How Did You Originally Choose Your Favorite Sports Teams?
I always find it fascinating to learn how people choose the teams they root for. There’s a wide spectrum of answers, from lineage (you root for the team your dad roots for) to location (whether it’s where you’re from or where you were when you started caring about the sport) to pure coincidence (the underdog [...]
Should All Athletes Aspire to Be Tim Tebow?
A few days ago I read a heartwarming article about the much-maligned Denver Broncos quarterback, Tim Tebow. Tebow was coming off a huge upset win over the Steelers despite a subpar season in which he completed fewer than 50% of his passes. The part that really got to me was this quote from Tebow: Here [...]
Can Democracy Make Americans Like Soccer?
Today I read about the most innovative sports team since the I read about the high school football team that doesn’t ever punt. The team in question? You guessed it: Murcielagos FC, a second-tier soccer team in Mexico. The Bats (their team mascot), are currently third in their league. In many ways, they’re like any [...]
Can a “Team Player” Make $200 Million?
Much ado will be made in the next few months about certain free agents in baseball who will be shopping around for bigger and better contracts. Each of them will inevitably claim that they’re trying to do what’s best for their family, and then when they’re signed for the maximum possible amount, they’ll say that [...]
Pet Please #51: Playing a Sport Immediately After Watching That Sport on TV
One of my favorite things is watching a professional sport on TV and then playing that sport immediately afterwards. I do this when I play soccer on the weekends–I watch a few minutes of a game, get hyped up about playing, and then go out onto the field and think I’m Ronaldo. Part of the [...]
The Green Bay Packers Are Not the NFL Champions
You read that subject line and think, “No, you’re wrong. The Packers are the undisputed NFL champions.” It’s simply a fact, right? We don’t even question that the team that wins the Super Bowl is the champion. There’s no other team that says, “Oh, we’re better than them. We’re co-champion. If we played the Packers [...]
Ohio State Trounced by Little Sisters of the Poor in Bowl Warmup
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – In an astounding upset, the Ohio State University football team was defeated by the Little Sisters of the Poor’s club team 57-3 in a bowl warmup game. The game was scheduled as a friendly match following OSU president E. Gordon Gee’s comments in November comparing Boise State University and Texas Christian [...]
Football According to Bob Costas
Tonight I attended a panel at Wash U about the future of sports. Bob Costas, who spent many years working in St. Louis, was on the panel, and he was the most vocal of the bunch. Costas had some really interesting things to say about football. The first was about why the NFL is–and will [...]
Pet Please #30: Sportsmanship
I was watching the Rams-Redskins game this weekend, and at one point a Rams player made a good run that was ended by a solid tackle. When the Rams player tried to get up, the guy who tackled him grabbed his hand and pulled him off the ground. In a small way, I think the [...]
How to Make Soccer 5x More Entertaining
I want to preface this post by saying that I love soccer (or to those of you in Europe or South America, soccer). I’ve played it since I was 5, I love watching it, and I’ve even coached it. I care about this game more than any other sport. Also, I don’t really care if [...]
Floppage Time
I think pickup sports are the purest forms of any game. Let me explain. After college, I started playing pickup ultimate frisbee (I love any game with an open field). Then I added pickup soccer and pickup football to the mix. And I tell you, there’s nothing better than a pickup game to relieve stress. [...]
My Greatest Fear #11
I consider myself fairly athletic. I currently play soccer, football, and kickball, and I’m in the upper tier of the athletes with whom I play. At my age, having fun while pushing myself a little is what’s important to me. So the sport itself doesn’t even matter that much. However, there is one sport that [...]
The Premier System
I love brilliant systems. The English Premier League’s ranking system is quite brilliant, and I want to talk about it briefly today. There are 20 teams in the EPL. The top four teams from this year are entered in the Champions League, which is an extended tournament held during the regular season of all of [...]
How to Play Fantasy Baseball Without Losing Your Girlfriend
A year ago I posted a version of this entry. At the time, I had a girlfriend; now it’s just me and my cat. Did I lose the girlfriend because of the way I played fantasy baseball? No–it was an offseason move. But this advice has withstood the test of time, and I think all [...]
2018 Winter Olympics: Antarctica
The basic premise of this entry: How cool would it be to have the winter Olympics in Antarctica? It would be, hands down, the most visually fascinating Olympics of all time. Integrating the infrastructure into the ice and snow would unite creative and engineering minds around the world and would leave Antarctica with facilities that [...]
CommonCensus
I’m totally forgetting who alerted me to this website, but I’d highly recommend you go to www.commoncensus.org and spend 30 seconds their answering a few questions. CommonCensus is an attempt to redraw geographical boundaries based on factors other than state lines. The most fascinating aspect to me is the maps resulting from the sports surveys. [...]
The Best Social Outdoor Game EVER
The best social outdoor game ever is four square. Hands-down. I played the other day, and I was quickly reminded how this childhood game is the perfect social game: Anyone can play. You barely have to move. You can mess up or make a stupid play, but it’s no sweat off your back, because you [...]
How to Play Fantasy Baseball Without Losing Your Girlfriend
A wise friend once told me that he had two girlfriends: his actual girlfriend, and fantasy baseball. Truer words have never been spoken. It’s a scientific fact that during fantasy baseball season (which starts about 2 months before regular baseball season, since managers need plenty of time to research for the draft), guys use 85% [...]
Football in 3D
I was at the movies yesterday (Marley & Me, actually good, maybe a post on that later) when I noticed a poster advertising tonight’s BCS Football Championship Game (Florida vs. Oklahoma) in 3D at the theater, live. I was intrigued…not intrigued enough to go dish out $9.50 to watch the event, since I can watch [...]
Do the Yankees Get ALL of the Free Agents?
Just saw that the Yankees are going to sign first-baseman Mark Teixeira, grabbing him from the two other teams who were trying to get him. They also recently signed the other two big free agents on the market, C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett (apparently they also like people who use initials for first names). So [...]
Fist Pound Versus High Five
At some point in his life, a guy will find himself in the most precarious, awkward position of all: He’ll hold up his hand for a high-five, and the other guy will offer a fist pound in return. This is a defining moment in the life of a man. The actions you take in the [...]
Tennis
Lately I’ve been playing tennis on a semi-regular basis. I hadn’t really played in years, but it’s coming back to me. My roots in tennis lay in lessons I took as a little kid (not posh country club lessons—these were normal, summer-camp lessons) and playing with my dad as a kid. I remember thinking that [...]
My Brilliant Ideas: Putting Lenses
I don’t condone cheating at anything, including sports. The whole steroids thing is kind of disgusting to me…I mean, we want to see athletes do incredible things on the field, but we want to see them do those things naturally. This people are blessed with near-supernatural strength, speed, and dexterity—is that amazing enough? The idea [...]
