Articles

January 8, 2013

North Korea, World Soccer Champions

Noah Davis

Most soccer rankings agree as to which national team is the best in the world. Paul Brown's signature ranking system doesn't. That he has North Korea making a claim to be the world's top team isn't even the strangest thing about his strangely reasonable-seeming rankings.

January 7, 2013

Kennnn-ny, Kennnn-ny

Cee Angi

For the first part of our weeklong celebration of all things Kenny Lofton , we present an excerpt on the illustrious outfielder from the Cleveland Indians (and many, many, many other teams) from the excellent e-book The Hall of Nearly Great.

January 7, 2013

The Incredible Shrinking League

Eric Nusbaum

When the puck drops in a couple weeks after four months of lockout, even less people are going to watch the hockey than did before. It's time for the NHL to finally embrace its status as a marginal sports league. Only then can hockey find its place in the sports ecosystem.

January 4, 2013

Super/Human: Understanding Aaron Rodgers

Rob Trump

Aaron Rodgers puts up superhuman stats season after season, and seems magically averse to making mistakes. It's natural to wonder whether there's something supernatural to all this, but his dominance comes from a very human, if freakily refined, place.

January 4, 2013

Why We Watch: Shane Battier And The Good Life

Bryan Horowitz

Shane Battier has made a lot of money, won a lot of games, and annoyed a goodly number of his peers and NBA fans by playing basketball his way. He has never seemed to care about that. What makes Battier unique among his peers is that he has always seemed uncommonly capable of separating the grind of his profession from everything else, and singularly aware of how vast "everything else" actually is.

January 3, 2013

The Imaginary Empire

David Williams

On the angry, fading, and increasingly imaginary empire of the Dallas Cowboys.

January 3, 2013

Why We Watch: Chris Wilcox, The Long and Winding Road

Alex Skillin

Coming into the league amongst a cavalcade of uber-athletic big men, Chris Wilcox was the type of player that could bend basketball games through his sheer athletic will, leaving smaller, less gifted opponents cowering as he came thundering down the lane. But how he ended up doing a yeoman's job backing up Kevin Garnett is Why We Watch.

January 2, 2013

Royals, Nation

Chris Collision

The Kansas City Royals are a lousy baseball team, and not much better for having traded away some of their best prospects in the offseason's biggest blockbuster deal last month. But, thanks to a combination of corporate fecklessness and unaccountability, the Royals are more depressing as a metaphor than they are as a team.