At one point in the highly entertaining Champions League match between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan a couple of nights ago we were treated to an extended period in which Bayern’s back four pas...
During the 2002 World Cup, Allen Barra, a great American sports writer (and acclaimed reviewer of books in general) published an infamous anti-soccer rant. The target of the rant was an alleged �...
https://thissportinglife.net/2010/07/31/is-soccer-an-inferior-spor/
In Part 1 of this little series, I argued — well, asserted — that an appreciation of the individual and team defensive plays and strategies is an essential component of sports connoisseurship...
https://thissportinglife.net/2010/07/15/soccer-vs-american-sports-part-2-in-praise-of-defense/
We’ll get back to the 3rd part of the series on the ethics of diving soon. In the meantime, while the World Cup is still fresh, I’m starting a new series of reflections on some of the ways fa...
https://thissportinglife.net/2010/07/13/soccer-vs-american-sports-part-1-dissing-defense/
A busy travel schedule has allowed me to see most of the matches so far, to keep up on the press and bloggers, yet not to comment much myself. But now the real tournament has begun, in the second...
https://thissportinglife.net/2010/06/28/world-cup-diary-3-the-beginning-of-the-end/
The passionate debate shows how much we all interpret baseball players as competing against all of their baseball ancestors as much as they are against their rivals this season. The blown call ma...
My friend Andrew Potter (author of the sizzling new book The Authenticity Hoax) tweeted a link on Friday to a compelling contrast between the two biggest stars in the world of ice hockey, the ...
https://thissportinglife.net/2010/05/04/why-is-hockey-analysis-almost-always-so-lame-part-1/
In the last post I sketched out some of the reasons why Tiger fans (and some Tiger haters) like golf. And by “like” in sports I don’t mean merely “enjoy” it or have a “revealed prefer...
https://thissportinglife.net/2010/04/11/more-on-what-makes-golf-great-and-not-so-great/
Tiger Woods could be the poster child for This Sporting Life. When I began this blog I identified four broad areas of interest for me at intersection of sports-philosophy-sociology. Thinking abou...
https://thissportinglife.net/2010/04/11/what-can-we-learn-from-tiger/
On Tuesday the owners of the NFL franchises agreed to change to the rules for how to deal with playoff games that end in a tie after “regulation” time. (On average, about one of the 11 games ...
https://thissportinglife.net/2010/03/23/old-nfl-overtime-rule-not-unfair/