Sports

Ezra Klein's an Athletic Supporter

I'm a fan of liberal blogger Ezra Klein, but this may be the worst sports metaphor ever: Since all political commentary is powered by sports analogies, let's take football here. The Clinton team is playing as if this will be decided on points. But in fact, it will be decided by judges, some of them empires, some of them representatives of the crowd, some of them big donors to the stadium. And those judges are terrified of pissing off their loyal fan base. The strategy here should be making the ... (read more)

2008/03/26

Blade Runner Can't Compete in Olympics

When he was 11 months old, Oscar Pistorius had both his legs amputated below the knees because of a congenital condition. Now 21, Pistorius is a sprinter who runs on artificial legs called blades, as he did in July at the Golden Gala competition. Pistorius can't compete in this year's Summer Olympics in Beijing because those blades have been ruled an unfair advantage. It's a shame he won't be allowed to compete. Seeing him round the turn in the 400 meters and take off, moving at world-record ... (read more)

2008/01/15

Hail to the Racial Slur

Joe Gibbs abruptly resigned today, ending his second stint with Washington's football team on significantly less successful terms than the first. In posting the story on SportsFilter and the Drudge Retort, I made the conscious decision to avoid referring to the team's racist mascot name. Original lyrics to Washington's team song: Hail to the Redskins Hail Vic-tor-y Braves on the Warpath Fight for old Dixie Scalp 'em, swamp 'em -- We will take 'em big score Read 'em, weep 'em, touchdown -- we ... (read more)

2008/01/08

College Football is Huge in Clemson's Death Valley

While looking for a photo of the entrance to Clemson's Death Valley football stadium, I found a bizarre form of photography that's exemplified by this picture: Take a close look at the larger sizes of Steven Bower's image, which is called a tilt shift, and let me know whether you think it's a photo of a real scene or a miniature. ... (read more)

2007/07/16

Keep Your Eye on Jason Kottke

Jason Kottke found something unexpected in an Online Journalism Review article about page design that used eye-tracking tests on 255 people. When looking at a photo of baseball player George Brett standing at home plate while batting, men and women had different points of attention. Women focused on the area around Brett's face, while men divided their time between the Hall of Famer's face and his crotch. I've added eye-tracking capabilities to Workbench to determine if these results are ... (read more)

2007/03/14

Fuzzy Zoeller Sues Over Libelous Wikipedia Page

Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller has sued a Florida company for libel over edits made to his Wikipedia entry from one of the company's computers. Although I reported one of Wikipedia's best-known gaffes -- project founder Jimmy Wales edited his own page to remove credit from a former colleague -- I'm a defender of the project. I think it's an amazing experiment in collective fact-gathering that deserves to be nurtured, no matter how many different ways Seth Finkelstein proves it should've been smothered in ... (read more)

2007/02/22

Saturday at the ACC Championship Game

I attended yesterday's ACC Championship game between Wake Forest and Georgia Tech in Jacksonville, picking up two $125 lower deck tickets near the 50-yard-line. I wanted to see whether seats that good at Alltel Stadium are worth the price. The game wasn't even close to a sellout, so there were giant packs of unhappy scalpers outside. One thing I didn't need to hear as my son and I walked in: "Lower deck seats, $5!" The section we were in, 237, has its own entrance and a Carrabba's, Outback ... (read more)

2006/12/03

Fired North Texas Coach in Black Mood

My alma mater, the University of North Texas, made national news this past week when a booster for its football program threatened to withhold a $1 million donation after the team fired Coach Darrell Dickey. In nine seasons, Dickey led the Mean Green to four straight Sun Belt Conference championships and the first bowl trip since 1959. He's one of the most accomplished coaches in the school's modest football history, but two losing seasons and criticism over recruitment led to his ouster. He's ... (read more)

2006/11/21

If You Had Told Me in 1986 ...

Trying desperately to find a silver lining in the loss of the House and likely loss of the Senate, rabid Republican blogger Hugh Hewitt writes: ... if you had told me in 1986 that 20 years later there would be a Republican president facing a 20 seat Democratic majority in the House and a two seat Democratic majority in the Senate -- and that the Soviet Union had collapsed -- I'd have cheered long and loud. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. That's a very weird use of the "if you had told me x ... (read more)

2006/11/08

You Stay Classy, Indianapolis Colts

Indianapolis Colts punter Hunter Smith took a weird shot at the Jacksonville Jaguars after their game Sunday: Jacksonville is like a stand-up comic who can only use vulgarity and curse words because he lacks intelligence and lacks class. He really doesn't have anything to say. Our intangible is our class and our intelligence. A team that gets personal fouls the way they do, the roughing penalties, they just don't have any material. That may be the most haughty insult I've ever heard from an NFL ... (read more)

2006/09/26

Read More Entries