Infographic: How Should I Feel About The Latest Sports Scandal?

You can't pick up a magazine or turn on the radio these days without hearing about a new scandal in the world of sports. This player's career was a front for a massive interstate drug smuggling operation; that league's games were fixed for the benefit of gamblers; players and owners from that other league were sniffing powdered rhinoceros horns from the glands of gamblers on a private boat in international waters. On and on it goes.

So when a new scandal strikes, a question naturally arises: What should I think? You're busy; before you start tracking all the follow-ons to that 12-part, 137,000 word report alleging that some student-athletes at Big State University may not be quite as devoted to particle physics and John Ashbery as their coaches have led us to think, you want to know if you should care. Thus, the Scandal Matrix. We've precisely arranged notorious scandals along a three-dimensional axis accounting for their notability, their novelty, and the all-important sense of fun, and will be regularly checking back in to put new scandals in their place.

Image by Jim Cooke