The same science that is improving sports is also improving sports journalism. New technologies, new ideas and lots of innovation create opportunities to tell new stories. It’s true — the best way to understand innovation is to actually innovate.
Marc Overmars, Kluivert junior and ‘Captain Fantastic’ Davy Klaassen – how Ajax are becoming a European force again (The Telegraph, Charlie Eccleshare)
Why athletes should treat the brain like a muscle (The Washington Post, Amanda Loudin)
Statcast Lab: Introducing Sprint Speed (Tom Tango, Tangotiger Blog)
How Easily Can Sharapova Return to the Top of the Game? (Stephanie Kovalchik, On the T blog)
NFL draft 2017: John Ross was fast long before the combine (SI.com, Jonathan Jones)
With boost from Dallas Cowboys, Frisco set to become nation’s sports medicine and research capital (Dallas News, Valerie Wigglesworth)
James Bunce: can a 31-year-old Englishman help USA win the World Cup? (The Guardian, Simon Austin)
Andy Murray admits paying price of battle to reach top of world rankings (The Guardian, Simon Cambers)
The Secret Life of Pitchers (The Atlantic, Will Leitch)
NFL Draft: 40 yards to stardom (Los Angeles Daily News, Ryan Kartje)
On ESPN, Sky Sports and the Normalization of Advanced Stats in Soccer (Richard Whittall, Front Office Report blog)
As MLS grows U.S.-born players face greater competition for roster spots (ESPN FC, Noah Davis)
Is the World Baseball Classic Injury Effect Real? (The Ringer, Ben Lindbergh)
Why Is an NBA Team Trying to Become Tech’s Next Big Incubator? (REDEF ORIGINAL, Mike Vorkunov)
The Upcoming Privacy Battle Over Wearables in the NBA (The Atlantic, Jeremy Venook)
The League’s Continuing March Towards Three Outcome Baseball (FanGraphs Baseball, Dave Cameron)
Kylian Mbappe and Christian Pulisic represent the future of attacking play (ESPN FC, Michael Cox)
Analytics Reach the Rec League (The New Yorker, Matt Giles)
Finding The Superior Athlete: SPARQ Cornerbacks In The 2017 NFL Draft (SB Nation, Blogging the Boys blog)
You’ve heard it before: Reporter asks about formation; coach dismisses question. Where is the disconnect? (FourFourTwo, Paul Tenorio)
Making a manager: the rise of Ronald Koeman from the ashes (These Football Times)
Technical advances and discoveries coming out of research provide a solid base for future storytelling innovation.
Sleep Research Shows Student-Athletes Benefit From Later Start (The Atlantic, Alex Putterman)
Nontoxic, biodegradable orthopedic implant could provide superior support to damaged bones, be safely absorbed by the body (Purdue University, Research Foundation News)
Forecasting Human Dynamics from Static Images (arXiv, Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition; Yu-Wei Chao, Jimei Yang, Brian Price, Scott Cohen, Jia Deng)
Robot volleyball machine helps Japan team practise attacks (New Scientist, Daily News, Timothy Revell)
(University of Illinois, Research News)
Where are all of the Electronic Tattoos We Were Promised? (Edgy Labs, Zayan Guedim)
Flexible processors with atomically thin materials (EurekAlert! Science News, Graphene Flagship)
More things that I read and liked last week:
Why we pretend to know things, explained by a cognitive scientist (April 16, Vox, Sean Illing)
Purdue football and the power of wow (April 12, News Sentinel, Fort Wayne, IN)
Digital Health: Moving from Big Ideas to the Practical Issues of Adoption (April 10, MDDI Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry News, Mike Sanders)
Your fitness tracker can count your steps, but it’s not that good at monitoring your heart rate (April 10, Los Angeles Times, Melissa Healy)
Training: Stress, Fatigue, Recovery, Adaptation (April 10, Joe Friel)