Meandering Thoughts #18
My wife and I are attending the 2024 Big Ten Women's Basketball Tournament at Target Center in Minneapolis. I highly recommend it, this is our second year attending, and surprised…
Snow, Snow Days and Football
Minnesota's reputation for brutal winters is not completely unjust: obscenely-cold temperatures (that's actual not windchill), blizzards which stop (almost) everything, winters where new snow fall is constant and the shoveling…
Meandering Thoughts #16
Team Viewer is, for the third season running, Manchester United's kit sponsor, but only today realized how appropriate: Manchester United's poor defensive record and Team Viewer's dubious security track record.…
Growing Iowa Women’s Basketball
In 1983, I matriculated at the University of Iowa to study computer science. Also in 1983, C. Vivian Stringer was hired as head coach for the University of Iowa women's…
The Citizenship Games
Military battles and wars aside, success in international athletic competitions is often viewed as increasing pride in one's nation. It's all for the sake of the nation, at least as…
Random Learnings #14
European sports list the home team first while US sports list the home team last. I knew that football did that, but didn't know it extended to other sports as…
England Premier League Demographics
Question: aside from truly niche sports, what sports have mass appeal in a single country and nowhere else? Baseball and world football (soccer to us Americans) expanded far and wide…
Graph Databases and Baseball
In my opinion, stating that baseball remains America's Pastime in 2023 is a tough argument to make, as it often is as the third-most popular sport in the United States.…
Las Vegas A’s?
My mother and her boyfriend moved my siblings and me from Brooklyn, NY to Green Island, IA in 1972, Iowa being my home from second grade through college graduation. When…
Games vs. Losses Behind
Most US-based sports show their standings as Games Behind (GB) which purports to show how far behind the leader your favorite team. The formula to calculate is: ((leading-team-win-count - your-team-win-count)…