I think it’s a little short on legislative policy. You have the ACA, Bush tax cuts, Inflation Reduction Act, ACA repeal fail, TARP, and the Patriot Act. I think the CARES Act (March 2020) is an obvious oversight, but maybe that just falls into COVID. But Medicare Part D (2003), CHIPS (2022), No Child Left Behind (2002), the bipartisan infrastructure law (2021), Dodd-Frank (2010), and ARPA (2021) seem like plausible candidates for policy/political impact.
You might also be a little short on court decisions. You have Obergefell, Bush v. Gore, and Dobbs, but boy, Shelby County, Citizens United, and especially Heller all seem pretty darn big.
I think at least one congressional procedure change deserves to be on the list—the nuking of the filibuster on nominations (2013 by Dems for lower courts and executive nominees; 2017 by GOP for SCOTUS nominees). This paved the way for much more partisan nominations, and forever changed how nominees interact with the Senate. Maybe this could be rolled into the Kavanaugh nomination on the list.
So what gets chucked if you add 2-4 things from my suggestions? I’d get rid of at least one of the Obama moments. Winning Iowa seems very time-period local. Will anyone care about that 50 years from now? And I get the point that every midterm is important, but I still think you have to chuck one or tow of them—you don’t have every SCOTUS nom on here, and that’s arguably always bigger than a midterm. I’d chuck 2022 “Dems limit damage” and 2002 “GOP adds to majorities.”
Greg Abbott deserves credit for pulling off the biggest political stunt of the decade (and, perhaps, the century to date). Other Republican governors followed suit. Immigration suddenly became a hot topic in blue states far from the southern border and a leading electoral issue nationwide.
The effects of Abbott's stunt shaped the 2022 and 2024 elections and are still being felt today.
Good point about the migrant bused to NYC, but I'd say if illegals were going to be on the list, it would be Trump's program of deporting them that is truly interesting.
Great list, but I really think the defeat of McCain-Kennedy in 2007 belongs on a top-50. To refresh: an immigration "compromise" was supported by the leading Congressional Dems and the Dem establishment including the newly enshrined Dem majority. The Republican sponsor was their nominee-in-waiting. And it was supported by the sitting Republican president. It failed because of the howls of the populace hitting the house reps who were all facing their two-year re-election cycle.
I always point to this for people who don't realize how truly deeply felt the immigration issue is, and how the "elite" consensus was pitted against the populace, which was always roughly 60-40 against anything smacking of amnesty etc.
The failure to understand the lessons of McCain-Kennedy 2007 left immigration as a "free lunch" issue for Trump to pick up off the floor in 2015.
I would also add the list as presented fails the "ctr-f immigration" test... immigration and terrorism are the two biggest political issues of the 21st century. Need to address is somehow. Brat/Cantor was an immigration referendum as I remember it, not purely a "tea party" tax thing.
It's quite a feat of partisan brain to think McConnell stole BOTH — that he clearly (clearly enough to use the word "stole") should have let Garland get confirmed but clearly should not have allowed Barrett to be.
Merrick Garland was nominated on March 16, 2016; *well* before the election and within historical timeframe.
Barrett was nominated on September 26, 2020 and confirmed on October 26, 2020; just 8 days before the election. The shortest length of time *ever* before a presidential election.
The problem with the Garland theory is that he was never getting on the Court in 2016. The whole issue was whether he was going to get buried in committee, or he was going to lose a vote on the floor. McConnell chose to bury in committee (in order to save a tough vote for his swing-state Senators like Gardner) and that can be rightly criticized, but the alternative timeline is not Garland on the Court, it’s Garland’s nomination going down to defeat on the Senate floor.
Joe Biden as chair of Senate Judiciary refused (for unapologetically partisan reasons) to hold a vote on John Roberts to the D.C. Circuit when Bush Sr. nominated him the January before the 1992 election. Was that outrageous on the same grounds as the lack of a vote on Garland was, or is the high principle also finely tailored so it only apply to SCOTUS nominees?
