It's not sports. The only physical activity is pushing keys. It's not getting out there and being challenged physically, emotionally, psychologically. | | | | Before Brady to Gronk, there was JFK to Bobby.
(Paul Schutzer/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “It's not sports. The only physical activity is pushing keys. It's not getting out there and being challenged physically, emotionally, psychologically.”
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| | rantnrave:// TOREY LOVULLO and PAUL MOLITOR are the NL and AL MANAGERS OF THE YEAR. Congrats. But why does it matter? Is the manager of the year award the most useless in sports? What's the criteria for the award? Is it just how much a team beat spring training expectations? How do you prove someone is a good manager? Deciding the best one in each league is a quixotic task. Should voters go on wins? How important is a manager? How many wins is a manager worth? Players win games, even if managers get credit. Most managers get judged by his team's expectations. Out-run them and he's good. Fall short and he's bad. Is it a meritocracy or about narratives? Maybe we can figure out how much contribution a manager makes to a winning team by how often they're being replaced now. DUSTY BAKER, JOHN FARRELL, JOE GIRARDI were all fired despite postseason runs. The center of power in an organization has moved from the dugout to the front office. Franchise alignment is key but are teams also looking for managers who'll follow directions, not necessarily think for themselves? What does that tell us about how much value managers add? Are good football, basketball or hockey coaches more easily identifiable? What's the difference between a good manager and a bad one? Maybe not that much... A WORLD CUP without ITALY, NETHERLANDS, CHILE, GHANA, or the US. That'll be weird. At least ARGENTINA snuck in. Maybe it's for the best the US isn't playing. Sad that we'll never see GIANLUIGI BUFFON play for the AZZURRI again. Italy missing the World Cup is like the French adding cream to carbonara. The WC isn't the same without the blue-bloods. At least we'll still have the ENGLISH to miss a penalty kick. The losers tournament might be fun... UCLA freshman LIANGELO BALL is headed home from CHINA after being arrested for alleged shoplifting, and his father LAVAR BALL didn't start an international incident. This is already better than when BART and HOMER went to AUSTRALIA... Does this make MIKE MCCARTHY MICHAEL SCOTT?... When you thought you were sitting outside the splash zone at SEA WORLD but you were wrong. | | | - Mike Vorkunov, curator |
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 | MMQB |
| The Lions' quarterback can make any throw from any angle, under pressure or on the run. But don't let the bullets he fires and that laid-back attitude fool you: This is no longer a mere gunslinger. Matthew Stafford has earned the NFL's biggest contract with a relentless commitment to improvement: The harder his job has gotten, the better he has played. | | |
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 | TIME |
| The coach writes that when NFL and NBA players protest the national anthem, they should inspire us all to live up to American ideals. | | |
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 | SB Nation |
| Why proper landing form can make the difference between a long career and one that fizzles out due to injury. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| In "Football Manager," dexterity is less valuable than your ability to clear your in-box of scouting reports. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| As NFL business model teeters, commissioner reportedly wants a massive raise. | | |
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 | National Football Museum |
| This morning at the National Football Museum, we have been opening boxes and boxes of balls! It's pretty incredible to see how much footballs have changed over the years to get to the startlingly white, leather versions scattered with branding that we now see as the regular. | | |
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 | Adequate Man |
| oday, we're talking ghosts, cutting boards, wiping kid butts, and more. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| Four men who shaped Georgetown’s new coach. | | |
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 | Deadspin |
| “The Super Bowl has changed since we were last in it,” the late Dan Rooney told the Pittsburgh writer Jim O’Brien in January 1996, in the run-up to Super Bowl 30. “It has gotten a lot bigger. There’s more hype. To be quite honest with you, it is more Jerry Jones.” | | |
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 | Polygon |
| I reckon I've spent three entire months of my life wandering the halls of video game conventions, engulfed in the noise of big game marketing. But sometimes, I get to attend events that are less like gaudy commercials, and more like art installations. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The insurgent media company has built a devoted following of what it sees as “average” sports fans: unruly, occasionally toxic and aggressively male. | | |
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 | New Republic |
| A new book traces the 19th-century beginnings of women's self-defense training. | | |
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 | SportsPro |
| It has become a fashionable phrase, one that has infiltrated the sports industry lexicon quicker than any self-respecting executive can say over-the-top (OTT), direct-to-consumer streaming service. But what exactly is meant by the term 'Netflix of sports'? | | |
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 | The Players' Tribune |
| The same aspects of my game that help me succeed at this level are the same things that cause some people to have a poor impression of me. | | |
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 | Sports Illustrated |
| How do you thrive in a global economy? Tennis provides a source of guidance and optimism. | | |
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 | ESPN FC |
| Italy's historic failure to qualify for the World Cup will linger for some time. But the building blocks are there for a much brighter future. | | |
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 | B/R Mag |
| Texas time, when It was 10:30 a.m. , LeBron James strolled into the Dallas Mavericks' arena for a recent shootaround. In his mouth was a black plastic spoon. But the King was not eating. No, his teeth were clenched firmly around the handle, leaving the round end an impractical distance from his mouth. | | |
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 | High Country News |
| Do women write differently about wilderness? | | |
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 | Vice Sports |
| Meet Kanak Jha, the top-ranked U.S. Men's Ping Pong player and the youngest American Olympian to participate in the Rio Games. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| The ‘Achievement Oriented’ hosts discuss the addictive joy of hunting Power Moons in Nintendo’s amazing new platformer. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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