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Harvard's Basketball Team Works Better Than Harvard
Sometimes Harvard Yard literally smells like bullshit. The grass takes a regular beating from the weather and the footsteps of mathematicians eager to find the shortest path to class. So, a few times a year, to spruce it up for the brochures and the visiting parents, the grounds crew gives it a fat ...
“Are You A Nerd?” And Other Questions We Asked Our Fellow Nerds At The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
Last weekend, I went to the sixth annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Attendance has gone up every year, and it gets harder and harder to get a feel for who actually goes to this thing: Why were they there? Were they still all sabermetrics geeks? High-powered businessmen? To find out, I di...
The Ravens Won The "Fuck" Bowl, Too: An Analysis Of Twitter Profanity During The Super Bowl
Twitter reports that the Super Bowl generated 24 million tweets last night. Most of them were terrible, so I just looked at the ones that said "fuck." ...
The Deadspin 2012-2013 Fantasy Football Awards
A few months ago, we compiled a Fantasy Football Almanac of results from 1970 to 2011. Now we're ready to update the almanac for the 2012 season, with awards for the best players and some new data as well. Take a look, then add your comments, analyses, quibbles, and rants in the discussion below....
<em>Inside The NBA</em> Got A Little Gay-Baity Last Night
During halftime of last night's Clippers-Suns game, the Inside the NBA crew had some fun at the expense of Charles Barkley, who mentioned during the second quarter that he gets his eyebrows waxed. The segment began with a mocking Shaquille O'Neal getting the same treatment, and it quickly devolved...
![A Vote For Roger Clemens Was A Vote For Barry Bonds: The Politics Of The Hall Of Fame Ballot, By The Numbers [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/18azwl896gdgujpg.jpg)
A Vote For Roger Clemens Was A Vote For Barry Bonds: The Politics Of The Hall Of Fame Ballot, By The Numbers [UPDATE]
Hall of fame ballots follow their own own internal logic. For instance, regardless of how they feel about steroids, almost all voters agree with both or neither of the following statements:...
Do Foreign Footballers Really Dive More?
This Regressing entry is brought to you by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Today: how Premier League diving might be a cultural phenomenon....
Who Are The Computers Voting For? We Ask Siri And Others For Advice
I'm about to go vote, and I haven't read up much on the issues. I don't know which candidate loves America more or who has the bigger penis. So I asked the only objective sources I could find: computers. In case you're still on the fence, I've copied their advice below. ...
Nate Silver's Braying Idiot Detractors Show That Being Ignorant About Politics Is Like Being Ignorant About Sports
In case you haven't been hanging around the benighted corners of the political internet lately, there's an idiotic backlash afoot against Nate Silver, the proprietor of the FiveThirtyEight blog who made his name as one of the sharpest baseball analysts around....
The Giants Sure Use A Lot Of Sabermetrics For An Anti-Sabermetric Team
The Giants' World Series title is the latest point of retreat for the desperate sportswriter still looking to slam the use of statistics in baseball. In today's San Francisco Chronicle, Bruce Jenkins insists that this championship team got there through hard work, gristle, faces, eyes, shoulders, k...
The Many, Many Tweets Referring To Alex Rodriguez As "Fag," "Pussy," And "Gay-Rod"
Alex Rodriguez is both straight and male, but you wouldn't know it from the insults lobbed his way on Twitter over the past few days. Here are a few hundred examples....
Even If Icing The Kicker Doesn't Work, It's Better Than Never Icing The Kicker
Mike Tomlin iced the kicker twice last night, but with an unfortunate twist: First, he called a timeout on his own kicker, Shaun Suisham, who proceeded to miss a 54-yarder. Then he stopped the Titans' Rob Bironas just as he was about to attempt the game-winning 40-yarder. Bironas waited two minutes ...
Bud Selig's New, Random Postseason Knows The Soul Of Baseball Better Than You Think
Out of the 22 playoff games in the first two rounds of the MLB playoffs, 12 have featured at least one team on the brink of elimination, and six of those will have been sudden death for both teams. Bud Selig's new postseason format puts a lot more weight on single games, which has led many players, ...
How The Crazy-Ass AL Division Races Unfolded: Visualizing Momentum
The Athletics and the Yankees clinched their respective division titles on the same day, but the paths they took to get there were very different. The A's budget freight train slammed through a Rangers squad that had sat atop the AL West for over 170 consecutive days, while the Yankees barely edged ...
When Good Statistics Go Bad: The Case Against The Case Against R.A. Dickey
R.A. Dickey, objectively speaking, is the greatest human being in history. His knuckleball destroys cities and he climbed a huge fucking mountain. But should he win the Cy Young Award?...
This Is The Angriest America Has Been At Referees Since The 2006 Super Bowl
What would motivate you to Google "referee?" Nothing good (unless you're counting sexy bedroom role-play costumes, in which case, uh, nothing good). The above Google Trends graph (updated last night) shows the relative frequency of "referee" searches in the United States since 2004. The term tends ...
Just How Tight Is The AL Playoff Race?
With three weeks to go in the season, over half of baseball is still in the race. Seventeen teams are within five games of a playoff spot. You might think that's mostly due to the new second wild card, and that's the case in the NL. With all three division leaders comfortable and the Braves safe at...