The September 11th attack is the seminal event of the 21st century from my perspective, which is that of a “late” boomer. Everything else pales in comparison for me.
I’d also rate the 2006 midterms more highly as I see that as a watershed marking the end of the neocon era dating to the Reagan victory twenty-six years earlier. It also resulted in the cashiering of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and his strand of geopolitical ideology.
That said, the listicle was a great listen. Thanks.
I agree completely. I think the consequences of 9/11 have become so ingrained in society that it's difficult for us to appreciate how impactful it is.
The obvious political impacts were Bush's strong midterm and re-election, TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the PATRIOT Act. But that's only scratching the surface.
In the most important feature, 9/11 birthed the "War on Terror", which changed the way Western nations thought of threats. Instead of warring against foreign powers, our enemy is individual terrorist actors. This meant expanding surveillance and executive powers to target anyone designated as a threat, including citizens stripped of due process protections that would have been considered inviolable before. We passed laws, throughout the western world, that enabled extra-judicial action to apprehend and interrogate suspected individuals in ways that would never have been politically acceptable in a pre-9/11 world.
We've militarized our police forces (NYPD maintains international offices for counter-terrorism!), expanded our intelligence networks, and lean on a larger security and defense bureaucracy than ever before, all to combat a loose network of potentially very dangerous actors.
On the surveillance side, we're still dealing with a post-9/11 mentality when it comes to backdoors in software, and entire industries have sprung up attempting to provide privacy against state-level actors. Even after the Snowden revelations exposed the scope of mass surveillance, the response was outrage but not rollback: the fundamental authorities and collection practices remained intact, demonstrating how thoroughly these powers have been entrenched.
We also should recognize that 9/11 helped create the political culture that led to the COVID response. After 9/11, we accepted that extraordinary events required extraordinary measures. That same mentality led to emergency lockdown measures that would have been unthinkable before we accepted the 9/11 precedent that extraordinary threats justify suspending normal rules.
To me, the great event of the 21st century is Covid. It has had a huge impact, too, what with the reform now going on of the horrible, dominating medical industry, and high time, too.
Isn't Trump's 2024 victory a much more historically transformational event then his 2016 victory? 2016 showed a growing anti-establishment sentiment putting in a power a leader with little clue how government worked. It was a warning to the status quo. As President Obama at the time commented: America could survive one Trump term, but he didn't think it could survive two Trump terms.
2024 showed that 2016 wasn't a fluke and put in power a leader and team determined to overhaul our democratic system as we've known it. This time the electorate knew, or absolutely should have known, what it was getting and choose Trump anyways.
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC and Russian invasion of Ukraine definitely need to be in the top 50.
I would also say 15th November 2012, the election of Xi Jinping as General Secretary, if Bo Xiali or someone in the mould of Hu Jianto had become General Secretary and pursued a less aggressive and less nationalistic approach then American politics would be very different, people would be far more relaxed about Chines EVs, tariffs would be less popular amongst hawks and the general shift against China that defined Trump and Biden would not have happened. It isn't American but it is an event that impacted American politics.
A great list. However I think the the Trump elections should be reversed in importance. The first Trump election certainly had a significant impact on America but the second Trump term has had a national and world wide impact second only in modern history only to the World Wars.
Appreciate #47 Scott Brown win being included because while the headline is that it prevented the Dems' last shot at a filibuster proof majority there were two lesser stories - (1) Ted Kennedy selfishly choosing to die in office rather than to retire and campaign for his successor; and (2) the MA Dem Party had manipulated a change in Senator replacement process when Kerry was running for President and Romney was in the Governor's chair. Dems' flipped the replacement to special election to take control from Romney and it ended up costing them (Dem Deval Patrick was Governor when Kennedy died).
we can pretty much agree Trump doesn't do much by now. He offends a bunch of liberals then you just sit back and watch him not getting anything done for 3.5 years until he's voted out over the economy. granted he IS dangerous, using the actual marines to offend liberals, but people obviously didn't take the bait so that's going to be a non-issue soon.
