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Talking about sports. Thinking about other stuff.
Browsing All Posts filed under »moral luck«
“Great Team Chemistry No Match For Great Team Biology”
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, […]
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 […]
Sport and religion: Does Jesus want you to pray for His help?
January 21, 2011
Did Jesus make me (able to) do it? He certainly gets a lot of credit. Not as many shout-outs as He gets at the Grammies. But he still seems to get credit for His fair share of home runs, touchdown catches, and buzzer-beaters. During my unintended blogging hiatus in the autumn I failed to pass […]
Great athletes are not born, they’re made… then sold to the highest bidder
September 23, 2010
It has been a big week for philosophizing about sports at Duke University, where I teach. Perhaps this helps us take our minds off a crushing loss to Alabama, the NCAA football national champions, who played here last weekend. First it was Justice Samuel A. Alito reflecting on how cheering for the Phillies made him, […]
More on Blown Calls: which sport is worse?
August 17, 2010
Here are a couple of quick addenda to the last post on the different types of challenges that officials face in different sports, and how this should affect decisions about introducing technology (or expanding its use) to overcome the “human error factor” in officiating. First, I want to point to the articles that prompted me, even […]
The players like it imperfect
June 15, 2010
Here’s a quick follow-up to the Imperfect Game controversy I followed over far too many posts, starting here. ESPN The Magazine conducted a (let us say, rather unscientific) poll of 100 major-league baseball players about their views on the umpires and the use of replay. The brief survey revealed three interesting results: 1. Despite the […]
The imperfect game, Part 5 of 5: The irrational quest to tame chance
June 10, 2010
Are the businessmen in charge of baseball trying to manage their precarious pre-modern brand by preserving its quaintest features? Or is there a recognition by the high-priests in charge that we have to reconcile ourselves with the essential element of luck and chance that is shot through the game of baseball. Those who passionately want […]
The imperfect game, Part 4: Do umps really need to be part of the game?
June 10, 2010
The Imperfect Game debate has revived a long-standing debate about how to treat umpires and their fallibility as “part of the game.” Everything we know about human perception and cognitive psychology informs us that umpires will blow calls. Most of the blowable calls, including Joyce’s call last week, involve “judgments” that have to be made […]
The imperfect game, Part 2: The paradox of changing the rules to award the perfect game
June 10, 2010
The passionate debate shows how much we all interpret baseball players as competing against all of their baseball ancestors as much as they are against their rivals this season. The blown call made absolutely no difference to the result — that is, to the result of a relatively meaningless game in the midst of a […]
The imperfect game. In our imperfect world. Part 1
June 10, 2010
Writing and traveling for my day job have distracted me from the blog for a busy three weeks in the sporting world. And in particular, other deadlines and a trip abroad kept me from weighing in on The Imperfect Game: when Armando Galarraga earned the 27th consecutive out, but was denied his perfect game when […]
Why is hockey analysis always so lame? Part 3: It’s hard
May 10, 2010
I’m obviously making this up as I go along; but if you’ve read Why is hockey analysis (almost) always so lame? Part 1 and Part 2, thanks for bearing with me. So far I have talked mostly about the ways in which hockey analysis (on TV, in the daily press) is so frustratingly superficial. I […]
Why is hockey analysis almost always so lame? Part 1
May 4, 2010
My friend Andrew Potter (author of the sizzling new book The Authenticity Hoax) tweeted a link on Friday [when I began writing this post] to a compelling contrast between the two biggest stars in the world of ice hockey, the Russian Alexander Ovechkin and the Canadian Sydney Crosby. The column in question was by Steve Simmons, who has covered hockey […]
More on what makes golf great. And not so great.
April 11, 2010
In the last post I sketched out some of the reasons why Tiger fans (and some Tiger haters) like golf. And by “like” in sports I don’t mean merely “enjoy” it or have a “revealed preference” for it. A true sports aficionado likes sports in the way an art-lover or wine-lover likes their thing. As […]
Meet David, the new Goliath: Butler’s victory over Duke marks the dawn of a new era in college basketball
April 6, 2010
Move over Gonzaga, Villanova, George Mason, and the Western Texas Miners. There’s a new Cinderella in town. Take that, Goliath: there’s a new David. Butler’s unlikely run all the way to the National Championship last night was like cotton-candy-for-breakfast in the sports media this morning. Many in the American sports chattering class routinely profess their […]
Why the new NFL overtime rule is an improvement
March 26, 2010
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 […]
The old NFL overtime rule was not unfair
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 […]
Putting American football to bed for awhile
February 13, 2010
(Originally posted 10 Feb. 2010) It’s always kind of surprising how quickly a sport disappears from our minds within a day or so of its championship game. For many true fans of the sport — i.e. not simply fans of a particular team, who lose interest as soon as their team is eliminated from the […]
Wayne Norman
This Sporting Life 
March 7, 2012
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