Sports Illustrated magazine, just after 1998 was safely in the rear-view mirror, said that that year was the greatest sports year ever. Ninety-eight was a phenomenal year, sure, with two sluggers chasing the greatest record in sports and Michael Jordan exiting basketball with a championship-winning shot. But it’s possible that 1998 was not even the best […]
August 2024
Bo Kimble & Greg Anthony
On ESPN Classic the other night was a game that I found really intriguing: a 1989 preseason NIT matchup between UNLV and Loyola Marymount. I found it interesting that ESPN chose to replay this game because the two teams would meet in a much more meaningful game later that season in the NCAA tournament. But […]
Wade Boggs, Willie McGee, and the Value of Information
The year 2005 marks the first year of Hall of Fame eligibility for two of the top hitters for average of the 1980’s. It also marks the twentieth anniversary of the 1985 season, when Wade Boggs and Willie McGee each won batting titles. In 1985, Boggs won his second career batting title and began a […]
Suspense vs. Purity:A Game Theory Perspective on Timed Sports
There’s almost nothing more exciting in the sports world than a buzzer-beating jump shot, a Hail Mary pass, or a last second wrist shot. We all know that when time is running out in a close game, we may be in for something very special. Knowing that the end of the game is near can […]
The Contender, the Rookie, and the Trailblazer:Sports as a Meritocracy
The year is 2005, and reality television has finally gone too far. After shows about flatulent fake fiancées, castaways driven to eating rats, and recipients of radical facial reconstructions, I think we’ve made it to a point where we all can agree we shouldn’t have reality TV interfering. After toying with the very idea of love and […]
Plato vs. Aristotle in the World Series
More than ever before, the 2005 World Series is not just a clash of two teams but a clash of opposing philosophies on the playoffs. You could say that this debate goes all the way back to the original Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, Plato and Aristotle. I’ve always enjoyed the fact that we have […]
The St. Louis Rams:The Tech Bubble of the NFL
The Tech Bubble of the NFL Conventional wisdom is rarely a fickle thing. It often takes generations to upend the most fundamental ways of looking at our world, which makes what is going on right now so interesting. The rise of terrorism, quantum mechanics, and complexity theory, to name a few, are changing the way […]
Politics and the Olympics: The World of 1972
Although we view the Olympics as a coming together of nations for spirited competition, there’s a lot of evidence that others have looked at the Olympics as validation for an ideology. For example, Hitler wished to use the results of the 1936 Olympics as evidence that the Aryan race was superior to others, which explains […]
The Heroes of 1972 | Politics and the Olympics: The World of 1972 | Rethinking The Dream Team
Basketball is a kids’ game. Kids play it, and kids are pretty good at it.”-Mike Krzyzewski The greatest active basketball coach is exactly right. After all of the games he’s been able to watch, Coach K probably knows about as well as anybody the joy that comes from watching the game you love be re-embraced […]
Golf’s Indelicate Imbalance
I took a golf class in college, and one of the course requirements was to purchase and study a textbook on the game of golf. I’m sure it had a lot on golf’s history and some instruction for beginners, but all I remember is this nugget: the book claimed that what makes golf different from […]