This list shares a similarity to The Ringer’s countdown of the top 100 sports moments of the past quarter-century that inspired it. The Ringer's number one was the helmet catch in the 2008 Super Bowl. The play was memorable for its almost slapstick character, but a 32-yard pass completion is only a mildly unusual NFL play. It raised the Giants' chance of winning the game from 27% to 48%, a big influence, but there are plenty of plays with 100% changes--like a last-play field goal by a team down by 1 or 2.
What I remember about that Super Bowl was one of the most egregiously biased lines--I had a lot of money on the Giants plus 13.5. For me and other bettors, the game had been long-since over. With the Patriots up 4 with 1:15 to go and the Giants in possession, there was basically zero chance for the Patriots to cover. That would have taken a touchdown and a field goal by a team looking only to run out the clock.
So the helmet catch changed nothing relative to expectation. It was exciting if you cared who won the game, and fun if you like wacky plays, but of scant interest to bettors.
My impression of most of the 51 selections here is similar. The events themselves were symbolic endpoints to much earlier surprises. The number one event, Trump winning in 2016 was a high (or low) point of the global populist surge on both left and right incited by the 2008 financial crisis with its Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Brexit and many other manifestations. The probability of Trump winning had gone from near zero a year earlier to around 50% on Election Day, and jumped to 100% with the vote. But the global cultural change that made Trump's election possible had occurred almost a decade earlier, and it continued to evolve afterwards.
I get that Silver Bulletin attracts a disproportionate amount of sports bettors but man this is a bad take. If you're rating great sports moments at all based on how they affect point spreads, it means you are doing sports wrong.
What makes the helmet catch so significant is that it was simultaneously an incredible play, the key play in a Super Bowl, and not just any Super Bowl but one that could have crowned that Patriots team as the greatest ever. It's the same reason that LeBron's chase down block in Game 7 rates so highly as well (says this Warriors fan ruefully).
In fact, Nate should probably take a swing at the Ringer's list using this formula:
MOMENT RATING= "Play Greatness" X "Play Importance" X "Game Importance". The Helmet Catch was super high on all three categories, which is why it deserves its place.
Also, unless a field goal is from 75+ yards, it doesn't change the likelihood to win by 100%. Teams lining up for game winning field goals generally are already expected to win the game.
I meant something slightly different. I didn't mean a criticism, just the point that both the sports and political lists did not measure events relative to expectation.
Yes, the helmet catch changed the probability of the Giants winning the Super Bowl by 21%, but the big surprise had already happened, that the Giants were even in the game with under two minutes in the fourth quarter.
Donald Trump's election in 2016 was roughly a 50/50 shot, meaning small surprise either way. The big surprise was that he had been nominated and had made a close race of it.
It wasn't just those two examples, the #1 choices on both lists. Most of the events were things that were not surprising--that is, events that did not convey a lot of information. Rather they were culminations of information-laded past events.
It's not just sports bettors who think this way. The economic effect of inflation, for example, has less to do with the rate than with how surprising the rate is. Anticipated inflation can be adjusted out of most transactions, but inflation surprises cause economic damage. Big news stories don't affect financial markets except to the extent they are surprising. It's not the billion common collisions in a supercollider that underlie scientific breakthroughs, but the handful of surprising ones.
A list of the 51 most information-heavy political events since 2000 would be different. Not better or worse, just different. They would be things recorded in the back pages of newspapers that carry lots of numbers--box scores, farm prices, stock market data--not the things recorded in headlines. They would be the things quants and nerds obsess over, not the things that excite most people. In Isaac Asimov's words they would be the "that's funny"s, not the "Eureka"s.
