Madness and fairness in March (and beyond)
Reading Time: 3 minutes Humans loath unfairness. It’s baked into our DNA. That’s just one of the many reasons the NCAA basketball tournaments every March don the moniker “Madness.” The famous psychology experiment The Ultimatum Game captures this perfectly. Player A is given a…
Soccer unveils the white card, and I’m conflicted
Reading Time: 4 minutes
I wanted to like it. I really did. But I just can’t.
Soccer’s first white card was given during a game in Portugal’s professional league this past weekend. To compliment—or, maybe, counterbalance—soccer’s punitive yellow and red cards, the white card…
Thinking about flopping
Reading Time: 5 minutes With all the World Cup excitement, fans and non-fans alike continue to engage in an evergreen disagreement: is ‘flopping’ unethical or just another skill and tactic we should value? After all, fans want to know whether to cheer for a…
The reality of fantasy sports
Reading Time: 6 minutes Since ESPN offered the first internet-based fantasy baseball in 1995, Fantasy Sports—and, especially, Fantasy Football—have become ubiquitous. Advertisements encourage viewers to log on now to win hundreds of thousands of dollars playing. In 2016, it was estimated almost 60 million people played…
From father to son: Sport as a catalyst for wisdom
Reading Time: 3 minutes In college, I read Umberto Eco’s richly complex and insightful novel, Foucault’s Pendulum. A particular line jumped out at me at the time: “What we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments when they aren’t teaching us.…
The ground ball statistic: Hidden glory grounded in the seemingly mundane
Reading Time: 5 minutes OnlySky · The ground ball statistic: Hidden glory grounded in the seemingly mundane Lacrosse fans from all over the world will tune in to watch the NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship, featuring a Maryland team poised for history. But lacrosse aficionados…
