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Real NFL fans should like the new overtime rule — especially once it gets applied to the regular season — for the same reason that most of the real NFL coaches hate it. It holds out the promise of more high drama of the kind the NFL does best: where the coaching staff have to make […]
March 23, 2010
On Tuesday the owners of the NFL franchises agreed to change to the rules for how to deal with playoff games that end in a tie after “regulation” time. (On average, about one of the 11 games each post-season is tied after 60 minutes.) The old rule was simple: a coin toss gave one team […]
March 19, 2010
We are rightly suspicious of arguments that justify institutional arrangements that promise to be “separate but equal.” These three conjoined words have had a unique ring in American culture ever since the landmark unanimous decision by the Supreme Court in the Brown v. Board of Education case (1954). The Court declared that “separate educational facilities are […]
March 18, 2010
You’d hardly know it watching ESPN these days, but there are actually two NCAA D1 college basketball championships going on now: one for men, and one for women. In general there is a pretty sharp line in “official” sporting competitions between men and women, or men’s and women’s teams. In fact, it is probably a […]
March 14, 2010
In the previous post I suggested that a 65-team tournament could be justified not because it was more likely than a more exclusive tournament to crown a worthy champion, but because it helped the NCAA meet a number of its reasonable objectives — which include providing a great experience for the student-athletes, growing the sport, and […]
March 12, 2010
I am willing to defend the NCAA’s current system for selecting the 65 teams in the national championship Tournament. But first a confession. I am also willing to admit that I know very little about basketball. I guess I know as much as most casual fans: I can follow the ball with the best of […]
March 11, 2010
There’s a 24-hr sports cycle in America, with several sports networks available on my cable menu any time of the day or night. ESPN alone gives me at least six, not including their virtual on-demand channels on the web. And yet most of the time no sporting matches are being played live. By even the […]
March 9, 2010
Question on SportsCenter today: “He has 6 national titles, what are your thoughts on what Hall-of-Famer Gino Auriemma has done with this program?” Bob Knight: “I’ve said in the past, that if I were an athletic director looking for a basketball coach — I don’t care whether the team was going to be made up […]
March 4, 2010
You have to wonder what the ancient Greeks talked about after their Olympic games finished. (I mean, we know what the modern Greeks talked about, or should have talked about, after their Olympics: how the hell are we ever going to pay for this?! Does anybody here have any connections at Bear Stearns?) After all, […]
March 2, 2010
The Wall Street Journal may not have won any journalism medals for its failure to foretell which financial institutions on its eponymous street would crumble first. But they have spared us the leg work necessary to figure out which countries did the worst at the Olympics. They have handed out lead, tin, and zinc medals […]
March 1, 2010
I suppose the official answer to this question is, “The World,” which according to the IOC mission is supposed to be made “peaceful and better” by “educating youth through sport practised in accordance with Olympism and its values.” But of course anybody who asks the question “who won?” really wants to know which country won. The IOC […]
This Sporting Life 
March 26, 2010
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