Sports is another field (No Pun Intended) where changes happen quickly, as every week in every match the established models are put to test. Thus, what today is successful and provokes hundreds of copy-cats will be dethroned and forgotten tomorrow.
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General
- Almost every innovation in sports can soon become this. Be it Sabermetrics in Baseball (or indeed any form of statistical analysis), the offside trap in Soccer (to the point where you wonder why they even show a replay for such blatantly obvious offside as was common in the 1970s), jumpshots in Basketball, the "Kempa-Trick" in Handball (throwing the ball to a teammate who catches it mid jump and throws a goal before landing) or the forward pass in American Football. Sure those things "made" teams and coaching legends at the time they were first brought up, but now not having a smattering of those "tricks" would be patently ridiculous.
- Modern day nutrition, medicine, conditioning, and materials technology has radically changed the performance of athletes today in all professional sports. As a result, when one looks back at past greats, their achievements may not look as impressive in a modern context. Kurt Browning was the first figure skater to land a quad jump in official competition, in 1988. Nowadays, quad jumps are considered a standard part of any male figure skater's program. John Elway, hall of fame quarterback and back-to-back Super Bowl champion, is considered one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, yet his stats would appear quite pedestrian by today's standards (his career passer rating would have made him the 28th best quarterback in 2014, out of 33 qualifiersnote ). Anyone who watches a player from decades past and declares that he "wasn't even that good" needs to be reminded of this trope.
Sports events
- The opening ceremony of the 1998 Winter Olympics had five choirs, one in each continent, along with performers in the host city of Nagano, singing Beethoven's Ode to Joy, together, in unison, live. This astounding feat can now be replicated by any group of people using Skype or Zoom, if they can compensate for the lag.
- The lighting of the Olympic Cauldron has reached such a level of one-up-man-ship (firing an arrow in 1992, lighting a zip-line in 1996, lighting a ring of fire that rose up to meet the Cauldron in 2000, the Cauldron bowing down to meet the lighter in 2004, running through the air to the Cauldron in 2008...) that the spectacle of lighting a cauldron itself isn't enough anymore.
- Many mock the Early-Installment Weirdness of association football tournaments, pointing out the very low amount of teams in the Olympic Games and the early World Cups. Still, they were the first attempts to have a global tournament in the sport.
- The Copa América was the first official championship to pit the national teams of a whole continent (South America). Though the early editions were primitive and only included 4 teams, it was the start of the longest running multinational championship in football
- The Copa Aldao was a club championship that pitted the winners of the leagues of Argentina and Uruguay. Just 2 teams. It was, nevertheless, the first attempt to have a multinational championship in South America, something that would later be codified (and with the inclusion of teams from all South American countries, and not all of them being winners of their leagues for that matter) with the creation of the Copa Libertadores.
- The Copa Intercontinental was, similarly, pitting the South American and European winners. Decades before the now common Club World Cup includes winners from all continents (and some that definitely don't, like teams from the host country).
- The Copa Interamericana is an interesting case. It pitted the winners of the South American and Central American confederations. It is rare, even today, to hold a cup where the 2 winners of any confederation play against each other. In a world such as the football one, where things are discarded rapidly, the Interamericana proved to gain a foothold and establish itself: it was a Long Runner that lasted for 3 decades. Still, by the 90s it stopped being played.
- Similarly, there was also an Afro-Asiatic Cup that pitted the winners of the African and Asian federations.
- In Argentina, the tournaments from the '60s to the '80s (Nacional, Metropolitano and Campeonato de Primera División) were influential for the norms that would be used later. The Copa Argentina owes its format to the Nacional (also, true to its spirit, it is the most open scenario for the low-budget teams from the provinces, like the old Nacional tournament was meant to be), while posterior round-robin formats like Apertura, Clausura and Superliga also owe their spirit to those previous tournaments.
American Football
- In American sports many of those innovations were brought by rival leagues to the established major leagues. There is a reason one of the documentaries on the upstart American Football League (whose merger with the NFL gave us the Super Bowl) is called "full color Football" - before that, football was hardly ever on television and mostly black and white. The AFL also started the wide open offensive style football is now known and loved for. In 1967, Joe Namath became the first quarterback to ever pass for 4,000 yards in a season and it was considered a remarkable achievement. Nowadays, 4,000 yards is something every above-average QB does (2019 saw 11 accomplish the feat) and the passing yards leader often passes for 5,000 yards.
