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NFL Teams Can't Stop Scoring. When Will They Stop Running And Punting?
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Are Football Players Really Living Longer Than Baseball Players? Why Grantland's Study Is Wrong
Grantland recently published an article, "Mere Mortals," by Bill Barnwell, which claims that:...
32 Paragraphs About 32 NFL Teams From The <em>Football Outsiders Almanac 2012</em>
The following is excerpted from the team chapters of the always-excellent Football Outsiders almanac. Buy the PDF for $12.50 or order the printed book from Amazon....
Dear ESPN: A 77 MPH Little League Fastball Is Not Equivalent To A 100 MPH Major-League Fastball
An email from reader Tommy Leonardi:...
How Crazy Was The Pacquaio-Bradley Decision? Bradley Had A 0.03 Percent Chance Of Being Randomly Judged The Winner.
Republished from KenPom.com....
Pablo Sanchez Would've Used Steroids, And Other Real-Life Projections For The Greatest Youth Baseball Player In Video Games
As every Millennial knows, Backyard Baseball is the children's computer game in which neighborhood boys and girls play pickup ball with kid-sized incarnations of everyone's favorite major leaguers. The 2001 edition, for example, featured the likes of Mike Piazza and Barry Bonds, traveling across dis...
Math! Says Hero Ball Doesn't Work
Some interesting research from the TrueHoop gang today, meant to address the non-flop-related issue of the 2012 playoffs: Who should be taking those crucial last shots? If the choice is between a covered superstar and an open non-superstar, the numbers say: give it to the open man....
The Best Shooters In The NBA, And Why Field Goal Percentage Can't Identify Them
What does field goal percentage actually tell us?...
How Readable Are Bill Simmons, Jason Whitlock, Rick Reilly, And Other Sportswriters? Science Investigates
The last time we played around with sportswriter analytics, we wondered if we could algorithmically determine a column's author based on his favorite words. (We could!) For a followup, I decided to look at the readability of different writers. Reading level is a nebulous concept and hard to define p...
Bristolmetrics: <em>SportsCenter</em> Said "Fire Extinguisher" More Times Than "Kobe Bryant" Last Week
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Bristolmetrics: <i>SportsCenter</i> Might Actually Have Under-Covered The NFL Draft
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Scott Hairston Hits For Cycle, Mets Get Clobbered
Scott Hairston did that cool and meaningless thing where a player gets all the different kinds of hits possible in one game. Sadly, it was not a "natural" cycle, an even more meaningless occurrence made remarkable by the order in which the hits are made. The Mets, on the other hand, did that uncool...
Bristolmetrics: The NHL Received Twice As Much Airtime As The NFL
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Bristolmetrics: Fidel Castro Received As Many Mentions On <em>SportsCenter</em> As Kobe Bryant
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke. ...
You Can't Stop Kevin Durant, But You Can Force Him To His Right
Durant is known for being able to go left or right, and finish with either hand. The data shows that to be true from near the basket and from midrange. But if you can keep KD on the perimeter, he's significantly more likely to beat you from the left....
Bristolmetrics: Brittney Griner Got More Mentions On <em>SportsCenter</em> Than Any Kentucky Wildcat
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Bristolmetrics: Tiger Woods Rules The <em>SportsCenter</em> Leaderboard
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Bristolmetrics: Dick Vitale Said "Baby" A Mere 14 Times On <em>SportsCenter</em> Last Week
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenterthroughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Bristolmetrics: The Week We Watched ESPN Savor Its Own Farts With "Peytonology"
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenterthroughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Sex Offenders And NHL Success: An Astonishingly Accurate New Metric
I'm not big on advanced stats in hockey. It's not because I don't think they're valuable, but because it's tough to translate the concepts to what I'm seeing on the ice. It's my own ignorance, yes, but for a new generation of hockey metrics to take hold, they'll have to be more relatable to the aver...