getty Page 38 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Crappy Manaus Pitch Is Being Spray-Painted Green
The turf at Manaus's Arena Amazonia is still going to be shit for Saturday's England-Italy match. It's going to be sandy and uneven and third-rate. But worry not: It's going to look great on TV. Today, workers laid down green spray paint to cover the brown parts....
Do NBA Teams With Whiter Fan Bases Have Whiter Rosters?
In the NBA of yesterday, an owner could be explicit about structuring his roster around the race of the players. "No team should be all white and no team should be all black, either," Cavs owner and legendary boob Ted Stepien told a reporter in 1980. And why not? "Blacks don't buy many tickets," he ...
The Falcons Will Be This Year's <em>Hard Knocks</em> Team
The Atlanta Falcons announced today that they will be featured on this year's Hard Knocks, which comes as something of a surprise. ...
Luck Is Hockey's "Bullshit Dump"
That up there is Bruce Bennett's photo for Getty, zoomed in to unsustainable resolution, but still clearly showing the millimeters of shaved ice that brought the loose, potentially game-tying puck to a halt with 1:11 left. The notoriously shitty surface at MSG tends to increasingly make itself known...
The Brilliance And Madness Of Dutch Wizard Johan Cruyff
From Eduardo Galeano's classic, now available as an ebook. We'll have excerpts throughout the week....
Hey, At Least Getting Bashed In Group Play Won't Break Algeria's Heart
Algerians, like many former French colonies, are used to watching some of their most promising potential internationals playing for the old rulers. Algerian fans will probably cheer Karim Benzema due to the French-born striker's Algerian heritage. They might also rue, or maybe sardonically snicker a...
What FIFA Gets Right About Nationality
In April, Manchester United midfielder Adnan Januzaj finally picked his country. The oddsmakers were right, and he selected Belgium over a palette of other national shirts: Albania, Serbia, and Kosovo (through his parents), Turkey (through his grandparents), and, if you asked the English, maybe even...
Here Are Some Fun Ways To Lose Money Betting On The World Cup
The FIFA World Cup is Earth's single greatest sporting event. It also happens to be Earth's best excuse to gamble at noon on a weekday for no reason passing degeneracy. And given that the World Cup is the rest of the world's Super Bowl, and any Super Bowl-level event is at its heart a chance to make...
Can South Korea Make Another Surprise Run In Brazil?
South Korea are one of Asia's traditional soccer powers. They and Japan have bossed the continent for decades now, coasting to World Cup to World Cup, where they've tried to prove that Asia's got real talent. In Brazil, South Korea have a chance to once again show that though Asia's a historically w...
Let's Stop Calling Belgium A Dark Horse
It's not a perfect fit, but Belgium are the closest thing we have to a true dark horse in this World Cup. They won't step onto the pitch as a mysterious bunch of kids in cleats—indeed, the whole reason they are so intriguing is because everyone expects these Belgians to be running things in a few ye...
Why A Great General Manager Might Be Worth More Than Mike Trout
Baseball is a strange market, forever correcting itself in strange ways. For a long time, the most obviously central ability for a hitter—getting on base—was overlooked, until suddenly it wasn't, and it occurred to teams that there were probably all sorts of other valuable skills they were neglectin...
Donald Sterling Releases Statement On Why He's Now Suing The NBA
OK, Donald Sterling is really suing the NBA this time, we think. He might change his mind in two days. Who knows. Anyway, he released a statement today explaining his reasons for suing....
Man On Twitter Deftly Trolls Gun Nuts
Today, after yet another school shooting, some gun nuts with access to Twitter barfed out one of their three or four defensive responses in these situations by channeling Charlton Heston and daring the vast expanse of the internet to take their guns away. One guy on Twitter found these people—some w...
Can You Guess Which Country Americans Picked To Win The World Cup?
In a World Cup poll, Americans picked their own country to win it all, because of course they did....
Can Ghana Break American Hearts Once Again?
Ghana locked up a spot in Brazil by first cruising to the top of their African qualifying group, then demolishing Bob Bradley's Egypt over 2 legs by an aggregate 7-3 score line. The Black Stars allowed only 6 goals in their 8 qualifying games, while scoring 25 of their own. They were led by veteran ...
Portugal's Eusébio Was As Gifted On The Pitch As He Was Important Off It
From Eduardo Galeano's classic, now available as an ebook. We'll have excerpts throughout the week....
Portugal Might Be Ronaldo And The Rest, But That's Still Scary Good
Portugal made a surprising run to the semifinals of Euro 2012, narrowly losing out to Spain on penalty kicks in a game many thought the Portuguese deserved to win. It marked the second straight tournament where Portugal were eliminated by their archrivals, as Spain won a 1-0 Round-of-16 matchup in S...
The Browns Turned Down <em>Hard Knocks</em>
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!...
Bosnia And Herzegovina Could Break Some Hearts In Their First World Cup
After generations spent competing on the international stage for various iterations of Yugoslavia, after gaining independence in 1992, making it through the Bosnian War, then getting FIFA recognition mere days after the war's conclusion, the nation known as Bosnia-Herzegovina will finally make its f...
Study: Napoleon Complex Is Real; Shorter NBA Refs Call More Fouls
A new study in the Journal of Sports Economics finds that shorter NBA refs may call more fouls, in an excellent manifestation of the Napoleon Complex. Paul Gift and Ryan Rodenberg looked at 4,463 regular season games from 2008 to 2012, and—controlling for variables like race and experience*—found a ...