Posts Tagged Athletes

Something about televised baseball doesn’t add up

We’ve earned TV treating us like idiots.  This is the nation that gets emotionally invested enough to call a hotline to determine whether Pamela Anderson or Evan Lysacek is the better dancer.

So I’m not surprised, as we start the 2010 baseball season, that broadcasts still feature outdated statistics.  You know what I mean.  A guy steps up to the plate and up pop “batting average” and “RBI.”  Serious baseball analysts prefer new-age baseball stats, called “sabermetrics” because that sounds more official than “tenth-grade algebra.” Read the rest of this entry »

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A really, really large SCAM

Good journalists use sharp, precise language to convey ideas clearly.  Pfft.  What I’m trying to do here is write a column about largeness and smallness issues affecting the private portions of our anatomies without using words that get this column filtered for content.

What does that mean for me, your Sex Column Answer Man?  I’ll employ the standard practice of talking around the issue of hand with vague allusions, as in: “Bob asked the urologist to examine his euphemism.”  But you’ll know what I’m talking about, because every time I make such a reference, I’ll wink at my computer screen.

Question: Why are men obsessed about size? Read the rest of this entry »

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You’re Ghana love the Snow Leopard

Sure the Winter Olympics have been beset by problems like the torch lighting snafu and the murderous luge track and that Vancouver’s been 74 and sunny.  But the viewing audience has largely overlooked these problems, because we’ve overlooked the entire Olympics.

Granted, ratings are high.  But it’s not to watch the majesty of competition.  It’s because, with a several-hour tape delay and selective editing, viewers know they’ll see all the significant wipeouts of the day in real-time and several slow-motion replays. Read the rest of this entry »

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Athletes as students: major problems

It’s the middle of summer break, which means student athletes are preparing for the upcoming season with 12 hours of grueling math drills a day.

Actually, they spend their summers training on the field, preparing to do the serious academic work of catching a football. This seems removed from the mission of the University, which consists of providing a top-tier education to Illinoisans whose parents gave money to Rod Blagojevich. Read the rest of this entry »

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