Milwaukee Brewers center fielder Lorenzo Cain has no regrets about opting out of nearly the entire 2020 season but realizes his long layoff could create some obstacles now that he’s back.
“Definitely the right choice, 100% it was the right choice,” the 2018 All-Star and 2019 Gold Glove winner said Wednesday from the Brewers’ spring training site in Phoenix. “No doubt in my mind. I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
Cain, who turns 35 on April 13, played just five games last year before sitting out the rest of the season. He was one of nearly 20 players to opt out, a group that also included Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher David Price and San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey. Nearly all are returning to action this spring.
… The first ESPN 100 player to commit to a historically black college and university (HBCU), the 6-11 Maker was expected to give the school’s basketball profile a major boost. He told ESPN last summer that he chose Howard with intentions of bringing wealth to the university and the greater black community. However, in the same interview, he also said: “If you’re a one-and-done talent, why not leave? My ultimate goal is to play in the NBA. If that takes me a year, I’m all for it. If it takes me two years, I’m all for it. I know I’m an NBA lottery talent… [so] if I’m good in a year I’m definitely out.”
Howard head coach Kenny Blakeney says he doesn’t know what the future holds for the school’s biggest player ever.
“We’ve talked, and ultimately it’s his goal and dream to play in the NBA and from where I’m sitting, it’s something that he probably will take a look at,” Blakeney said in an interview. “But I don’t know [what he’ll do]… if there’s a team that loves him and gives him a great opportunity, that’s something he should look at, and we support his decision 100%.”
Without the NFL scouting combine this year because of COVID-19, college pro days will become even bigger parts of the pre-draft process this spring.
The NFL released a schedule of those pro days Wednesday. Northwestern will be among the first teams to host its session March 9, Illinois will hold its pro day March 17 and Notre Dame’s is scheduled for March 31.
I’ve actually never seen it happen though. Let them do their jobs! We work for arguably the best of all time and he’s never told us how to do our jobs.
Example: We don’t usually do the 110 test. Coach has done it for a long time and been quite successful. He asked us what we thought and we laid out a process that would help players be at their best for the season and peak for the playoffs instead of for the test. No 110 test!
Spartan Athletics and the Michigan State University Burgess Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation have announced a collaborative partnership that will educate student-athletes on how to sharpen their entrepreneurial mindset, master business basics and learn the process of creating new ventures.
For sports are getting old. And they’re about to get even older.
Modern truth, of course, tells us that Brady is indeed an extreme rarity, able to conjure Super Bowl-winning productivity at an age when most quarterbacks have long since put the playbook into cold storage.
Yet he might not always be. As time ticks forward and medical science and sporting perception shift with it, it is entirely possible that the way future generations think about Brady’s recent masterpiece in Tampa Bay will be with a slightly lessened sense of wonder.
“Quarterbacks will definitely continue to get older and … the average age is really going to start rising,” Josh McHugh, Editor-in-Chief of the Future Of Sports told me. “People are going to be able to turn back the clock on their body tissues. There is this new biotechnology of telomere maintenance …”
Bloomberg Technology, Thomas Gualtieri and Rodrigo Orihuela from
Spain’s top soccer league LaLiga is working with KMPG to sell a majority stake in its technology services unit, which focuses on player analysis and stadium logistics, in order to speed up growth in the business.
LaLiga aims to sell to a financial investor a 60% stake in LaLiga Tech, which has an enterprise value of 450 million euros ($547 million), LaLiga managing director Jose Guerra Alvarez said in an interview. Potential buyers have already been shortlisted and an agreement is expected to be reached by the end of the current season in May, with the aim of launching the new project before the end of 2021, he said.
“In the last seven years we’ve been developing a significant technology capacity for over-the-top streaming services, anti-piracy, as well as players’ statistics analysis and the management of fans’ access to our stadiums,” said Guerra. “We can now compile data to improve their engagement and generate new sources of income for both the league itself and our sponsors.”
