But what position will he play? Back in 2013, that was the main question on the minds of NFL front-office types about Tyrann Mathieu. That uncertainty, even more than the suspension and off-field concerns that dogged the Heisman finalist, kept one of the best players ever to come out of football factory Louisiana State University from being selected before the 69th pick in the 2013 NFL draft.
But what position will he play?
Seven years later, NFL teams are still asking that question. But gone is the tone of curiosity and skepticism. It’s been replaced with anxiety and fear. Because, for the Chiefs’ opponents, the dilemma that is Tyrann Mathieu is no longer theoretical. Any hope of beating the defending Super Bowl champs depends on knowing not only where on the field Mathieu will be — but what he will be.
St. Mary’s varsity boys’ lacrosse coach Josh Field grew up playing golf, but once he reached Newton North High School, he had to put that sport on the back burner to concentrate on football and lacrosse.
So when the MIAA officially postponed football to a “Fall II” season this school year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Field encouraged his son, Jackson, a sophomore at St. Mary’s of Lynn, to seize the chance to play golf this fall.
“When this opportunity came up, as a parent, I encouraged [Jackson] to make the most of it,” Field said of his son, who plays varsity lacrosse, basketball, and football at St. Mary’s.
… As years have gone by, more research has suggested that post-exercise recovery work may not have the effect on muscle soreness, range of motion, or next-day performance that we had previously believed it did. Furthermore, it has been shown that traditional arm care work, consisting of scapula and rotator cuff exercises, is better served when performed with a higher intensity and lower volume, to better match the demands of pitching.
Our traditional recovery protocol has consisted more of low intensity, high volume endurance type work. When you consider that throwing itself, especially on moderate to high-intensity days, is a fatiguing exercise, it doesn’t seem wise to have athletes perform more endurance work immediately after. Intuition aside, the research had added up to the point where it was clear that to best serve our athletes for their performance and their health, we needed to make a change.
Taking this into consideration, we identified some issues we needed to resolve
The Australian Open will only go ahead in January if agreement can be reached with local authorities to allow players to practice while they undergo quarantine in Melbourne, tournament director Craig Tiley said on Thursday.
Canadian Running Magazine, Ben Snider-McGrath from
Markus Rummel got into endurance sports in 2012, and for a while, he had no issues fitting training into his schedule. But he was in university at the time, and after graduating, finding a job and getting married, he struggled to work in as many training sessions as he had before. “I had way less time to train, so I wanted to be more optimal about it,” he says. To do this, he created an app called AI Endurance that uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to prepare personalized training plans to help athletes optimize their workouts and perform at their best on race day.
New technology can quickly and accurately monitor glucose levels in people with diabetes without painful finger pricks to draw blood. A palm-sized device developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo uses radar and artificial intelligence (AI) to non-invasively read blood inside the human body.
“The key advantage is simply no pricking,” said George Shaker, an engineering professor at Waterloo. “That is extremely important for a lot of people, especially elderly people with very sensitive skin and children who require multiple tests throughout the day.”
About the same size as existing glucometers, the rectangular device works by sending radio waves through the skin and into blood vessels when users place the tip of their finger on a touchpad. The waves are then reflected back to the device for signal processing and analysis by a machine learning algorithm (principal component analysis), telling users within seconds whether their blood sugar has gone up, down or remained the same.
Alabama coach Nick Saban has tested positive for COVID-19 and is currently in isolation at home, the university announced Wednesday.
Saban, 68, is not experiencing any symptoms of the coronavirus, he said in a statement. The announcement comes just three days before No. 2 Alabama is set to meet No. 3 Georgia at home in one of the biggest games of the regular season.
Dr. David Lintner has spent the last 26 seasons as the Houston Astros team doctor. But this is no typical season for the team, the doctor or Major League Baseball. … “They know me since I’ve worked with them forever, but they usually only see me once a week in a normal year,” Lintner said. “During this month, they have seen me every day, all day. I end up being in conversations, jokes and pranks — things professional athletes do.”
If the NFL is going to survive the season without a shutdown due to COVID-19, they need to start treating infected players the way hospitals treat infected patients, said Dr. Mark Siedner, an infectious disease clinician and researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital.
As the Patriots and Tennessee Titans get back to the field after extended layoffs due to coronavirus outbreaks, Siedner warned that it’s gut-check time for the NFL.
“When you have an outbreak, you have to play by the rules,” he said.
… “Anytime you have a bubble, which is basically just…a fixed population inside a closed environment, you’re limiting the individuals that are allowed in and out of your environment,” says James Borchers, a physician who specializes in sports medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “When you’re able to do that and you can sterilize the environment, you’re going to have a better opportunity with a smaller group like that to limit the spread of the virus.”
For the NBA, this meant that team members had to quarantine for two days in their hotel rooms upon arriving in Orlando and receive two negative tests for COVID-19. After entering the bubble, players had to wear masks and practice social distancing when possible. Few people, including reporters, were allowed into the bubble, and their contact with players was limited. Anyone who left without approval had to quarantine for 10 days.
