Why wasn’t no. 94 “Getting hit by a bus driven by a Christian”?

The NCAA almost had to do this to perpetuate the myth of the student-athlete upon which the entire multi-billion dollar enterprise is built. Its not the games the athletes play that matters so much as its the classes the students attend that matter. Horseshit.

I’m not sure why even false claims of death threats are sufficient to justify firing for cause. I’m sure there is a conduct clause in his contract that allows dismissal for besmirching the reputation of the program, but I don’t see how seeking sympathy via lies does anything but besmirch McElwain’s reputation. …

In Benjamin’s defense, once he had his eyes on the ball (and then turned backwards to recover his own drop), he couldn’t know that the Patriots’ coverage guys had outrun the Chargers’ blockers. So picking up the ball and starting to run (rather than just going out of bounds) is a somewhat defensible idea. From that…

“ESPN shit-for-brains Stephen A. Smith.”

To crib from io9's recap entries, a few assorted musings:

Which is the problem. As long as you continue to treat every insane utterance and blatant lie as if it were something an actual, responsible adult human would say, you normalize the Trump administration and assist it in its mission of destroying rational analysis of the world. ABC, CNN, the New York Times, NPR; I…

Smoltz brought this concept up last night during the game. Dave Roberts has received a lot of credit for his team’s success, in large part because of how good the Dodgers’ bullpen has become over the season: they had difficulty getting to Jansen early in the season, made some moves, moved guys around, and then become…

In order to actually utilize the anonymity promised by the Dark Web, don’t you have to use it only on a dedicated device? Like, here’s my Mac for emailing my grandmother and reading Lifehacker, but here’s my PC which I only use to discuss The Anarchist’s Cookbook on Jotunbane’s Reading Club and hire assassins.

Two years ago, my son’s girlfriend had an Italian girl living with her for their junior year of HS. I am one of those parents that talk to their kids’ friends and she was nice enough to put up with it and smart enough to be interesting. I joked with her that if the Republicans ended up being stupid enough to…

Only if the intention of all intercollegiate sports is, like professional sports, to make money. You are accepting the status quo that “unless the championship game is on one of the ESPN channels, its not a real sport” argument the pollutes all this. Who benefits from this perspective? Certainly the coaches and…

Because I like the concept of Whiterose being the omniscient, omnipotent villain, I bought into the Trump thing. Everyone tries to ascribe various rationales for Trump’s behavior, but I think he really boils down to one simple, guiding force: people must think I’m the best. Everything else serves that simple idea,…

“but if he can recapture that kind of form”

Small sample size is the bugaboo of sports analytics. I think players (in all sports) can try too hard in big games, taking them out of the mind- (and skill-) set that made them successful, but by and large, you can take any 5 or 7 game stretch of games and show Barry Bonds or Babe Ruth underperforming.

Talk about looking like an idiot. The Suns have been bad under Watson during his entire year+ running the team (I mean, they have bad players who have played badly, so its a little hard to parse out Watson’s contributions to that badness), but they brought him back this year despite that. But 3 games in is suddenly…

But isn’t calling Pence out for wasting “taxpayer’s money” just using his own rhetoric against him to expose his hypocrisy? I completely understand your explanation (and was enlightened by it, so thank you), but isn’t it like calling George W. Bush a “draft dodger” or that idiot pro-life, pro-family guy from…

In the aftermath of Charlottesville, NPR had a number of interviews with a guy who was once a white supremacist but who now ran an organization that helped bring people out of that community (I’m pretty sure it was Christian Picciolini of Life After Hate). He provided a pretty compelling argument for giving Nazis a…

Baseball is great with the unlikely guys doing amazing things: (1) Mark Whiten (423 career RBI in 11 years) is tied for the records of 4 HRs and 12 RBI in a game; (2) a nondescript starting pitcher named Tony Cloninger going for 2 GS and 9 RBI in a game against the Giants in ‘66; (3) Bobo Holloman (one season career,…

One of the more important contributions to the world from the Sabrmetrics community is the realization that so much of baseball comes down to luck: the inconstancy of BABIP from season to season revealing how little control pitchers have after the ball leaves their hand; the non-existence of “clutch hitting”; the…