Denmark had 4 medals in 2012, but 26 in 2014... Holy shit, they must have instituted the most awesome doping program in just two years.

If a Jewish gangster in Providence can do it, I like Russia’s chances.

Alisher Usmanov is Russia’s richest man. Although I think he’s actually Uzbek, so I’m not sure how that works out, but he’s old enough to have been in either place when both were part of the USSR. So that would have made him a Commie at some point.

You must be extraordinarily stupid.

The University of Texas did something similarly brilliant/awful when Tom Penders was basketball coach. There was a low-level scandal of sorts with the illegal release of a player’s grades. In the following investigation I think Penders was either bought out of let go or some mutual parting but there was no report or…

Because currently management’s use for analytics is only to reinforce things they already believe.

You get paid for making it into the qualifying rounds. I believe it’s €200K for the first qualifying round and €300K for this round. So Gibraltar has already made what I would assume is decent money for a club its size. I have no idea how much gate revenue (if any) goes to visiting teams for the CL but that could be…

Been to Wimbledon a couple of times. The early rounds are great because you can catch some decent players on the outer courts. You can also sit right along the lines and you can get really close to the court.

Do not agree. Sure there have been a handful of players who are exceptional penalty takers, even some with a substantial sample size (so, no, Balotelli doesn’t count). But finishing from open play and penalty taking are not necessarily the same skill.

Slow down, cap’n. Portugal have 1 win in 4 games.

Clearly you didn’t watch the knock-out games on Saturday.

That’s because the rate for all penalties is about 75%.

Yeah, Higuain missing a wide open goal with the only the keeper to beat was a much bigger choke job.

And here’s the part where we note, for the 750 millionth time, that tax money is fungible. If the legislature approves a hotel tax hike, that money could go to literally anything—even things that are actually useful to a local economy.

I’m not even talking about the game analysis stuff, which I guess would mean my 70% is overshooting things. But there was a lot of really good sportswriting happening there. The pop-culture stuff was garbage mostly.

Shocking that a person whose biggest insights involve making analogies to The Karate Kid would fail to have some sort of intellectual staying power.

You identified all the garbage, but a lot of the sportswriting there (~ 70%) was exceptionally good.

Any two consecutive World Cups? Because without even looking up anything I know that list is missing Italy, who (I’m pretty sure) made it to the KOs every time from ‘78 to 2010. In fact in ‘78 there were two group rounds before the KOs. They made it out of both.

After getting off a grand total of zero shots on goal.

It is or should be a knock against MLS. Our midfield of MLS players could not have been more incompetent last night. Hell, they were close to invisible. Like literally. I mean I know there were 11 players out there, but every time Argentina got the ball in their half, they were moving quickly to the edge of our 18…