Well, that kept me up way past bedtime– my 9:15 lecture is going to be fantastic— but at least my Giants pulled out the win at the end. I couldn’t think of a better way to open the Cowboys’ new stadium… And really, there’s no better metaphor for the Cowboys in the Jerry Jones era […]
Category: Football
Fantasy Sports Are Killing America
Summer is drawing to a close, which means we’re finally starting to get some actual sports to talk about, after a long, dull stretch of nothing but baseball. So I’ve started listening to “Mike and Mike” again in the mornings in my office. Which may have been a mistake because I’ve just had to listen […]
Rationality Stops on Sunday
I am a fan of the New York Giants. I believe that they can win every game they play. I hope that they will win every game that they play. I get emotionally involved in their games to such a degree that my heart pounds and I get short of breath when they face a […]
MJ, Fame, Writing, and More
If you’re desperate for something to fill your Friday afternoon, and not the comment-leaving sort, you could do a lot worse than spending an hour and a half (give or take) with Chuck Klosternman and Bill Simmons in their two part ESPN podcast. It’s nominally about sports, but they spend a good bit of time […]
Seasonal Sports Peeve
It’s March now, which means that we’re at the absolute peak of the college basketball season. Small conferences have already started their tournaments, playing for the one shot those teams have of getting into the NCAA’s. Big conference tournaments start next week, with the Big Dance the week after. So, of course, ESPN and all […]
Point Spreads, Again
I’m listening to “Mike and Mike” on ESPN radio, as I usually do in the morning, and they just spent the better part of five minutes talking about the point spread for the upcoming Super Bowl. The opening betting line has Pittsburgh favored by seven points, but some Las Vegas organization or another told them […]
Final Football Thoughts
Somebody really needs to arrange a game between the Giants and the Titans, so they can have an inept-off. Tennessee thoroughly outplayed Baltimore in just about every way, but coughed the ball up twice on stupid plays (LenDale White carrying the ball like the proverbial loaf of bread, Todd Heap trying to hurdle a defender), […]
The Football Positioning System
It’s NFL playoff time, which means that sports fans will be treated to the sight of the most high-stakes farce in sports, namely the ritual of “bringing out the chains” to determine whether a team has gained enough yards for a first down. We’ve all seen this: the play is whistled dead, a referee un-stacks […]
Why Do I Bother?
I generally enjoy Gregg Easterbrook’s football writing– he gets a little repetitive, and the shtick is starting to overwhelm any insight, but he makes some good points, and is usually entertaining. For example, I really enjoyed his take on the Dallas Cowboys at the end of this week’s column (schadenfreude is a powerful thing). Easterbrook’s […]
The Stupidest Argument in College Football
Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean has a nice, concise post about what’s wrong with college football. He’s responding to a desperately stupid post that ends with this: Let’s not ruin college football’s fabulous 13 week do-or-die regular season with a playoff! This was posted back in October, so the author can perhaps be forgiven for […]