Sports is a mechanism of control. If people didn’t have sports they would be a lot more disappointed with their role in society. There would be a lot more anger or stress about the injustice of poverty and hunger. Sports is a way to channel our energy into something positive. Without sports who knows what half of these kids would be doing? | | | | Lionel Messi has the world at his feet.
(Laurens Lindhout/Soccrates Images/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Sports is a mechanism of control. If people didn’t have sports they would be a lot more disappointed with their role in society. There would be a lot more anger or stress about the injustice of poverty and hunger. Sports is a way to channel our energy into something positive. Without sports who knows what half of these kids would be doing?”
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| | rantnrave:// CHRIS MULLIN and PATRICK EWING coached against each other Tuesday night. GEORGETOWN vs. ST. JOHN'S, the new generation. That makes me feel old and I wasn't even born when they were in college. Also makes me miss the old BIG EAST conference. I'm a LUDDITE when it comes to college sports. The old Big East was catnip for a college basketball fan. The HOYAS, the RED STORM, SYRACUSE, UCONN, VILLANOVA, PITT -- I looked forward to that conference tournament as much as the NCAA TOURNAMENT. This isn't some kind of sepia-toned desperation for the past. Just a remembrance of a fun time in college sports. Conference expansion has robbed the sport of rivalries and broken up institutions. So it goes. I'm sure there are fans clamoring for the SOUTHWEST CONFERENCE or when the BIG 10 was 10 schools. JOHN THOMPSON. LOU CARNESECCA. JIM CALHOUN. JIM BOEHEIM. The six overtime game between 'Cuse and UCONN. The 1985 FINAL FOUR with three Big East teams. The conference was able to bridge generations. No use in sticking to the past, though. College sports is about renewal. It's just fun to look back every once in a while... Two of my favorite stories Tuesday were about perfume and running shoes. The smell of tennis and the search for good looking shoes. I'll never waver away from my NEW BALANCE shoes again, I don't care how they look... The BASEBALL HALL OF FAME voting is broken if ANDRUW JONES gets eliminated from the rolls after one year. He's at risk of finishing under five percent -- the cutoff to stay on for another year. Even if you don't think he's a Hall of Famer, he deserves to stay on the ballot. And he is a Hall of Famer. Tenth all-time in WAR among center fielders. Sixth in home runs. Maybe the best defensive player ever at his position. There's such a long backlog of players worthy of votes and philosophical dissent amongst voters that it risks crowding out great players too soon... The NBA has more presidential candidates than the DEMOCRATS... This is why I don't let my OLYMPICS rivals get my drinks... Counter-programming the Olympics. | | | - Mike Vorkunov, curator |
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 | Longreads |
| Perfumers evoke the elegance of an imagined tennis game, not the stench of a real one. | | |
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 | Sports Illustrated |
| Not all of the wounds Lindsey Vonn has suffered have come on the slopes. But she has learned from them all, and still has the speed to make her last Olympic run a golden one. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| As the Boston Celtics star prepares to play in London, he talks to Donald McRae about race, the NBA and the death of his best friend. | | |
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 | Racked |
| Right now, I own two pairs of running shoes. They've carried me through hundreds of miles over the past five months, on dozens of runs and one marathon. They've been on my feet in the summer heat, during the fall rain, and in the recent freezing cold winter temps. | | |
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 | Yahoo Sports |
| Bear or G.O.A.T.? Saban's success in a changing modern game makes his sixth national title all the more impressive. If he hasn't already surpassed Bear Bryant, he will soon enough. | | |
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 | ThinkProgress |
| NCAA concussion lawsuit looms over college football’s biggest celebration. | | |
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 | CBSSports.com |
| The rebuilding dilemma in baseball is knowing when to pull the plug on tanking. | | |
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 | Men in Blazers |
| Rog and Davo are joined by "Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver for the MiB Television Show's Boxing Day Craptacular on NBCSN. They talk John's love for Liverpool, the Reds season so far, and make predictions for the year ahead. | | |
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 | WBUR |
| Lael Wilcox is one of the greatest living athletes in a sport you’ve probably never heard of: self-supported, ultra endurance bike racing. But Lael's story is about more than just the physical costs of competition. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| Buck up, sports fans. Follow these steps, and cord-cutting won’t be as hard as it looks. | | |
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| Sports Illustrated |
| To beat Georgia and tie Bear Bryant with his sixth national title, Nick Saban needed his best coaching job yet--and a true freshman QB savior. That's what made this 26–23 overtime win in Atlanta the sweetest championship yet for the architect of Alabama's dynasty. | | |
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 | FanGraphs |
| "Scouts vs. stats" is an expression that boils a complex, gray issue into clear black-and-white sides,in a way that's familiar to those who follow political media. In the reality of front-office decision-making, however, this "debate" has been settled for years and the obvious answer was always "both." | | |
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 | Compete |
| Overwatch League kicks off tomorrow (Jan 10) in the Blizzard Arena in Burbank, CA with a trio of matches starting at 7 pm Eastern. Blizzard will broadcast the league's games via both Twitch and Major League Gaming. Preseason matches only broadcasted on MLG, which had the dubious benefit of no available viewership statistics. | | |
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 | AL.com |
| Alabama 26, Georgia 23 in OT wasn't just another title fresh off the assembly line. Nick Saban was forced to find the fountain of youth. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Football’s newest market inefficiency -- spending big on free agents -- used to be seen the opposite way. | | |
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| Yahoo Sports |
| He's 18, throws 102 mph, and is ready to make a difference in his community despite not reaching his ultimate goal yet of one day playing in the majors. | | |
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 | FiveThirtyEight |
| For most of Monday night's College Football Playoff championship game, a fifth Alabama title in nine years seemed unlikely. Georgia went into the game as the Crimson Tide's mirror image, and spent the first half outplaying Bama at its own game. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| With the President in attendance at college football’s national-championship game, sports fans and protesters debated his accomplishments. | | |
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 | The Players' Tribune |
| The thing about Chicago basketball is, it’s not even a sport. I mean, it is, but not like that. It’s more like a fight. These dudes at the park, they will f*** you up. | | |
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 | Polygon |
| A former writer on "Westworld" and author of "How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe" on "Universal Paperclips" and "Subsurface Circular." | | |
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 | YouTube |
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