On last-second field goals, I mean the outcome gives either a 0% or 100% probability of the kicking team winning the game with no intermediate outcomes, the greatest difference possible. However, in a sense neither outcome is much of a surprise, unless as you suggest, it's from an extremely long distance. Even an extra-point distance miss is only a moderate surprise. Events need very low or very high prior probabilities for their outcome to carry great information.
I think the point about information heavy political events is a fair one Aaron. And it might be interesting to try to come up with a list of "surprising" numbers in this way (perhaps like the Big Short folks noticing the subprime housing market issues or the creation of Bitcoin). But would still argue that it's the wrong lens to use for sports. While I'm happy for you that you won your wager, there is no sense in which the most important or surprising part of that Super Bowl was the Giants within a score with a few minutes left.
And I would say it's a different lens, not the wrong lens.
I would start by asking what aspects of sports in 2025 would be most surprising to a fan from 1999. I'd think of things like the college football transfer portal, the soccer match-fixing scandal, widespread legalized on-line sports betting, MMA displacing boxing and so on. Who won the 2008 Super Bowl would not be on the radar screen.
Then I'd look at the paths that each of those things took the event from near-zero to 100% probability, and ask what were the biggest jumps. In most cases, these would be obscure-at-the-time events that few people were paying attention to, not headline stories.
For the 2007 Super Bowl that might have been the strip-sack of Tom Brady with 0:22 left in the half at the Giant 44 with the Patriots up 7-3, or maybe the early third quarter interception of Eli Manning at the New England 14 with the same score. The Helmet Catch might be somewhere between fifth and tenth most consequential play. So not the most important play of the game, and not anything that really mattered in the overall global context of sport.
It's still fun to look at a list of the most celebrated moments, but by inclination I'm more interested in the most consequential moments. Both lists are interesting.
If you want to come up with a list of ways the sports landscape has changed over the last 25 years, it's fine to do so. But even setting aside the fact that this wasn't what The Ringer was trying to do, that's a list that's more about society than sports. I think a list of important moments in sports that excludes anything that happens on the field (which such a list basically would by definition) is not a good way to approach sports.
But regardless, coming back to that Super Bowl, the idea that Brady's first half sack or Eli's third quarter interception were more important or consequential moments in that game then the Helmet Catch is silly. I think WPA stats have all kinds of issues but even those metrics wouldn't support that argument.
Think you're trying way too hard to be surprising here Aaron. Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one. And there is no doubt that Manning escaping what appeared to be a certain sack and somehow completing a 30+ yard pass with a minute left in the game was the most important play of arguably the most important Super Bowl ever in terms of legacies.
Fair enough. It's disagreements that make a horse race.
I agree that The Ringer and Nate Silver were not trying to identify the key moments that changed the world. They were listing the culminations, not the causes.
You're, of course right, that Obama wasn't descended from slaves. And if you want to argue that Obama experience is far different from most African Americans because his mother was white, his father was African (not African American), and he grew up in Hawaii, that's a legit argument. But that's different than saying "African-American" means descended from slaves because that simply isn't true.
This is a fun read and good list. A few comments:
I think it’s a little short on legislative policy. You have the ACA, Bush tax cuts, Inflation Reduction Act, ACA repeal fail, TARP, and the Patriot Act. I think the CARES Act (March 2020) is an obvious oversight, but maybe that just falls into COVID. But Medicare Part D (2003), CHIPS (2022), No Child Left Behind (2002), the bipartisan infrastructure law (2021), Dodd-Frank (2010), and ARPA (2021) seem like plausible candidates for policy/political impact.
You might also be a little short on court decisions. You have Obergefell, Bush v. Gore, and Dobbs, but boy, Shelby County, Citizens United, and especially Heller all seem pretty darn big.
I think at least one congressional procedure change deserves to be on the list—the nuking of the filibuster on nominations (2013 by Dems for lower courts and executive nominees; 2017 by GOP for SCOTUS nominees). This paved the way for much more partisan nominations, and forever changed how nominees interact with the Senate. Maybe this could be rolled into the Kavanaugh nomination on the list.
