Sports

Aug. 13, 2010

Rooting for the laundry, 109 A.D.

Even in ancient Rome, according to Pliny the Younger, sports fans were rooting for the laundry.

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Jul. 9, 2010

Losing LeBron

There is not much left to say about the LeBron James debacle. There is enough harrumphing already about James’s narcissism. (Good examples here, here, here or, well, anywhere you look today.) But at least one good thing came out of it: this memorable front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. What a brilliant minimalist design. [...]

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Mar. 18, 2010

Baseball’s Yankee Problem

In baseball, the deck is stacked. It’s worse than unfair; it’s boring.

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Jun. 15, 2009

The Science of Home-Field Advantage

Jonah Lehrer examines why the home team tends to win more often. The answer is more complex than you might think. Several years ago, an innovative study compared the performance of two NCAA basketball teams in the presence and absence of spectators. Because of a measles outbreak, the teams played 11 games while the schools [...]

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