Dive into the archives.

• die hard index

  Russ Maschmeyer, a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York, created this beautiful visualization to find fans who martyr themselves to root for their team: The Die Hard Index determines the quality of a sports team’s fans, or more specifically, the degree to which fans will continue to buy tickets, even when [...]

  11 May 2010 Sport, design; no comments. permalink   

• Google ads are jerks

  At least to Jets fans. From the sponsored ads on an article on ESPN.com: Eric Mangini’s IQ=138 Think you’re smarter? Try to beat his score here. [URL redacted] . . . Avg NY Jets Fan IQ=102 What’s Yours? Can you beat it? Take the 3-minute Quiz Now! [URL redacted] And now Mangini has left for [...]

  08 Jan 2009 Sport; one comment. permalink   

• clay bennett has last laugh, smells of diarrhea and evil

  Oklahoma businessman Clay “fecal-blended hemorrhage” Bennett, having successfully oozed out of Seattle with a stolen NBA franchise like the pus-filled sack of rectal effluence he is, has dubbed his victim “the Oklahoma City Thunder”: “It’s hard to keep a secret,” team chairman Clay Bennett said after stepping to a podium on the ground floor of [...]

  03 Sep 2008 Sport; one comment. permalink   

• tmq: shark-jumping for a decade

  Gregg Easterbrook has had a mostly entertaining column in Slate—and then in ESPN’s Page 2—for the better part of a decade. Most of the time, his fifteen-page football rants are enjoyable. But sometimes, one just wishes he’d shut up. He’s back for the shiny new 2008 NFL season with a shiny new column. He starts [...]

  14 Aug 2008 Nerdery & Sundry, Sport; no comments. permalink   

• the decline (and fall?) of the national league

  The WSJ has an article on the decline of Major League Baseball’s National League in recent decades. Unlike Gibbons or Will, the author is quite straightforward: The plight of the NL seems rooted in a chain of events that began in 1973 when the AL adopted the designated-hitter rule — which allows for the pitchers [...]

  11 Jul 2008 Sport; no comments. permalink   

• the nationals’ new ballpark

  28 Apr 2008 Sport, photos; no comments. permalink   

• the nba is dead to me

  I used to defend the NBA against those who thought college basketball was the superior incarnation of the game. Fan disillusion after a major point-shaving scandal in the college game, after all, was the reason the fledgling Basketball Association of America (BAA) was able take off as a viable league. Fittingly, NBA Commissioner David Stern [...]

  26 Mar 2008 Sport; no comments. permalink