- Likewise, the USFL forced the NFL's hand in adopting the two-point conversion, which had long been used in college and was even used in the AFL before the merger.
- The forward pass was considered a desperation ploy in American football until the 1920s, when one college team made it the mainstay of its offense, a move that revolutionized the game so much that today every team attempts at least a couple of dozen per game.
- The game-winning drive that concluded Super Bowl XXXVI (New England def. St. Louis on a last second field goal) can be harder to appreciate nearly twenty years after the fact. Nowadays, most fans consider 90 seconds to be more than enough time to build one last scoring drive to break a tie and win the game in regulation, especially since a field goal can be attempted from as far back as midfield. The two-minute drill is an entire offensive strategy designed for these types of situations. Changes to the rules which protect quarterbacks in the years since make it even easier. For a coach to not make the attempt and simply play for overtime would be considered unacceptable. However, in 2001, playing for overtime was considered the rational thing to do. If the quarterback mishandles the snap, if the ball is intercepted or is fumbled, or if the field goal is blocked or even misses the goalposts with time on the clock, there's potential for a last-second reversal. As a result, it can be confusing to listen to John Madden saying that the Patriots should play for overtime while Tom Brady is marching downfield with machine-like precision.
Association Football
- In the mid 19th century, the rules of Association Football (commonly called soccer in the United States) were finally established: until then there were many variations from town to town about how the sport should be played. Though a no-brainer today, it was essential to codify the currently universally known rules of the sport.
- In the late 19th century, the Scotland national team established the 2-3-5 formation (2 defenders, 3 midfielders, 5 strikers). Nowadays, the idea of putting only 2 defenders seems insane, it is an invitation to being obliterated by your opponent. However, one has to put things into context. Until then, utterly insane formations like 1-2-7 were common. The 2-3-5 formation would be the most common for the whole first half of the 20th century.
- The Austrian national team of the '30s (also called the Wonderteam) made headlines with its defensive system, in a time when almost every team played offensively.
- The world was shaken in the '50s when the tried and true 2-3-5 formation was beginning to be put to test and started to crumble with the advance of two revolutionary formations: the 3-2-2-3 of Hungary (also called the Magic Magyars) and the 4-2-4 of Brazil.
- Yet again the '60s brought the Italian defensive style called catenaccio to the front: in an era where teams still were playing very offensively, it was revolutionary to have a 4-4-2 formation. Having only 2 strikers was seen as paltry at first, and 4 midfielders was also seen as awkward. But the biggest offender was the line of 4 defenders. Nevertheless, this would prove to be one of the defining changes in the history of football: until this day a formation with 4 defenders is the norm.
- In South American countries, around this time was when they started to develop the idea of a playmaker ("enganche" in Spanish): an offensive player that can move freely around the field, with its position set between the midfielders and strikers lines, and devise new attacks or just control the rhythm of the match.
- In European countries, they were in parallel developing the position of a sweeper ("líbero" in Italian): a defensive player between the goalkeeper and the defenders line, with free movement to stop opponent advances and, like the playmaker, devise and coordinate new moves for the team.
- The Netherlands national team of the '70s (called the Clockwork Orange) brought perhaps the most influential change to the game, as they invented a 4-3-3 formation where, paradoxically, no player was given a specific role and everyone covered everyone. This style would be remembered and copied for decades to come, and would be the soul in highly successful teams, like the Barcelona of the 2010s.
- In Argentina, the national coach Cesar Menotti was the first to establish professional schedules in a time where the national team was almost an amateur wreck. In the years after, Menotti's rivals mocked him for a supposed lack of defensive training (which, really, couldn't be far from truth, as he trained the team that would win the 1978 World Cup with serious and up-to-date routines).
- Similarly, his biggest rival, Carlos Bilardo, would also gain opponents because of his markedly defensive and tactical schemes, but he also included greatly offensive players in the team that would win the 1986 World Cup, like Maradona. At the time, he also made a fuzz due to his strange 3-5-2 formation with 3 central defenders and 5 midfielders: the 2 midfielders in either extreme also doubled as the wing backs!
