That sounds like a pretty great idea. Double elimination would certainly reduce some of the randomness too. Read more

If you make it to the second paragraph, you'll see that there are some pretty serious issues. Read more

A huge part of these ideas is to make the regular season more relevant/meaningful. Completely randomized seeding would make the entire regular season 10x more of a complete waste of time than it currently is. Read more

While I wholeheartedly agree that stadium subsidies are a massive scam, shouldn't we be blaming the politicians who willfully hand over the cash and rob taxpayers blind rather than the teams who just ask for it? Read more

NBC's Olympic studio has tighter security admitting non-Americans than the actual U.S. border. Read more

The fact is that these cheerleaders are expendable, and there are people lining up around the block dying for a chance to do the job—and who can do it at a level just as well. The NFL doesn't have to pay them much because they really aren't worth that much. Read more

Yeah, that's the issue with head-to-head cherry picking. You can criticize Roger for rarely beating Rafa, but at the same time, you can also criticize Rafa for sometimes struggling against lower players whereas Fed always beat everyone outside the top 5. Read more

But see, it's all zero-sum. Because Nishikori/Fognini often plays close matches with the top guys, you can use that fact to say that he's elite or reverse it and use it as a sign that Nadal/Djokovic aren't all that elite. It could easily go both ways. For all we know (and I admit this is unlikely), guys from Federer's… Read more

The thing about the "Federer's competition at the start of his career was weaker" argument, though, is that the only way people justify the claim that they were weaker is because nobody emerged from rest. Would we think of Federer higher if, say, Safin had a higher success rate against the likes of Hewitt and… Read more

Connors only played two Aussie Opens in his career. (He won one and made the finals in the other, so on a per-tournament basis, he was actually much better down under.) Read more

You and me both :( Read more

You could also make the case, though—and this is almost never made—that the dominance of the top few seeds over the last few years is just as much a testament to to the lower level skill of players outside the top four as it is to the skill of Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray. We could just as easily be in an era of… Read more