I'm no defender or PSU or Joe Paterno, but the "vacating of wins" announced in the NCAA's penalty to PSU over the Sandusky child abuse doesn't make much sense to me. I'm glad they've pulled down Paterno's statue and I wouldn't have minded if they'd simply shut down the program (of course, I wouldn't mind if they'd just shut down all Div. 1 ( Read more... )

Lovely story about Curt Schilling and his software company, 38 Studios: link1, longer link2. If you'll recall, Mr. Schilling is a free market enthusiast who worked hard to get George Bush elected and re-elected. Seems, however, that Schilling isn't quite so concerned about gov't handouts when they're coming to him. He accepted a $75 million loan ( Read more... )

Year after year, the NHL playoffs are rife with upsets. Apparently, number 1 seeds defeat number 8 seeds less than 75% of the time. This year, the eighth ranked LA Kings easily defeated the first place Vancouver Canucks. General regular season success is not a great predictor of playoff success -- this year lower seed teams won half the first round ( Read more... )

One thing I still don't understand about Americans is how they get so excited about how well the basketball team from some school they attended 20 years ago is doing in some annual tournament. I honestly have no clue how any of the teams in any sport in any of the postsecondary schools that I attended performed this year. I can imagine catching a ( Read more... )

When I read the story (link) about Tom Brady acting as if losing a Super Bowl game is a good reason to be completely overcome with grief and shock, I'm reminded of a possibly apocryphal story of Wayne Gretzky. I've heard before that a reporter once posed a question in which he referred to the infamous Steve Smith "own goal" loss to Calgary as a ( Read more... )

I think I mentioned earlier that I'm playing hockey this fall. It's been going well, except that on Saturday I ran into traffic so heavy that I missed all but the third period of the game. Otherwise, though, it's been more fun than I'd anticipated. I wish I'd got back into it a lot sooner. I think the key is to find a league at the right skill ( Read more... )

Apparently, 1000+ Penn State students demonstrated in support of Joe Paterno and his decision to do nothing more than the absolute minimal legal requirement when given evidence of anal rape being performed on a 10 year old boy.  Such is the idiocy of sport and celebrity worship in America.

A member of my vast readership asked me to find the definitive answer to the question of what percentage of NHL players are Canadian. Seems there are a few different answers, but I found one (link) that has a very authoritative looking graph so I assume it's most accurate. It claims the answer is 52.9%. This is down from 73% in 1990 and the ( Read more... )

For $170 I can get TV access to every NHL game this year or buy 3 (recently heavily discounted) nosebleed seats for a single Capitals game. I don't understand how people, other than businesses that can write them off as tax expenses, can justify buying season tickets. It would cost me over $8000 to take my family to every game, not including ( Read more... )

Wow, that was the best night of baseball I've watched since Joe Carter's walk off. Crazy ( Read more... )