Recent quotes:

Giamatti: The Green Fields of the Mind

Maybe it wasn't this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio--not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television--and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind.

What Steph Curry's Three Minute VR Drill Means for Pro Sports

Before any of this begins, Curry dons a VR headset for roughly three minutes. His goal is simple: work on peripheral vision, spatial relationships, and hone focus to start the day. It’s like getting in the mood to play serious basketball. The mental game is powerful. Motivation and momentum are products of the mind, the perception of winning or feeling ready as opposed to overwhelmed. Curry’s routine is all about honing the sharpness of the brain and preparing for the challenges ahead. He uses a similar technique before workouts, extending the session to ten minutes. Exercises are individualized, so there may not be the need to focus as much on the method of playing basketball. Similar to utilizing VR during the offseason, there is a tremendous value to just being immersed in the game.

Q&A With 'The Performance Cortex' Author On Neuroscience In Sports

But the problem — and this is what the teams were kind of stuck on — is that it takes 40 minutes or so. That’s a barrier that, at this point, you can’t really get around. If you’re going to actually get anything out of the technology and get any usable information, you need to have this rigorous approach. You can’t just stick a guy in an EEG, have him in front of a laptop and see 10 pitches. You’re not going to get anything out of that. So it takes time. Teams at this point are so afraid of burdening the players with any extracurricular activities. That was an issue. Until the point where the neuroscience technology gets to be so easy to use and relatively [burden]-free where you can wear it while walking around, I think that’s going to be a hard barrier for entry. Or it’s just going to take a team to say we’re willing to have our players sacrifice some time for what we might be able to get out of it.

The city is a tournament

, may have to do with the sense of competition that city life can inspire: “In a dense city, people have to compete more for resources,” Mental Floss explained, “and investing in education and spending more time raising fewer kids can lead to being a more competitive member of society.” Besides, the more densely populated your home base is, the more likely you can scratch that itch for instant gratification in other ways, like delivery at weird hours of the night.

Putting for par is easier than putting for birdie

A study of over 1.6 million putts shows that professional golfers are significantly more likely to succeed in sinking a par putt than a birdie putt of equal distance and difficulty. Remarkable but true: If the average top golfer putted as well for birdie as he puts for par, he would make an additional $1.2 million a year.

Touching synchronizes NBA teams

The study, which was titled "Tactile Communication, Cooperation and Performance: An Ethological Study of the NBA," was authored by Michael W. Kraus, Cassy Huang and Dacher Keltner. After reviewing broadcasts of games from the 2008-09 season, they concluded that good teams tend to be much more hands-on than bad ones. Teams whose players touched the most often were more cooperative, played better and won more games, they said.

Trail Running and Tenkara Fishing: A New Way to Explore the Backcountry

My trail-running partner Jeff, 45, of Boise, Idaho, and I had run seven miles upstream over a broken-granite trail pinched between vertical canyon walls and the North Fork of the Boise River in southwest Idaho, scouting along the way for large pools that would sustain a wild trout population. Eschewing the heavy tackle of western-style fishing, we each carried a tenkara rod, a 12-foot telescoping rod that collapses down to 12 inches and weighs a scant three ounces.

Tiger Woods shoots career high 85

Tiger Woods hit a new low with a career high. Right when it looked as though Woods was slowly making some semblance of progress, he posted an 85 on Saturday at the Memorial for the worst score of his career. It was three shots higher than the 82 he shot in the second round of the Phoenix Open in January, which led to him taking a two-month break from competition until he could get his game in order. Woods ended his front nine with back-to-back double bogeys for a 42. Needing a par on the 18th hole to avoid his worst score, he hooked his tee shot into the water, flubbed two chips from short of the green and took a quadruple-bogey 8. It was his third round in the 80s as a pro.

Aspiring MBAs slide onto the rink

Ice hockey, an unpopular sport even among people who enjoy sports, is a veritable obsession at some elite business schools.

Former UNC official says pressure led to improper graduate admission of athletes

Former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein’s critical report on the scandal caused Thomas to come forward. Shortly after his report came out in October, she sent the correspondence regarding Waddell to Wainstein, the NCAA and the commission that accredits UNC. She said all acknowledged receiving the correspondence, but after nearly three months with no further contact, she reached out to The News & Observer in January.Waddell’s case points to an issue rarely discussed in college sports – the use of graduate school programs to extend an athlete’s eligibility. There’s far more attention placed on athletes’ qualifications to be admitted as undergraduates and on their academic work toward a bachelor’s degree.

64 Dartmouth students cheated... in an ethics class

Dartmouth College has charged 64 students, many of them varsity athletes, with honor code violations following allegations of widespread cheating in a sports ethics class. […] According to Balmer, in late October, students who failed to attend class passed off handheld devices known as “clickers” to classmates. Those students then used the gadgets to answer questions on the absent students’ behalf to make it appear as though they were present in class, Balmer said.

TV viewing habits

UNC-Chapel Hill Should Lose Accreditation?

Any accrediting agency that would overlook a violation of this magnitude would both delegitimize itself and appear hopelessly hypocritical if it attempted, now or in the future, to threaten or sanction institutions—generally those with much less wealth and influence—for violations much smaller in scale. […]If falsified grades and transcripts for more than 3,000 students over more than a decade are viewed as anything other than an egregious violation of those standards, my response to the whole accreditation process is simple: Why bother?
The new model would codify the college sports world as one “much more, perhaps, of haves and have-nots,” said Peg Bradley-Doppes, the vice chancellor for athletics at the University of Denver, which is not in a Big 5 conference. “It may make the competitive experience more challenging.”
"There's no such call," Klinsmann said, when asked how he would respond if Loew telephoned him to request a mutually beneficial tie. "Jogi is doing his job and I'm doing my job. I'm going to do everything to get to the round of 16. That's what I'm going to do. There's no time to have friendship calls. It's about business now."
“People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil,” Palin said to Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Monday night. “They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates.”
I went back through Sports Illustrated's cover archive and counted the number of covers featuring active female athletes. I only needed one hand