… The son of a white mother and Black father, Battier is one of few African Americans working in an analytics department in the NBA, a job that more likely would go to an MIT grad (read: white) than a former player (read: Black). The lack of diversity in analytics is a well-known problem, and Battier is hoping to make it more accessible as the rest of the world grapples with systemic racism.
Battier spoke with The Undefeated during the 2020 Finals about his current role with the franchise, the power of data, and the greatness of James and Kobe Bryant.
… “Alex has a very bright mind that helps him think logically and look for innovative ways to utilize data,” [Matt] Edwards said. “He has all the tools.”
That much was obvious when Stern, at Edwards’ suggestion, competed in the Big Data Bowl, a National Football League-sponsored analytics competition for students that was held just before February’s draft combine.
From a data set, Stern wrote an algorithm that calculated exactly how much space each individual offensive lineman was creating for the running back on each play. The algorithm standardized their grades, taking specific situations into account.
A skilled team that got eliminated early in the playoffs by a tougher opponent a few years removed from a Stanley Cup Final loss signed a forward with his name engraved on the trophy and a big defenseman hungry to win after years of not being in contention.
Rewind to 2019 and early 2020 and that description fits the Tampa Bay Lightning, who added some grit and toughness to their talented core and went on to win the Stanley Cup. In the present day, it’s the Nashville Predators, who are among the many contenders copying Tampa Bay’s blueprint to try to get over the hump.
The Lightning effect was clear as soon as NHL free agency opened.
… An obvious culprit is the increase in penalties awarded. Last season, the International Football Association Board introduced new, more clear-cut, much stricter handball rules. While Premier League referees essentially didn’t enforce the new regulations last year, FIFA has taken over the league’s application of Video Assisted Referee (VAR). With every potential offense now under an instant-replay microscope, the rate of penalties awarded has skyrocketed: It’s 0.66 per match this season, up from 0.24 last season and 0.27 the season before.
More and more of those penalties have come from handballs, too. According to data from the soccer consulting firm 21st Club, 24 percent of penalties this season were for handballs — up from 21 percent last year, 14 percent the year before that and 8 percent in 2017-18. The new rules and their sudden enforcement have required defenders to change the way they approach the game when they’re inside their own penalty area.
“We need to adapt to these rules,” Loran Vrielink, a private tactical coach for a number of top players across Europe, told FiveThirtyEight.
Making Sense Of: Colleges, and College Sports, in a Pandemic
As American universities were ramping up in August to (in many cases) bring students back for in-person classes, a longform article in Nature described the situation as a “vast unplanned pandemic experiment.” The experiment has played out in ways that are diverse and unique, as diverse and unique as America’s institutions of higher education. Smaller, wealthier schools in remote areas have done the best. Large public universities in red states have done the worst. (My assessment.)
College sports has become a fulcrum within the universe of American sports. It is a core aspiration on which youth sports is based. And it is an essential training ground for American professional athletes. The vast pandemic experiment has dramatically changed college life, and it has changed college sports. On some campuses athletes with COVID-19 are spiking. At other campuses, non-athletes are noticing, sometimes protesting, the preference that athletes get for COVID testing. The situation is far from copacetic. Yet, the key stakeholders in college sports, namely youth and professional sports, don’t seem willing to help create solutions.
University administrators, the ones who oversee the entire school, are even more unsettled than the athletic department administrators, though the co-dependence can’t be helping either group. The overnight need for widespread online student course instruction and for student de-socialization dropped the value of both the college education and the college student experience, but universities had become deeply dependent on the tuition revenue. Cost reductions for students has been minimal, in large part because university admin costs have skyrocketed as bureaucracies grew in step with massive tuition increases. NYU Stern Business School professor Scott Galloway frequently makes the case that elite universities will have little trouble since those places can just activate their waiting lists to maintain demand. Higher education institutions with less-than-elite profiles (think “safety schools”) will be hurt financially, possibly devastated. Some big state universities are calling for emergency aid from the federal government, knowing that state government resources for higher education have been dwindling for decades.
The business model of the American university is on a course correction, and part of the course correction should be an overhaul of U.S. college sports. Fixing both matters to more than just the universities. U.S. Olympic Committee executives have expressed their dire worry that the pipeline of emerging world-class athletes will dry up as university cutbacks eliminate inter-collegiate Olympic sports. The Aspen Institute’s Project Play is frequently trumpeting declines in youth sport participation, a trend that has gotten worse in the pandemic. Pre-college athletes face uncertain futures.
The list of things to fix in college sports is long. Overall, priorities that support career administrators at universities have not been in the best interests of the students who come and go from the institutions. Youth and professional sports have their own issues but these groups need to be aware and responsible stakeholders when it comes to the course correction that is needed for college sports to thrive. And fixing college sports is a crucial part of the larger, more daunting course correction that is needed at American universities.