So what gets chucked if you add 2-4 things from my suggestions? I’d get rid of at least one of the Obama moments. Winning Iowa seems very time-period local. Will anyone care about that 50 years from now? And I get the point that every midterm is important, but I still think you have to chuck one or tow of them—you don’t have every SCOTUS nom on here, and that’s arguably always bigger than a midterm. I’d chuck 2022 “Dems limit damage” and 2002 “GOP adds to majorities.”
April 13, 2022
Texas sends its first busload of migrants to NYC.
Greg Abbott deserves credit for pulling off the biggest political stunt of the decade (and, perhaps, the century to date). Other Republican governors followed suit. Immigration suddenly became a hot topic in blue states far from the southern border and a leading electoral issue nationwide.
The effects of Abbott's stunt shaped the 2022 and 2024 elections and are still being felt today.
Good point about the migrant bused to NYC, but I'd say if illegals were going to be on the list, it would be Trump's program of deporting them that is truly interesting.
Great list, but I really think the defeat of McCain-Kennedy in 2007 belongs on a top-50. To refresh: an immigration "compromise" was supported by the leading Congressional Dems and the Dem establishment including the newly enshrined Dem majority. The Republican sponsor was their nominee-in-waiting. And it was supported by the sitting Republican president. It failed because of the howls of the populace hitting the house reps who were all facing their two-year re-election cycle.
I always point to this for people who don't realize how truly deeply felt the immigration issue is, and how the "elite" consensus was pitted against the populace, which was always roughly 60-40 against anything smacking of amnesty etc.
The failure to understand the lessons of McCain-Kennedy 2007 left immigration as a "free lunch" issue for Trump to pick up off the floor in 2015.
I would also add the list as presented fails the "ctr-f immigration" test... immigration and terrorism are the two biggest political issues of the 21st century. Need to address is somehow. Brat/Cantor was an immigration referendum as I remember it, not purely a "tea party" tax thing.
Mcain/Palin?
No I'm speaking about this reform/amnesty bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Immigration_Reform_Act_of_2007 which was a successor and sitll referred to as McCain-Kennedy
So, the two Supreme Court nominees that Mitch McConnell effectively "stole" from Democratic Presidents doesn't make the list?
It's quite a feat of partisan brain to think McConnell stole BOTH — that he clearly (clearly enough to use the word "stole") should have let Garland get confirmed but clearly should not have allowed Barrett to be.
Merrick Garland was nominated on March 16, 2016; *well* before the election and within historical timeframe.
Barrett was nominated on September 26, 2020 and confirmed on October 26, 2020; just 8 days before the election. The shortest length of time *ever* before a presidential election.
The problem with the Garland theory is that he was never getting on the Court in 2016. The whole issue was whether he was going to get buried in committee, or he was going to lose a vote on the floor. McConnell chose to bury in committee (in order to save a tough vote for his swing-state Senators like Gardner) and that can be rightly criticized, but the alternative timeline is not Garland on the Court, it’s Garland’s nomination going down to defeat on the Senate floor.
That's no better than special pleading.
Joe Biden as chair of Senate Judiciary refused (for unapologetically partisan reasons) to hold a vote on John Roberts to the D.C. Circuit when Bush Sr. nominated him the January before the 1992 election. Was that outrageous on the same grounds as the lack of a vote on Garland was, or is the high principle also finely tailored so it only apply to SCOTUS nominees?
Mitch did great. I was very pleased at the time. A cooperative Supreme Court ----- YES!
The September 11th attack is the seminal event of the 21st century from my perspective, which is that of a “late” boomer. Everything else pales in comparison for me.
I’d also rate the 2006 midterms more highly as I see that as a watershed marking the end of the neocon era dating to the Reagan victory twenty-six years earlier. It also resulted in the cashiering of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and his strand of geopolitical ideology.
That said, the listicle was a great listen. Thanks.
I think this is correct. Up there with the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand, both in direct impact and incompetence and consequences of the response.
