dorks Page index.xml - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Dwyane Wade's Save-The-Date Video Is Just As Corny As Everyone Else's
Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union are getting married on August 30, and TMZ got its hands on the save-the-date video that the couple sent to potential guests. If anything, this is evidence that the gap between Wade and Union and a typical thirty-something suburban couple isn't as wide as you might thi...

How Far Did Rocky Go in His Training Run in <em>Rocky II</em>?
Originally published in Philadelphia magazine....

Measuring The Ridiculous Physics Of Disney's <em>Hercules</em>
Two years ago, our friends at the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective applied their usual rigorous statistical scrutiny to a series of basketball movies. We pick up the idea again with this analysis of Hercules, by Anthony Zonfrelli and Dmitri Ilushin....

I Got Paid To Cheer For Another NCAA Tournament Team, And Other Confessions Of A Spirit Squad Member
Class is in session at my university this week, but I won't be there. I'll be a part of March Madness, but I'm not a basketball player. I'm a member of my school's band, which makes me a member of the "spirit squad"—the peppy umbrella term that also encompasses our school's cheerleaders and mascot. ...

Rockets GM Daryl Morey Has A Counterintuitive And Analytic Reason For Giving Money To Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney is not a really popular guy, except in the Cayman Islands. Lots of people like him because he's not Barack Obama, and lots of people like him because his party's platform aligns with their personal views, but no one really seems to like Mitt for his essential Mittness. But Daryl Morey, t...

The NFL Will Make Its All-22 Film Available To Everyone Next Year, And Football Writing Will Never Be The Same Again
Rejoice, football dorks! The NFL evidently rolled out its Game Rewind 2012 today and announced that there'll be real full-game-length All-22 film in there. This is big....

Science! Proves Ron Artest's Halftime Drinking Hurt His Free-Throw Shooting
Our old friends at the Harvard Sports Analytics Collective took a long-overdue look at whether Ron Artest's early-career practice of drinking Hennessy cognac at halftime hurt his play. "Sure enough during the 2001 and 2002 seasons his free-throw percentage during the third quarter was 67.21% compare...

Was Scott Howard Actually Better Than Teen Wolf? A Statistical Investigation
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the past week, they've been applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). The series concludes wi...

Calculating The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air's Usage Rate, And What It Can Tell Us About Ball Hogs
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the next few days, they'll be applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). Today we have some b...

It’d Take Trey Parker A Million Years To Lose, And Other Statistical Oddities Of <em>BASEketball</em>
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the next few days, they'll be applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). Today: The offensivel...

Compiling The Absurd Box Score For <em>Space Jam</em>; Or, Shawn Bradley Sucked Against Cartoons, Too
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the next few days, they'll be applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). Today: Space Jam by t...

An Advanced Statistical Analysis Of Jimmy Chitwood's Basketball Performance In <em>Hoosiers</em>
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the next few days, they'll be applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). Today: Calculating Ji...

Do Not Adjust The Orange Balance On Your Monitor: The Faces Of Harvard-Princeton
On Saturday, Harvard and Princeton faced one another in a one-game playoff for the Ivy League title. The game ended with a splendid buzzer-beater, and now Princeton, a 13 seed, has the honor of losing to Kentucky on Thursday. (Harvard's in the NIT—the Cornell of tournaments. How fun.)...

On Eve Of Princeton-Harvard Championship, Vikram Spills Tiger Blood
This week we've followed the story of Harvard and Princeton, two storied crew programs, somehow stuck playing a basketball game Saturday for a spot in the NCAA tournament. You've heard from Brad and Vikram, and Jasper and Colin, all smack-talking because Greg Mankiw and Lars Svensson can't do it on ...

Bill Simmons, Malcolm Gladwell, And The Dirty Secret Of The MIT Sports Analytics Conference
The Joke That Started It All Shortly after 9 a.m. Friday, in a big gray conference room in a big gray convention center, 1,500 people—mostly white, mostly male, mostly clad in business suits—roar with laughter. Jeff Van Gundy, the former Knicks and Rockets coach and current ESPN analyst, has just cr...

Harvard-Princeton War Of SAT Words Escalates, Yale Joins The Fray
Big basketball game Saturday afternoon, folks: Harvard (23-5, 12-2 Ivy) and Princeton (24-6, 12-2 Ivy) fighting to the death on Yale's court, a neutral site, for the Ivy League's March Madness bid. Extra high stakes for Harvard, who hasn't appeared in the tourney since 1946, back when RFK was punchi...

Harvard And Princeton Will Fight Old-Fashioned Douchebag Standoff In Saturday Playoff
Big news for our high net worth contingent: Princeton defeated Penn in the Ivy League's regular-season finale tonight, meaning—you guessed it—the Tigers will battle Tommy Amaker's Harvard squad for the conference's automatic berth in a playoff at Yale on Saturday....

Minor Leaguers Mercilessly Teased For Their Giant, Goofy Heads
Big helmet or tiny head? Francisco Cervelli fans (hey, he has some!) have been wondering that for a few weeks now, but in the coming years an entire corps of MLB players may look like futuristic, yet dorky space travelers....

Calling All Baseball Dorks! Bill James And Joe Posnanski, In Conversation!
They're talking about Randy Johnson, but does it really matter? I've written slash fiction about this very moment. [SI.com]...

We congratulate Jamie Mottram, baron of all matters AOL Fanhouse, on his new job as Senior Editor of Blogs And Community at Yahoo! Sports. He starts next month. Though sorry, Jamie, but you can't curse there either. The comment section isn't as horrible, though. [Sports Business Daily] (The Big Lead...