slate Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Map: The United States Of America, By Meat
This is fun. L.V. Anderson and Jess Fink of Slate started with a simple observation—Americans consume more meat per person than any other nation on earth (except Luxembourg, those gluttons), yet most of our official state foods are not meat—and have created a map that assigns a unique meat or meat-...
Get It Right, People: Bobby Knight Didn't Throw A <em>Folding</em> Chair
Despite being one of the most infamous coaching meltdowns in history and either the first or second thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Bobby Knight, there is one crucial aspect of The Incident With The Chair that is consistently misremembered: the type of chair he chucked across the flo...
Why Do Coaches Always Beat Up On The Little Sisters Of The Poor?
The Little Sisters of the Poor are in the news again, but surprisingly not as a sports metaphor for a patsy opponent. But now's as good a time as any to wonder: Where did this ubiquitous metaphor come from?...
Auburn's Field Goal Return Was Even Rarer Than You Think
The insane ending to last week's Iron Bowl had sports fans wondering if any college football game had ever ended in such an improbable fashion. NCAA records show that even in the missed-field-goal-returned-for-touchdown department, Chris Davis's score was especially rare....
How The NFL Used To Punish Teams For Crowd Noise
Last month, Kansas City Chiefs fans broke CenturyLink Field's record for world's loudest stadium. Not long ago, however, that kind of in-game crowd noise was explicitly forbidden in the NFL rule book. This isn't all that surprising, as the NFL has a habit of hating its fans....
Children's Song Will Teach Young Knicks Fans How To Face Despair
The fight for the future fandom of New York's children has finally been memorialized in the instant classic, "Who Do You Like Better, The Knicks or the Nets?" As expected, the lyrics prepare today's youth for the existential agony that is being a Knicks fan, without addressing that other team at all...
Lou Reed Loved Sports, Too
In the days since Lou Reed's death, you've undoubtedly come across numerous eulogies lauding the man and his varied interests. But one side of him you probably haven't heard much about is his sports fandom. This week on Slate's Hang up and Listen, Mike Pesca enlightens us on the topic of Reed's rela...
<em>Sunday Night Football</em> Producer: No Need To "Glorify" Big Hits Anymore
The producer of the NFL's flagship broadcast, NBC's Sunday Night Football, said he's getting super-cautious about showing repeated replays of rough hits, especially those of the helmet-to-helmet variety....
Hammering On Hank
Our man Tommy Craggs's 2007 story for Slate about how the media abuse baseball's home run king:...
At Least One ESPN Program Bans The Use Of "Redskins"
Our friend Josh Levin over at Slate made a fascinating discovery today: Back in the mid-2000s, when ESPN broadcast the finals of the National Scrabble Championship, a total of 170 words were prohibited from being used during the game. One of them was nickname of Washington's NFL franchise, which Sla...
Remembering Ashley Whippet, History's Best Frisbee-Catching Dog
The Ashley Whippet Invitational is the world's premier athletic competition for dogs that excel at catching frisbees, and it wouldn't exist if not for the contributions of its namesake. On this week's excerpt from Slate's Hang up and Listen, Josh Levin takes a look back at the career of the greatest...
True To The Game
Thanks to Kottke I came across this excerpt from Brett Martin's new book Difficult Men. This piece goes behind-the-scenes on HBO's classic, The Wire:...
Why Do We Say Three-Pointers Come From "Downtown?"
If you've ever watched a basketball game, you've heard a play-by-play announcer exclaim something along the lines of, "From way downtown!" after a made three-pointer. But when did this become the go-to turn of phrase for describing three-point shots? On this week's excerpt of Slate's Hang up and Lis...
Matt Bonner Talks About The Time His Team Doctor Was A Dentist
Team doctors are a vital part of any NBA team. They are counted on to manage sprains, guide players through rehab, and help cure any number of physical maladies that might befall members of the team. Matt Bonner discovered the value of his team doctor when he got his head split open by an errant elb...
Roy Hibbert Can Never Play For Team USA, And It's All Jamaica's Fault
The United States Olympic basketball team, finding itself short on centers, wanted to add Indiana Pacers big man Roy Hibbert to its roster before the 2012 summer games. There was just one problem: Hibbert belonged to the Jamaican national team. On this week's excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen ...
Does A Baseball Player's Race Affect The Value Of His Card?
Is a baseball card worth more money if the player on it is white? Perhaps! On this week's excerpt from Slate's Hang up and Listen podcast, Mike Pesca runs through the many studies have been done on the subject of racial bias and baseball card values, many of which posit that racism has long driven d...
Will Anyone Ever Run A Marathon In Under Two Hours?
One of the last remaining grand achievements to be had in the world of competitive running is the sub-two-hour marathon. The current world record—held by Kenyan Patrick Makau—sits at two hours, three minutes, and thirty-eight seconds. But many wonder, is it possible to run a marathon in under two ho...
Who Made The Not-Quite-Baseball-Hall-Of-Fame In 2013?
So we know who made up the class of 2013 at the Baseball Hall of Fame: no one. Well, OK, the veterans committee voted in Hank O'Day, Col. Jacob Ruppert, and Deacon White. But they all died in the 1930s; we wouldn't expect much in the way of induction speeches....