I’m sure your dad continued, “and son, your coach might deny you proper medical care on the field, or have you work with an unlicensed trainer because he was drinking buddies with him once. You might have a permanent injury that was totally preventable because your head coach is an incompetent and maniacal asshole,…

As someone who lives in Utah - where this has been going on for ages because dipshit 19 year-olds keep having kids out here - it boggles my mind because there’s plenty of unique names that don’t require superfluous spelling and actually have linguistic and etymological roots, yet parents still go for this shit.…

How about cricket, where teams have 11 defenders but only 2 batsmen (max) on the field at a given time and is played by far more people than baseball? Or how about name a real-world scenario in which an outnumbered player got gangbeat to hell because of a bench-clearing ban, which is the dumbest reason I’ve ever heard…

I’d love to see examples from any sport where a bench-clearing ban led to a player getting ganged up on. I’ll be here.

That too. The idea that 9 pro athletes would gangbeat the shit out of 1 guy on the field in front of fans and cameras - and that officials would just let it happen - is laughable. Knowing that your bench can’t back you up if you want to start shit, however, might temper a few folks. Just be stricter with the fines and…

Yes, because that’s exactly what happened after the NBA instituted their bench-clearing suspension. This is stupid reasoning. Sure, 9 guys could jump on 1 dude, if they wanted to get suspended for the season and guarantee every opposing team will be drilling them in perpetuity for pulling such a chickenshit move, not…

Carson, like Bell and Inglewood and Vernon and countless other municipalities dotting SoCal and across the country, have a working-class population with low education. Those types of folks don’t have the time to actively follow local politics, and even then don’t have the knowledge to understand the byzantine…

This is bad Kinja.

"Hahahaha both SLC and OKC are such shitholes!1!1"

A formerly anonymous Republican Governor who's narcissistic and delusional enough to think he could be President one day signing a pseudo-religious freedom bill in a naked attempt to pander to the religious bigots that hold an outsized influence in his party? It must be an odd-numbered year.

"Coasties," as they're affectionately called at B1G schools like Michigan, IU, PSU, and Wisconsin, are a particular brand of asshole. Granted, at those schools the bulk of students who go there are in-state or regional kids who made pretty good grades and it's the best/most affordable option they have close to home…

No, because a tie denies your opponent an additional point. Smart teams knew this, and in the pre-salary cap era it was way too common to watch an outmanned opponent play a divisional rival to a tie to keep even with them in the standings. My dad's a diehard Red Wings fan, and I recall seeing their opponents pulling…

"This is not true. OTLs counted for zero points and ties counted for one point,"

I've heard that before, but that's where the War on Ice link comes in handy. In the PNL category (no points for losses or ties), the standings barely move; if anything, the biggest change is in seeding for teams that are already making the postseason. This makes sense if you think about it and look at baseball as a…

Don't get me wrong, the work you did here is great, but typically when formulating policy it's best to first look at what already has a large empirical data set than to run a ton of hypothetical analyses. With the 3-1-0 system, all the NHL has to do is look at a myriad of soccer leagues to see its impacts on scoring…

Great, thanks! From a statistical perspective, is there some reason for creating an OTL point? The 3-2-1-0 system had been bandied about, but if they adopted the standard soccer scoring (3-1-0) system and reinstated ties it would seem to to work best: 3 points for a win offers plenty of incentive for teams, as they…

This is great stuff, but I'm curious if there'd be a way to run an analysis on what points/standings would look like if they got rid of the OTL. Isn't that the biggest source of this problem? Teams are guaranteed a point if they make it to the extra period, and therefore have much less incentive to go for the win. In…

This. I teach college, and at my previous institution - an SEC school - I once had an offensive lineman confide that he couldn't remember the last time he played a game where his head wasn't "floatin" afterwards. But he shrugged and said football was the only reason why he was here and got out of his poor-ass Southern…

Nah, it's the opposite. People who talk up the superiority of 90s NBA ball either a) are holding onto nostalgia more than reality or b) are hoopsters who wear vintage jerseys and think the personalities back then were cooler without any real substance to back it up or c) are fans who simply pined for the days when…

See, that first point about post-season success would be fascinating and one I hadn't considered. Could Gonzaga in basketball or Boise State in football lure away top-notch talent with the promise of playing in the biggest games, without having to fight as hard to crack the starting lineup? A 4* or 5* recruit could…