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Talking about sports. Thinking about other stuff.
Did Lance Armstrong Cheat, and Does it Matter?: what to make of all this now that he will “no longer address” the issue
When Lance Armstrong suddenly pleaded “no contest” last week in the USADA’s proceedings against him, my university’s communications office sent out a time-sensitive request to faculty members who might have some comment. I foolishly glanced at a couple of news reports on my iPad in the meeting I was in, and then tapped out a […]
Posted in: cognitive bias, performance-enhancing drugs
“Great Team Chemistry No Match For Great Team Biology”
March 7, 2012
That was a recent headline from The Onion, and as usual, the short article that followed it pretty much wrote itself. ”I’ve never seen a team work in sync with itself as well as A&M did tonight, but unfortunately, they were up against players who have bodies far better adapted for playing basketball,” ESPN’s Jay Bilas […]
This bullfighter needs a left tackle…
March 7, 2012
…though he is clearly not lacking in cojones. This post may interrupt the flow of posts on the NFL’s “bountygate” (last seen here) but the surreal juxtaposition probably isn’t out of place. Is a bullfighter an athlete? an artist? a butcher? sad clown? all of the above? Well, if Juan José Padilla were an NFL player, […]
What we cannot reliably learn from former NFL players about the “bounty” system (or anything else)
March 7, 2012
It goes without saying that most of the chatter on the sports networks comes from the mouths of former players and coaches. There may typically be one journalist or “broadcaster” moderating a discussion, and occasionally there are non-player “experts” about particular subjects internal or external to the sport in question (from folks who analyze the […]
Bounty Ethics in the NFL
March 6, 2012
It’s now day 5 of “bountygate” and there’s surely very little left to be said. For those not entranced by the blue glow of 24/7 sports gossip on ESPN and the NFL Network (where gaggles of pundits on retainer need something to gab about between the early-Februrary Super Bowl and the late-April draft), or for […]
Shameless “Linsanity” link
February 18, 2012
In an over-committed personal and professional life — which includes teaching, overseeing another blog, being an editor of an academic journal, trying to get better on electric guitar, running, Bikram yoga, and refereeing on-going incidents involving two house-bound tomcats — this blog seems to have drawn the short straw for the time being. But to […]
Posted in: partisanship, sportsmanship
Luck don’t come easy
October 31, 2011
This blog has been dormant so long it missed an entire baseball season. There are no doubt plenty of thorough accounts of that season; but a very short post-World Series blog post in the New Yorker by Roger Angell captures a lot of what’s great and weird about every baseball season. Thrilling but, in a […]
Posted in: baseball, moral luck
Wayne Norman
August 28, 2012
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