BCS Bowl in January 2008, defeating the Oklahoma Sooners 48-28 in the Fiesta Bowl at Glendale, Arizona.

[edit] International use

  • The Spanish national football team has a long history of early World Cup or European Championships eliminations despite regularly featuring superstars. Since 1964 in both events, they only reached a semi final once, in 1984, beating Denmark in penalties and later losing the final against France.
  • The English national football team has lost almost every penalty kick series in its history, crashing out like this in the 1990, 1998 and 2006 World Cups and in the 1996 and 2004 European Championships. The only penalty series won was in the 1996 EC quarter finals against Spain, but England lost to Germany in the following semi final - after penalty kicks.
  • Male tennis player Guillermo Coria lost the 2004 French Open final, having been a huge favourite and having a 6-0 6-3 4-4 lead against unseeded Gaston Gaudio. Even when Coria managed to earn the lead several times in the fifth set, and had two match points in the twelfth game, he couldn't close it out and Gaudio prevailed (though it is worth noting that Coria injured his ankle during the third set, and in all likelihood would have closed out the match had he been healthy). Coria has never regained his form.
  • The New Zealand All Blacks have a fine reputation for losing World Cups when entering the tournament as favourites having choked at every event since 1991. In 2007, they entered the tournament as red hot favourites having dominanted world rugby for the preceding four years only to play an astonishingly bad game in the quarter final in losing to the plucky, but limited, French side. When the pressure was on, the All Blacks were simply unable to reproduce their efficient, flair and at times beautiful rugby that had so captivated the rugby world previously.
  • Used in Ice-Hockey when a team with a large lead or who are highly favored in a game or playoff series are unable to win. Typically such losses happen in dramatic fashion. For example in the 2001-2002 Stanley Cup playoffs the Vancouver Canucks held a 2-0 game advantage before losing the next four games and the series to Detroit. The series is memorable because momentum was turned in Detroit's favour by a goal which was scored from the red line by Nicklas Lidstrom of Detroit on Vancouver's goaltender Dan Cloutier. Detroit went on to win the Stanly Cup that year. Despite Stanley Cup finals appearances in 1982 and 1994 Vancouver has never won the Stanley Cup since they were founded in 1945 one of only 6 current teams formed before 1991 to have never won the Stanley Cup.
  • The Italian football team Inter has a long history (overall in the 90s) of failures in the national league and in the European Champions League despite every year is potentially one of the best team in the world.
  • Used in football (soccer), when a team loses its cool at the crucial time of the season, and falls away in spite of huge expectations. An example of this is Arsenal Football Club [1]. Despite being 6 points clear at the top of the table in February 2008, they fell away when everyone expected them to go on and win the league, and their title challenge was over after losing to Manchester United[3]. They did the same in the Champions League, the FA Cup, and the Carling Cup, each time conceding 4 goals in the games that counted.

[edit] Other uses

  • Hillary Clinton can be argued to be seen as choking in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, blowing a huge lead in national polls over Barack Obama in 2007 for the nomination, only to lose to Obama.

[edit] References

  1. ^ ESPN Page 2 - The Sports Guy: We hate everything
  2. ^ CNNSI.com - 2000 NBA Playoffs - Lakers' late rally stuns Blazers in Game 7 - Monday June 05, 2000 09:32 PM
  3. ^ http://www.sportingo.com/football/a7253_arsenal-beginning-manchester-united-choke-manchester

[edit] External links