I love the away goals rule. SO MUCH STRATEGERY!

You don’t grasp how they do it? Or why they do it? The clubs that advance to later rounds in the UCL have very large squads—playing 2 matches a week isn’t really that big of a problem for clubs like Chelsea, Bayern, or Real Madrid.

Strong work.

Yes, baseball is a great example. Both have a relatively difficult offensive task—hitting a baseball vs scoring a goal. Both a good hitter and a skilled striker will, more often than not, "fail"—the shot goes over the net, is saved, is scuffed, hits the post in soccer, while the batter misses the ball, pops up, fouls…

Michael can probably speak for himself, but as an econometrician myself (and a soccer enthusiast!), I can say that you're correct in that—in theory—we'd love to be able to account for "this sort of information." However, desiring to account for a variable and being able to account for a variable aren't always the same…

Magary probably made him sign a contract promising to do so.

It’s nice that there is some Cosmic force in the universe that ensures any shot a player takes after executing such a move will go in.

The bloody knuckles are a perfect touch in that video. Looks so tough.

I see he’s borrowed a shirt from Drew Magary’s closet, too!

1) Notts County Ladies are indeed in the top flight of women's football in England, and have been since the league's formation (though they were called Lincoln City Ladies, iirc, for the first 2-3 years).

I just want to say that Jay Mariotti has really, really skinny legs.

I get all the anal leakage I need from Oleo, thanks.

Sigh. Yeah. He'll probably revert to the exhausted-looking, offside-sitting, ghastly first-touch-footed Lukaku that we have seen all year by Sunday against Newcastle.

I love the game, so much. Videos like that do a much better job explaining why I am somehow able to put FIFA's corruption, match-fixing scandals, racism, and other obvious problems associated with the sport to the side every single weekend and watch it like it's going out of style.

Here's Action Bronson doing the Dance of Joy.

Good guys? No. Good fellas? Yes.

My understanding (basically from reading post-draft analysis articles) was that this was always the plan in drafting Exum: Burke would initially continue as starting PG, with Exum coming off the bench as a rookie. As Exum develops, he would then move into the starting role, whereupon Burke would either transition to…

That's the hope, sure. The fear is that they're just providing 3 years of quality training for these guys before they walk to the Hawks (or some other team) for free, like the past few years have seen happen.

No doubt. I hope that he comes good in the end anyway—the dream is for him to transition to SG and have Exum start at PG...but right now, Exum isn't there yet (rookie, I'm patient) and Burke is just really inconsistent.

The only other potential concern I have is that I think Kanter has genuine ability/upside, whereas I think Gobert's place in the Jazz's future frontcourt isn't quite as certain as you alluded to. The guy was on exactly zero maps until a couple of months ago, when he had a string of strong performances. I don't get to…