I agree completely. I think the consequences of 9/11 have become so ingrained in society that it's difficult for us to appreciate how impactful it is.
The obvious political impacts were Bush's strong midterm and re-election, TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the PATRIOT Act. But that's only scratching the surface.
In the most important feature, 9/11 birthed the "War on Terror", which changed the way Western nations thought of threats. Instead of warring against foreign powers, our enemy is individual terrorist actors. This meant expanding surveillance and executive powers to target anyone designated as a threat, including citizens stripped of due process protections that would have been considered inviolable before. We passed laws, throughout the western world, that enabled extra-judicial action to apprehend and interrogate suspected individuals in ways that would never have been politically acceptable in a pre-9/11 world.
We've militarized our police forces (NYPD maintains international offices for counter-terrorism!), expanded our intelligence networks, and lean on a larger security and defense bureaucracy than ever before, all to combat a loose network of potentially very dangerous actors.
On the surveillance side, we're still dealing with a post-9/11 mentality when it comes to backdoors in software, and entire industries have sprung up attempting to provide privacy against state-level actors. Even after the Snowden revelations exposed the scope of mass surveillance, the response was outrage but not rollback: the fundamental authorities and collection practices remained intact, demonstrating how thoroughly these powers have been entrenched.
We also should recognize that 9/11 helped create the political culture that led to the COVID response. After 9/11, we accepted that extraordinary events required extraordinary measures. That same mentality led to emergency lockdown measures that would have been unthinkable before we accepted the 9/11 precedent that extraordinary threats justify suspending normal rules.
To me, the great event of the 21st century is Covid. It has had a huge impact, too, what with the reform now going on of the horrible, dominating medical industry, and high time, too.
What about Obama’s tan suit?
Or Michelle's dress that didn't have sleeves -------------
Hi Nate,
Isn't Trump's 2024 victory a much more historically transformational event then his 2016 victory? 2016 showed a growing anti-establishment sentiment putting in a power a leader with little clue how government worked. It was a warning to the status quo. As President Obama at the time commented: America could survive one Trump term, but he didn't think it could survive two Trump terms.
2024 showed that 2016 wasn't a fluke and put in power a leader and team determined to overhaul our democratic system as we've known it. This time the electorate knew, or absolutely should have known, what it was getting and choose Trump anyways.
Dat's wight, wabbit, we chose Trump anyway. There's a clue there: we like what he's doing. Your thinking we don't is probably not going to matter.
...what?
You must be young and you never saw an Elmer Fudd cartoon, did you? [:-)
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC and Russian invasion of Ukraine definitely need to be in the top 50.
I would also say 15th November 2012, the election of Xi Jinping as General Secretary, if Bo Xiali or someone in the mould of Hu Jianto had become General Secretary and pursued a less aggressive and less nationalistic approach then American politics would be very different, people would be far more relaxed about Chines EVs, tariffs would be less popular amongst hawks and the general shift against China that defined Trump and Biden would not have happened. It isn't American but it is an event that impacted American politics.
A great list. However I think the the Trump elections should be reversed in importance. The first Trump election certainly had a significant impact on America but the second Trump term has had a national and world wide impact second only in modern history only to the World Wars.
Appreciate #47 Scott Brown win being included because while the headline is that it prevented the Dems' last shot at a filibuster proof majority there were two lesser stories - (1) Ted Kennedy selfishly choosing to die in office rather than to retire and campaign for his successor; and (2) the MA Dem Party had manipulated a change in Senator replacement process when Kerry was running for President and Romney was in the Governor's chair. Dems' flipped the replacement to special election to take control from Romney and it ended up costing them (Dem Deval Patrick was Governor when Kennedy died).
Democrats selfishly (and stupidly) dying in office at very inopportune times could be a major subthread here.
[:-) Like RBG.
kinda feel you'd put #1 Trump not #1 9/11 for showmanship's sake if nothing else
Agreed. 9/11 not being #1 on any list talking about the 21st century is pure clickbait or a result of TDS.