- Mrcelo Bielsa also was revolutionary, both because he wasn't either a Menottist nor a Bilardist, and because he used his own formation: a 3-3-3-1. Bielsa would become a divisive and polemic figure, due to polemics, failures and his eccentric behavior, but still he would become an influential figure to many players and coaches.
- The Barcelona revolutionized the world of football when, in the late 2000s, it started to use a different playstyle that no team have ways to counter: for starters, it used a 4-2-3-1 formation. How to counter a formation that became a 4-5-1 in defense and, with total naturality, a 2-1-7 when attacking? How to counter the position of a false 9? (that is, a centerforward but instead of the tall, musclebound, immobile one that was commonplace, a medium-to-small, lightweight, freely-moving striker that brought defenders out of their position when they tried to mark him), and lastly: how to counter the immense genius of Messi?... the gigantic success of Barcelona provoked lots of copycats that tried to reach the same success, and what was once a revolutionary model that destroyed the status quo of football, soon became the new status quo.
Ice Hockey
- In a similar vein to the AFL, the upstart World Hockey Association gave a chance to a seventeen year old Canadian by the name of Wayne Gretzky and revolutionized the sport far beyond the few franchises that were merged into the NHL, but watching archive footage from them today seems... bland.
- Roger Neilson can be listed here twice.
- When he was an assistant and later head coach of the Vancouver Canucks in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Neilson was the first coach to use footage of his team and of their opponents for coaching segments. Nowadays, across all sports video sessions are standard practice for every team's preparation for their next game.
- Late in Game 2 of the Campbell Conference Final against the Chicago Blackhawks, Neilson took a small white towel from a trainer, put it atop of a hockey stick and waved the stick, looking like he was "waving the white flag". Neilson did this because he believed his team was being unfairly treated by the referees and used this gesture to drive his point home. A few other Canucks on the bench did the same thing as Neilson, causing the refs- who were not amused- to throw out Neilson and the rebel players from the game. For Game 3, in Vancouver, thousands of Canuck fans would bring their own white towels and waved them during the game as a show of solidarity with their coach. The practice would soon spread across not just the hockey world but the wider sports world as a result, with every team having their own version of the "rally towel".
- The "playoff beard" began in ice hockey. The 1984-85 Detroit Red Wings were the first team documented with wearing them, but the early 1980s New York Islanders- who won four straight Stanley Cups- are also cited with starting the practice. Since then, the playoff beard has become a standard practice across hockey, with almost every playoff competitor opting not to shave or cut their hair (usually if they can't grow a beard), with some players doing both. The practice has spread to other sports, with Ben Roethlisberger, LeBron James and the 2013 Boston Red Sox sporting playoff beards, among others.
- In the first round of the 1999 playoffs against the Philadelphia Flyers, Toronto Maple Leafs coach Pat Quinn was asked about a possible injury to defenceman Dimitri Yushkevich. Quinn responded by stating that Yushkevich simply had an "upper body injury" and didn't go into further detail. Quinn said he came up with the term "out of the blue" because he was tired of having to describe injuries to the press, plus he was worried about Yushkevich possibly becoming a target in what was a physical playoff series. Since then, coaches across the entire NHL have opted to consistently describe their players' injuries as either "upper body" or "lower body" injuries, continuing to do so as this does not violate NHL rules on the subject.
Skiing
- In international cross-country skiing, American Bill Koch's technique of skating rather than the traditional move of keeping skis parallel was almost scandalous in the late 1970s. Now it's so standard as to be unremarkable.
Baseball
- It can be faintly amusing to read stories of pitchers from the early days of baseball who boasted what was then seen as incredible velocity. There were no reliable ways to really measure velocity back then, so we're mostly left with overwrought descriptions from the grandiloquent sportswriters of the days. And when you do see hard numbers put to these pitches, they often register in the low-to-mid 90's — impressive by the standards of normal human beings, of course, but yawn-inducing in the context of modern baseball, when every team in the league has a cadre of relievers who can throw 98 MPH and thinks nothing of it. It's easy to forget that pitchers in these decades didn't have the advantages of modern nutrition regimens or biomechanical analysis, and it was totally normal to see star pitchers skate their way through games barely throwing harder than 80 MPH. A pitcher who could touch 95 was a legitimate athletic marvel in the 1920's through 1940's.
