Im curious if someone could actually explain what goes on in the classic "Letdown Spot" in sporting events..

First of all, what actually IS a letdown game? Sure, I know its when a good team seems to be asleep at the wheel against a bad team, but why?

Is it because they've deduced they can take the night off because they're lazy?

Is it because they've deduced that they can try fancier and more fun plays on the field because they have an extremely large margin for error?


Opinions welcome..

Hudson: That's it man, game over man, game over! What the **** are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?

If PSU loses to Iowa, they'll also lose to MSU! That is all...

The idea of a letdown game is that a good team is either coming off a big win or has a big game next week, so they fall asleep at the wheel and lose to a bad team.

In my opinion, it's just a bunch of BS. The media pretty much refuses to accept that variance exists in sports, so they come up with stuff like this to explain things whenever there's any kind of upset.

Cant we prove its existence by reflecting on playing in a competitive league in our own lives at some point?

For example--Having played on a pickup basketball we tried hardest to win every game.. However, fifth game in, when a really awful team came up to play we definitely felt like we could mess around a bit more...The problem with professional sports is that any team has the talent to win on any night for the most part...

Basically there's a level of hunger, intensity, focus, whatever that is involved when chasing after a goal. When you suddenly feel like you've arrived at where you need to be, or there's a sudden transition in going from hunter to hunted, it can be very easy to lose that focus and difficult to turn right back on.

awesome, well said.

So your team has 3 games left and if they win them all, they get a shot to win a championship, but they must win them all.

Your team is super hungry and wins its first game handily, but loses the 2nd game in a long drawn out battle. Are you saying that this team plays its last game with the same intensity as if it had won the previous game?

Well, this is definitely another kind of letdown, but its more obvious then a midseason letdown game-- ie; the dominant 5-0 bears a couple years ago when Denny Green had his famous rant because the incompetent Cardinals nearly beat them on the road...an extremely improbable outcome.

Pickup bball games are taken too seriously for the most part. It blows my mind how pissed off some people get when they lose.

In a high school school playoff game, we were the 6 seed and beat the 3 seed on the road. A number of the teams were considered pretty evenly matched, and although we had to play the 1 seed the following week, most people considered the 2 and 3 seeds to be better than them. Anyway we thought we were tough **** and were gonna roll all the way to championshipness. We got destroyed 36-0, and although it could have been that they were just that much better than us, it's pretty unlikely as they got killed the following week (by the 2 seed, a team also in our division, the 2,3, and 6 seeds (us) were from our division and all had close games throughout the year.)

Fact: Variance exists in sports.
Fact: Emotion exists in sports.

What was so improbable about the outcome?

At the time, the fact that the cardinals were up 17 points late in the game, even though they miraculously still found a way to lose.

Meh, just don't think that's a very good example of the type of game you're talking about. It was a Monday Night game in which the Bears had a chance to show off their dominance to a national audience, plus the Cardinals were obviously treating it like their Super Bowl from the opening gun. I don't think motivation was a problem there.

The fact that their QB- who had clearly played WAY over his head over the first five games- turned the ball over SIX times....that was a problem.

assume all regular mid-season games:

Dallas vs NFC East team on the road
Dallas vs DET on the road

Duke vs UNC
Duke vs NC State

Yankees vs Red Sox
Yankees vs Orioles

i see it as similar to a rivalry game hype. obviously if we assume these games are all midseason games then they are relatively equal in value (yes i understand that the NFL one is kind of a bad example bc they are divisional vs non divisional matchups blah blah). It is pretty clear that the intensity and focus will be greater in the rivalry games (which are also "big games") than it will be in the other games.

thats just how i view it.

Variance definitly exists in sports...but I think there is more to it than just that.

I think it comes down to preparation and mental focus...and that overall thirst to win and just flat out perform at the highest level possible. With that said - I believe underdogs have more motivation when facing heavy favorites...and the favorites under estimate the intensity and motivation the underdogs will bring to the game...thus catching the favorites off balance and suprised.

The favorites have certain expectations of the underdogs gameplan and are preparing for it like any other game...whereas the dogs are preparing for this game like its their Superbowl. That mindset and preparation and gameplanning alone can lead to a LETDOWN game itself imo.

Agree...Hard to predict though..There are so many levels.

Basically, a let down game is any time an underdog wins after a team just won a big game right before. The polar opposite of the look ahead game.

The margin between the best team in the league and the worst team in the league is pretty minimal. It doesn't take much of a lapse for a pro team, no matter how bad, to beat a team that isn't playing 100%.

Also agree..This is why we arent really accustomed to seeing letdowns until we reach at least college ball...Because most of the time the talent margin is big enough to avoid losing regardless of emotional state in any sort of recreational league, and even in a lot of college matchups.

Of course, as the talent level evens out, you would expect to see more upsets regardless of whether the game was a letdown game or not, so once again you have the problem of whether letdown games are just humans being fooled yet again by randomness.

How can it be purely random if theres emotion involved?

Dont we only designate things "random" that have no bias or emotion involved?