Or just regular recency bias? 9/11 comes pretty close to the start of the 25 year period and has faded in collective memory much more by now.
we can pretty much agree Trump doesn't do much by now. He offends a bunch of liberals then you just sit back and watch him not getting anything done for 3.5 years until he's voted out over the economy. granted he IS dangerous, using the actual marines to offend liberals, but people obviously didn't take the bait so that's going to be a non-issue soon.
Yeah, just keep on saying he doesn't matter while Trump and Republicans keep on winning elections and changing things away from the crazy leftists.
you're supposed to do something useful after winning elections. that's actually the trick to winning 2 in a row
I expect you are right.
Howard Dean post-Iowa meltdown
"The Scream."
This list shares a similarity to The Ringer’s countdown of the top 100 sports moments of the past quarter-century that inspired it. The Ringer's number one was the helmet catch in the 2008 Super Bowl. The play was memorable for its almost slapstick character, but a 32-yard pass completion is only a mildly unusual NFL play. It raised the Giants' chance of winning the game from 27% to 48%, a big influence, but there are plenty of plays with 100% changes--like a last-play field goal by a team down by 1 or 2.
What I remember about that Super Bowl was one of the most egregiously biased lines--I had a lot of money on the Giants plus 13.5. For me and other bettors, the game had been long-since over. With the Patriots up 4 with 1:15 to go and the Giants in possession, there was basically zero chance for the Patriots to cover. That would have taken a touchdown and a field goal by a team looking only to run out the clock.
So the helmet catch changed nothing relative to expectation. It was exciting if you cared who won the game, and fun if you like wacky plays, but of scant interest to bettors.
My impression of most of the 51 selections here is similar. The events themselves were symbolic endpoints to much earlier surprises. The number one event, Trump winning in 2016 was a high (or low) point of the global populist surge on both left and right incited by the 2008 financial crisis with its Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Brexit and many other manifestations. The probability of Trump winning had gone from near zero a year earlier to around 50% on Election Day, and jumped to 100% with the vote. But the global cultural change that made Trump's election possible had occurred almost a decade earlier, and it continued to evolve afterwards.
I get that Silver Bulletin attracts a disproportionate amount of sports bettors but man this is a bad take. If you're rating great sports moments at all based on how they affect point spreads, it means you are doing sports wrong.
What makes the helmet catch so significant is that it was simultaneously an incredible play, the key play in a Super Bowl, and not just any Super Bowl but one that could have crowned that Patriots team as the greatest ever. It's the same reason that LeBron's chase down block in Game 7 rates so highly as well (says this Warriors fan ruefully).
In fact, Nate should probably take a swing at the Ringer's list using this formula:
MOMENT RATING= "Play Greatness" X "Play Importance" X "Game Importance". The Helmet Catch was super high on all three categories, which is why it deserves its place.
Also, unless a field goal is from 75+ yards, it doesn't change the likelihood to win by 100%. Teams lining up for game winning field goals generally are already expected to win the game.
I meant something slightly different. I didn't mean a criticism, just the point that both the sports and political lists did not measure events relative to expectation.
Yes, the helmet catch changed the probability of the Giants winning the Super Bowl by 21%, but the big surprise had already happened, that the Giants were even in the game with under two minutes in the fourth quarter.
Donald Trump's election in 2016 was roughly a 50/50 shot, meaning small surprise either way. The big surprise was that he had been nominated and had made a close race of it.
It wasn't just those two examples, the #1 choices on both lists. Most of the events were things that were not surprising--that is, events that did not convey a lot of information. Rather they were culminations of information-laded past events.
It's not just sports bettors who think this way. The economic effect of inflation, for example, has less to do with the rate than with how surprising the rate is. Anticipated inflation can be adjusted out of most transactions, but inflation surprises cause economic damage. Big news stories don't affect financial markets except to the extent they are surprising. It's not the billion common collisions in a supercollider that underlie scientific breakthroughs, but the handful of surprising ones.