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) from
A new preparation technique fabricates thin, silicone-based patches that rapidly wick water away from the skin. The technique could reduce the redness and itching caused by wearable biosensors that trap sweat beneath them. The technique was developed by bioengineer and professor Young-Ho Cho and his colleagues at KAIST and reported in the journal Scientific Reports last month.
“Wearable bioelectronics are becoming more attractive for the day-to-day monitoring of biological compounds found in sweat, like hormones or glucose, as well as body temperature, heart rate, and energy expenditure,” Professor Cho explained. “But currently available materials can cause skin irritation, so scientists are looking for ways to improve them,” he added.
… I spoke with Charles Rodenkirch, president of Sharper Sense, one of the 10 companies named for the accelerator. The startup spun out of Columbia University, where Rodenkirch got his doctorate, to develop neuromodulation. It’s developing a noninvasive stimulation patch that enhances the brain’s ability to accurately process sensory information received from the eyes, ears, and skin, Rodenkirch said.
For everyone from athletes to those with learning disabilities, impaired sensory processing decreases sensory acuity and reduces the ability to understand spoken words and written words, but it also interferes with performance at work, during recreation, and in sports, he said.
“There are clinical causes of impaired sensory processing, like sensory processing disorders … that long-term we can treat,” Rodenkirch said. “But even healthy individuals will have temporarily impaired senses from things like inattention or fatigue. So when you think about athletes at the end of a long race, [it’s about] making sure that they’re not having these types of misperceptions. I’m sure everyone’s familiar with standing in front of a cupboard looking for some sort of ingredient for all your cooking and then noticing that it’s been in front of your face for the whole last minute. So this is kind of a moment where you’re having this type of impaired sensory processing.
1. Expresses gratitude to the rest of us for *allowing* them to operate.
2. Recognizes they’re part of a broader community & have some responsibility to someone besides themselves.
… [Eric] Topol: Well, you have been rocking it there at Yale. I’ve noticed you and your colleagues, which span the gamut from immunology with Akiko Iwasaki, who Abraham and I had a chance to talk with; to Saad Omer on wastewater; and the work you’re doing with Anne Wyllie on rapid saliva.
You’re covering every base of this pandemic. How are you doing it?
[Nathan] Grubaugh: Looking back at this over the past year, it’s sort of crazy to think about all of the different things that we have done. It really stems from the beginning, going back to late February, early March last year, when a lot of us were realizing what was going to hit us. Maybe not everybody fully had an appreciation for it.
… These are indications of how the pandemic has financially paralysed Spanish football perhaps more than any other major league. The effect has been all the greater because Spanish clubs had only recently been so great.
It left a lot of bloated squads with bloated contracts, in a lean market. Spanish clubs couldn’t buy better signings but also couldn’t move players on, preventing overhauls, and creating these dysfunctional teams that had lingering problems. That still doesn’t explain the extent or speed of the drop-off, though, especially when the country’s command of the Europa League seemed to reflect the strength in depth.
It is difficult not to put it down to aura, and approach.
This isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, after all. The great leagues have always risen and fallen, and when they go they tend to go quickly. Serie A very suddenly fell off a cliff after 2007, as they adapted poorly to changing economics and changing tactics. Some of it is similar here.
… Last week, [Gabby] Douglas’s fellow Team USA gymnast Simone Biles joined other Olympians in a campaign for beauty brand SK-II. In a manifesto for the campaign, Biles wrote, “In gymnastics, as in many other professions, there is a growing competition that has nothing to do with performance itself. I’m talking about beauty. I don’t know why but others feel as though they can define your own beauty based on their standards.” She closed by saying that she’s “done competing versus beauty standards and the toxic culture of trolling when others feel as though their expectations are not met… because nobody should tell you or I what beauty should or should not look like.”
Biles speaking out is a step in the right direction — especially considering the fact that a 2016 U.S. study found that the Black women and girls surveyed “avoided getting their hair too wet during exercise because it made their hair ‘puffy’ or ‘nappy.’” Some of the women and girls surveyed admitted that “though they exercise, they refrain from too much exertion in order to protect their hairstyle.”
