No more NU football

Northeastern University has decided to drop its football program (or look here in case NU doesn’t keep announcements long term). Here are their records (the team started in 1933):
1930’s : 24-20-7
1940’s: 14-29-2
1950″s: 38-30-4
1960’s: 52-29-1
1970’s: 39-53-1
1980’s: 36-66-1
1990’s: 39-70-1
2000’s: 47-67
Total: 289-364-17
They did have a good run in the 1960’s (they even went undefeated in 1963 and went to a [...]

Wow–Bolt, fast

Usain Bolt must be from a different planet or something:
After being pushed close to the finish line in the 100 on Sunday by Tyson Gay as Bolt won in a record-setting 9.58 seconds, Bolt had to do the pushing himself in the final straightaway of the 200 on Thursday. Running alone — strikingly alone — [...]

The Fenway neighborhood and the Red Sox

The Boston Globe has an article about John Henry’s wedding:

When they were initially drawing up plans in May, Henry’s event planners had asked only that a few spots on Lansdowne and Ipswich streets be blocked off for parking to fit in generators that would power the reception, which took place under a massive outfield tent. [...]

Full court press?

This article by Malcom Gladwell on innovation has been getting a lot of attention, especially one of the main elements of the article: how a full court press helped a junior high basketball team do better than expected. In the background there’s the obvious point that you don’t play to an opponent’s strengths.
I saw this [...]

Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox–oh my

The Boston Globe has a story about the scheduling of the Bruins and Celtics playoffs. It notes that there could be 5 days where they both play at the same time and on three of those nights the Red Sox also play (for example, tonight the Red Sox start at 7:10, the Bruins at 7:30, and [...]

Baseball 2009

The 2009 baseball season is now underway (the Braves beat the Phillies 4-1 yesterday–I link to the Boston Globe to help prevent its demise). The Red Sox will have to wait a day though as its raining quite hard here in Boston.
My predictions are:
AL East: Tampa Bay
AL Central: Cleveland
AL West: LA
AL Wildcard: Boston
NL East: NY
NL [...]

No more Olympics in China

One of the ways China convince the Olympic committee to hold the Olympics in China was by saying they would be more open and would allow protests. It now turns out that they allowed none:
In the end, official reports show, China never approved a single protest application — despite its repeated pledges to improve its [...]

Lis Hartel

I read the obituaries because you find people who have done amazing things that you’ve never heard of. A case in point is Lis Hartel who died on February 12. She won two silver medals in the equestrian sport of dressage in 1952 and 1956 (she also won the world championship in 1954). What makes this [...]

2009 Spring Training

Now that the Super Bowl is past (and it was quite a good one, although I don’t really like either of the teams), I start to look forward to baseball. The first step is truck day, when the trucks with equipment leave for the team’s spring home in Florida or Arizona, which has already happened for some [...]

Red Sox will want more

The Boston Globe looks at a study comparing how Boston and Denver made out from the World Series in 2007:
The Mile High City was able to boost its municipal coffers by $940,365 during the playoffs from taxes generated by fans eating at restaurants, staying at hotels, and patronizing local businesses. Boston, where most taxes generated [...]

Utah #1?

Right now there are 5 teams that could be considered for the top spot in college football: Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, USC, and Utah. If Texas wins (which I expect) then there will be four.
Here are the teams that were in the top 11 before the bowls (with their record, how they did in their bowl, [...]

Yankees argue for salary caps

Ok, not really but this:
After a stunning turn yesterday, Red Sox fans are waking up this day before Christmas with a new hardball villain. Mark Charles Teixeira is a New York Yankee after agreeing yesterday to a contract that will pay him roughly $180 million over eight years, in the process jilting the Red Sox [...]

Red Sox Feel Our Pain

Sometimes the rich and powerful show exactly how little they understand the common people:
“We have been the beneficiary of fan support and fan loyalty,” said Larry Lucchino, the team’s president and chief executive, waving a list of ticket prices at Fenway, last year the most expensive in baseball. “And at a time when our fans [...]

Olympic Medals per Capita

As I said I might (the number of medals are from the Wikipedia link there and the populations come from the US Census Bureau), I have compiled the number of Olympic medals per capita for all the countries for all the Olympics. I was a bit lazy–some countries are gone, others are split, and so on, [...]

Numbers Stuff

The Numbers Guy has two posts that I find interesting:

the first wonders who was the most successful nation in the Olympics. He links to a WSJ article that ranks the countries that won a medal by a few categories. We find that The Bahamas won the most medals per capita and Zimbabwe won the most per [...]

Olympic Sportsmanship?

I haven’t watched too much of the Olympics, but I wouldn’t be surprised by this (via here):
China’s determination to win as many gold medals as possible – what one Western reporter snottily, and bizarrely, brands its ‘gold medal culture’ – is held up as evidence that the ruthless and robotic Chinese, with their well-oiled ‘sports machine’, [...]

Bolt Sets Record in 100

Wow. Not only did Usain Bolt break the record in the 100 meters, he did it while easing up:
It was there for all to see, too, in his “How good am I?!” mugging for the cameras with about 20 meters to go, already certain victory was steps away — outstretched arms with palms up, slap [...]

China Plays Politics With the Olympics

China is always saying that people shouldn’t play politics during the Olympics (especially in terms of Tibet or Darfur), but they seem to like to do it (via here):
What happened a few days ago was that someone in Beijing tried to change the first two characters of the agreed-upon name from “Zhonghua” to “Zhongguo.” The [...]

Football’s New Offense?

I’m not sure if this has been talked about and I’m just asleep, but a California high school football team is trying out a new type of offense, they call it the A-11 (it looks like they’re trying to promote it, they even have a web site with instructional videos and so on). Here’s their description [...]

China and the Olympics

The Olympic ideal is that people will get together openly to compete without regard to politics or conflict. This is why China says there should not be a boycott based on their actions in Tibet or Sudan or other places. Of course it’s all just a cover, China has no problem:

keeping out entertainers it doesn’t [...]