Tag: sports

Posted on
by
Golf gets a new look with high-tech indoor league by Cassandra Cassidy (Morning Brew)
TGL has star power in Woods, but the sports world is waiting to see if young fans take to the new age game, or if it flounders like SlamBall.

Cassandra Cassidy concluded a report in Morning Brew about the TGL, a new indoor golf league headlined by Tiger Woods and Rory McIllroy, by asking an open-ended question: “[T]he sports world is waiting to see if young fans take to the new age game, or if it flounders like SlamBall.” [Cassandra Cassidy at Morning Brew (01/07/25)] I submit for the record that when I started reading the article (I had not previously read about TGL), my first thought was SlamBall. Seldom have I ever felt so on the same weve-length as a reporter. All jokes aside, SlamBall, which is roughly basketball-plus-trampolines (I found it vaguely reminiscent of the NBA Street video games), is neat for the first five-to-ten minutes. I remember when ESPN tried to make it a thing in the early 2000s and I watched a couple of games, but its moment came and went quickly. The TGL is similarly (if not more) gimmicky, but it has the advantage of having the biggest name in golf (still Tiger Woods) whereas SlamBall did not feature any broadly recognizable practitioners. You may be wondering how this is a things I learned post. Learning that TGL exists is not very exciting and I noted that I remember watching SlamBall in the early 2000s. While looking for a good SlamBall link, I learned that ESPN apparently planned to air SlamBall in 2023 and 2024. [Katie Hughes Martin for ESPN Press Room (June 21, 2023)] That was the plan at least, but it does not look like SlamBall 2024 happened. [Wikipedia; January 11, 2025 capture of blank 2024 schedule on SlamBall website] In any event, it was (or is) a solid come-back, I assumed that SlamBall had gone the way of the dodo after the first ESPN rodeo in 2002.

Posted on
by

According to Roger Sherman, under college football rules, “[i]t’s legal to change a player’s uniform number mid-season—all that matters is the roster submitted to the officials on gameday.” This ensures that the opposing team has the opportunity to review the changes. If the change was not noted before the game, “it would have had to be reported to the official and announced” when the player in question takes the field. There are additional rules, such as those governing changing a player’s number to the number of a player at a different position. Conversely, the NFL avoids any issues by prohibiting in-season number changes. [Source: Roger Sherman (12/30/24)] In an earlier article, Mr. Sherman explained that a college football player change jersey numbers in the middle of a game in order to be eligible to catch a forward pass (players must be wearing a number outside of the 50-79 range to be eligible to catch passes). Here, the NFL has a more sensible approach, allowing the Coach to declare an otherwise ineligible receiver eligible before a play. [Source: Roger Sherman (9/27/24), text fragment link]

Things I learned aside, I highly recommend reading the first source article. Mr. Sherman tells a very fun story about selling a fake punt with subterfuge in an otherwise sleepy bowl game between Bowling Green and Arkansas.

Posted on
by
Commercial Gaming Revenue Growth Continues in Q3 2024, Driving Industry’s 15th Consecutive Quarter of Growth - American Gaming Association (americangaming.org)
Americans legally wagered $30.3 billion on sports [in Q3 2024], generating $3.24 billion in quarterly revenue (+42.4% YoY). Recent market launches in Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina and Vermont contributed to this growth.

According to a press release by the American Gaming Association (always working to improve the lives and morals of Americans), “Americans wagered 30.3 billion on sports” in Q3 2024. [American Gaming Association] This of course only counts legal sports betting,  for example bets like those placed on the official gambling app of our nation’s capital. According to the press release, this legal sports gambling “generat[ed] $3.24 billion in quarterly revenue (+42.4 YoY).” I noted while reading the summary that “legal sports betting” generated more revenue than iGaming in Q4 2024 ($3.24 billion vs $2.08 billion) but substantially less than “[t]raditional brick-and-mortar casino gambling” ($12.28 billion). However, both sports betting and iGaming saw significant YoY increases (the latter was +30.3 YoY) while traditional gambling saw a tiny contraction (-0.9 YoY).

Posted on
by

I have not followed the NBA closely since 2016. However, I am working on a few article projects for The New Leaf Journal focusing on interesting NBA points, primarily from when I followed the league closely (1997-2016). See, for example, my pair of articles from last year on the Detroit Pistons’ 2003 NBA Draft and the 1997 trade which gave them the second pick in that Draft. I am in the midst of writing an article on the 2001-02 NBA MVP race, wherein Tim Duncan narrowly won the honor over Jason Kidd, but not without controversy (spoiler for my take: Mr. Duncan was the clear MVP). For that reason, I was happy to see that Basketball Reference, which I use for all of my NBA articles, just added awards voting information to its main player tables. While award voting sometimes goes sideways and specific awards do not age well (e.g., had Jason Kidd won the MVP over Tim Duncan…), I think it adds valuable context to how the media viewed specific players at the time they played.

Posted on
by

Sports Illusrated, fresh off an AI article controversy, selected Colorado Buffaloes college football coach Deion Sanders as its Sportsperson of the Year. Mr. Sanders took over as head coach at Colorado after the football team went 1-11 in 2022. Sports Illustrated noted that the team improved greatly in Coach Sanders’ first season:

As for the actual football? It’s been an adventure. Colorado is massively improved over 2022, when it was by far the worst Power 5 program. The Buffaloes were outscored by 29.1 points per game last year, compared to 6.7 this year

The team lost its final six games to finish 4-8. While that is better than the 1-11 record Colorado posted in 2022, it is still sub-par.

Sportsperson of the Year is a nebulous award, But a college football coach coming off a 4-8 season, regardless of the circumstances leading up to the season, does not seem like a likely candidate. If they want to honor Mr. Sanders, why not wait 2-3 seasons to see how Colorado football looks after Mr. Sanders has more time to build the program in his image and bring in his recruits? What award be left to give Coach Sanders if Colorado is 11-1 at this point in 2025?

On the other hand, if the Sportsperson of the Year award is to honor sports figures who give human and AI journalists things to write about, the eminently quotable Coach Sanders had one of the best cases in 2023.

(I would have submitted now former Texas A&M football coach Jimbo Fisher for earning $76.8 million to not coach Texas A&M.)

Posted on
by

I came across an article noting that Corey Seager of the Texas Rangers was walked three times in a 3-game sweep of the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Divisional Series, breaking Barry Bonds’ 2003 record of 8 for a divisional series. I am not a baseball fan and am not following the playoffs, but I took note of the article since I recently wrote about some of Barry Bonds’ more absurd intentional bases on balls and regular walks records, with a focus on 2001-2007. There is one major difference between Bonds’ 2003 NLDS and Seager’s 2023 ALDS. 6 of Bonds’ 8 walks in the 2003 NLDS were intentional whereas only one of Seager’s 9 walks in 2023 were intentional.