Celebrating Cheese Week
(Forgive me for lack of blogging recently. Overtaken by events and all that.) What a happy coincidence. For me, preparing my weak flesh for the inaugural Big Ten showdown for Nebraska (their opponent: Wisconsin)...
Category: Sports
The Finals
Sports have never been a focal point for the League, so I’ll put this one below the fold . . .
Super Bowl Open Thread
I don’t have a real rooting interest, but I am anticipating a great game. My tentative pick: Steelers over Packers, 28-24. Feel free to throw out any predictions, gambling tips, or jokes at Ben...
Superbowl XLII half-time show
Tom Petty’s half-time show at Superbowl 42 is probably the best I’ve ever seen – maybe the only one I’ve ever liked at all. This is in part because Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers...
The Political Football: Cynical Collapses and Redemptive Comebacks
Joe Lieberman endorsed John McCain for President almost exactly three years ago, at a time when McCain’s shots at the GOP nomination were widely dismissed as DOA because of his reputation as a “moderate,”...
Defending Basketball Mysticism
I know I should be talking about Four Loko or Thomas Friedman’s latest column on the horrors of deliberative democracy, but the start of a really compelling NBA season demands some sports blogging. Despite...
Is winning everything? (for an athlete)
I’m not much of a basketball fan – correction, I’m not a basketball fan at all – but the heavily-reported saga of Lebron James’ free agency has struck a bit of a chord with...
Why I watch soccer
The weekend beckons, so I thought I’d write something about the World Cup. At his personal blog, Jonathan Last links to a pretty apt take-down of soccer evangelists he wrote in 2002, when Americans...
Quote of the Day
“What the heck is Yahoo? Is it one of those computer things? Is that like Twittering?” – The inimitable Gregg Popovich, demonstrating his technological savvy right before tip-off.
Don’t disenfranchise foreign NBA fans
In lieu of discussing more serious matters (Citizens United, health care, “Jersey Shore”), I’d like to direct your attention to the pressing issue of NBA All Star voting. After Tracy McGrady’s hobbled corpse nearly...
The Polian Connection
After a decade of success relying on Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, and for awhile Tony Dungy, the Indianapolis Colts are sitting undefeated through 14 games. Manning is still there, but Dungy and Harrison are...
Can’t we all just get along?
A nice vignette from the Grizzlies-Kings game (via): Grizzlies center Hamed Haddadi , the first NBA player from Iran, and Omri Casspi, the first Israeli player in the league, met at midcourt and shook...
This is not a persuasive rejoinder to rigorous sports analysis
Peter King, being snide: There are many reasons why I like the Patriots, but the biggest is that all the statisticians of the world got together the other day and ran all the Pats/Jets...
Football in the Northeast
…which, for football purposes, includes South Florida. In 2005, the Big East – long a basketball-heavy conference – lost three of its five traditionally strong football programs to the ACC, while one of the remaining...
NFL “debunks” player concussion studies
Seriously, this should be a bigger deal. The NFL is literally making shit up about the long-term impact of player collisions:
Our National Drug of Choice
No one is above the outrage cycle. We have now, in our culture, synthesized the two worst elements of pre-9/11 and post-9/11 media: the pre-9/11 obsession with meaningless bullshit; and the post-9/11 obsession with...
The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
I think it’s safe to say that former NFL player Pat Tillman – an Army Ranger killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan – was the first hero of the War on Terror. Like many,...
Bloodsport
Contra Bill Simmons, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest article isn’t 2009’s best piece of sports journalism. In fact, it’s not even the best article about football-related concussions. For that, you’ll have to go to GQ’s “Game...