A list of the 51 most information-heavy political events since 2000 would be different. Not better or worse, just different. They would be things recorded in the back pages of newspapers that carry lots of numbers--box scores, farm prices, stock market data--not the things recorded in headlines. They would be the things quants and nerds obsess over, not the things that excite most people. In Isaac Asimov's words they would be the "that's funny"s, not the "Eureka"s.
On last-second field goals, I mean the outcome gives either a 0% or 100% probability of the kicking team winning the game with no intermediate outcomes, the greatest difference possible. However, in a sense neither outcome is much of a surprise, unless as you suggest, it's from an extremely long distance. Even an extra-point distance miss is only a moderate surprise. Events need very low or very high prior probabilities for their outcome to carry great information.
I think the point about information heavy political events is a fair one Aaron. And it might be interesting to try to come up with a list of "surprising" numbers in this way (perhaps like the Big Short folks noticing the subprime housing market issues or the creation of Bitcoin). But would still argue that it's the wrong lens to use for sports. While I'm happy for you that you won your wager, there is no sense in which the most important or surprising part of that Super Bowl was the Giants within a score with a few minutes left.
And I would say it's a different lens, not the wrong lens.
I would start by asking what aspects of sports in 2025 would be most surprising to a fan from 1999. I'd think of things like the college football transfer portal, the soccer match-fixing scandal, widespread legalized on-line sports betting, MMA displacing boxing and so on. Who won the 2008 Super Bowl would not be on the radar screen.
Then I'd look at the paths that each of those things took the event from near-zero to 100% probability, and ask what were the biggest jumps. In most cases, these would be obscure-at-the-time events that few people were paying attention to, not headline stories.
For the 2007 Super Bowl that might have been the strip-sack of Tom Brady with 0:22 left in the half at the Giant 44 with the Patriots up 7-3, or maybe the early third quarter interception of Eli Manning at the New England 14 with the same score. The Helmet Catch might be somewhere between fifth and tenth most consequential play. So not the most important play of the game, and not anything that really mattered in the overall global context of sport.
It's still fun to look at a list of the most celebrated moments, but by inclination I'm more interested in the most consequential moments. Both lists are interesting.
No, in this case I'd just say wrong.
If you want to come up with a list of ways the sports landscape has changed over the last 25 years, it's fine to do so. But even setting aside the fact that this wasn't what The Ringer was trying to do, that's a list that's more about society than sports. I think a list of important moments in sports that excludes anything that happens on the field (which such a list basically would by definition) is not a good way to approach sports.
But regardless, coming back to that Super Bowl, the idea that Brady's first half sack or Eli's third quarter interception were more important or consequential moments in that game then the Helmet Catch is silly. I think WPA stats have all kinds of issues but even those metrics wouldn't support that argument.
Think you're trying way too hard to be surprising here Aaron. Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one. And there is no doubt that Manning escaping what appeared to be a certain sack and somehow completing a 30+ yard pass with a minute left in the game was the most important play of arguably the most important Super Bowl ever in terms of legacies.
Fair enough. It's disagreements that make a horse race.
I agree that The Ringer and Nate Silver were not trying to identify the key moments that changed the world. They were listing the culminations, not the causes.
Fun read! Typo in #9: “ rank 2024 more highly than **202** because of the”
I'd flip numbers 1 and 5. Without Obama Donald Trump would not have been elected President.
Just a nit: Obama isn’t African-American, except in being black. AA generally refers to descendants of slaves.
Er, no it doesn't.
You're, of course right, that Obama wasn't descended from slaves. And if you want to argue that Obama experience is far different from most African Americans because his mother was white, his father was African (not African American), and he grew up in Hawaii, that's a legit argument. But that's different than saying "African-American" means descended from slaves because that simply isn't true.
Well, and his father, at least, being from Africa!! If that doesn't make him African-American I don't know what would.