Girls Sports Injuries More Severe

A long, anecdote-laden New York Times Magazine feature, "The Uneven Playing Field," examines the fact that, excluding football -- which girls generally aren't allowed to play -- female athletes are getting injured far more frequently and seriously than their male counterparts. Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of ...

Hillary’s Horse Finishes 2nd, Collapses, Put Down

Sad and surreal: Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton told an Indiana crowd, "I hope that everybody will go to the [Kentucky] derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me. I won’t be able to be there this year -- my daughter is going to be there and so she has strict instructions to ...

Army’s Caleb Campbell Drafted by Detroit Lions

Caleb Campbell, a safety out of West Point, has been drafted in the 7th round of the 2008 NFL Draft by the Detroit Lions. At 218, he's going to be one of the last players chosen this year but, because of the circumstances surrounding the pick, ESPN has been featuring him heavily in its coverage today. The ...

NFL Draft 2008 Live Blog

I'm doing it over at OTB Sports. I'll do pick-by-pick posts in the first round and then summaries thereafter, with an especial emphasis on the Dallas Cowboys' draft. NFL Draft 2008 - Round 1 #1 - Miami Dolphins - OT Jake Long NFL Draft 2008 - Round 1 #2 - St. Louis Rams - DE Chris Long NFL Draft 2008 ...

Congress Condemns BCS

Three Members of Congress are claiming that the NCAA Bowl Championship Series is illegal and demanding a playoff. Forget government corruption or corporate fraud. Three members of Congress want the Justice Department to investigate whether college football's Bowl Championship Series is an illegal enterprise. Reps. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, are introducing a resolution rejecting the ...

Labor Crisis Ahead For NFL

Hard though it may be to believe, a lot of NFL owners are actually strapped for cash -- and are looking at their current deal with the players as the cause: Sometimes financial well-being simply doesn't compute. In a resort hotel where coffee costs over $6, many an NFL owner was kind of crying last week about money. Basically, they don't ...

Virginia School Bans Tag and Touch Football

An elementary school in McLean, Virginia (an affluent D.C. suburb) has banned tag and touch football. Robyn Hooker, principal of Kent Gardens Elementary School, has told students they may no longer play tag during recess after determining that the game of chasing, dodging and yelling "You're it!" had gotten out of hand. Hooker explained to parents in a letter this ...

Texas Rangers Talk to Man in Polygamist Probe

I was a rather bemused to get the CNN Breaking News Alert, "Texas Rangers meet with and then release a man suspected of abusing a teenage girl at a polygamist compound." While I think this would disrupt team chemistry, the Rangers are currently last in the AL West and might have to take that risk. (Shoot, the crosstown Dallas Cowboys are ...

Best NFL News of the Month

Possibly the best NFL news of the entire offseason: Bryant Gumbel will no longer be doing play-by-play on NFL Network games. The NFL Network said Friday it was looking for a new play-by-play announcer to work with Cris Collinsworth on the network’s Thursday and Saturday night games. “I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to call NFL Network games the past two years, which ...

Public Financing of Professional Sports Stadiums

Megan McArdle argues, not unreasonably, that "if the Yankees want a $1.3 billion stadium, they should pay for it themselves." Instinctively, I agree. Practically, however, it's not that simple. Big league sports franchises are an incredibly scarce resource and municipalities are willing to bid for the advantages, psychic and real, that attach to having one. I examined ...

Politics as Football

Terry Mitchell uses a sports analogy to illustrate Hillary Clinton's bid to count the Florida and Michigan delegates: Suppose that the Dallas Cowboys play the Houston Texans in an exhibition game next August and the Texans win. Then suppose that the Texans subsequently appeal to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to have the game counted in the regular season standings. How fair ...

Americans Giving Up Golf

America's love affair with golf has been fading with fewer men willing to devote a huge slice of their free time to the sport, forcing club owners to scramble for new ways to hook customers. “We have to change our mentality,” said Richard Rocchio, a public relations consultant. “The problem is time,” offered Walter Hurney, a real estate developer. “There ...

Congressional Investigations of Sports Scandals

As if Congress didn't have enough work to do in handing out tax rebates to people who don't pay taxes, building bridges to nowhere, censoring the perverts within its ranks, and the like, our esteemed legislators have been devoting an inordinate amount of time lately investigating the internal operation of professional sports leagues. Henry Waxman, for one, wishes he hadn't. ...

Michael Vick’s Dogs

Good news for some of Michael Vick's dogs. Ten of the dogs have been taken in by a dog rescue group in San Francisco called Bad Rap. All ten dogs on well on their way to transitioning from a short brutal lives as warriors under a brutal and sadistic man to lives as happy family dogs. His back resting ...

Petraeus PT Job Interviews

Kris Alexander links a piece in, of all places, Runner's World that gives some pretty good insights into the kind of man David Petraeus is: "When we bring a new guy in, I take him out for a run," says Petraeus. "I'll go out hard, then ramp it up around five miles to try to waste him. I want to ...