Posts by Michael Bertin
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![Old Trafford]()
Will the New Noise at Old Trafford Make a Difference?
When this slipped out late last week, it barely picked up much traction because, well, it seemed weird. Plus it surfaced on Friday, and Friday is where news goes to die. Manchester United has hired a sound engineer to improve the atmosphere at its home ground, Old Trafford. They want it to be louder. This […]
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![Ivory Coast]()
The Ivory Coast, the Africa Cup of Nations, and Why You Don’t Want a Golden Generation in Football
The man who once stopped a civil war was helpless to stop a ball. It wasn’t just Didier Drogba. Everyone in an Ivory Coast shirt was helpless. Nigerian midfielder Sunday Mba’s 78th-minute run from midfield ended with him running out of options. So he had a shot. The ball took just enough of a deflection […]
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![Lionel Messi]()
The FIFA World XI Is Terrible
There were two travesties in Zurich on Monday night. Three if you count Lionel Messi’s suit. Although as adjectives become increasingly useless in describing his play, few things could say “Yes, I’m that good” like wearing a polka dot suit to your sport’s Oscar night. The first was, again, the complete lack of any hardware […]
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![Stan Kroenke]()
Is This Man Ruining Arsenal?
On Tuesday, Arsenal lost on penalties to Bradford in the League Cup. This is astonishing because Bradford is in the fourth division of English football and Premier League–side Arsenal is still good (or they might be … they are in the last 16 of the Champions League, after all). And it’s not every day that […]
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![Luiz Felipe Scolari]()
Is Luiz Felipe Scolari the Right Man to Manage Brazil?
Last week, Brazil lost the 2014 World Cup. Not the job of hosting of the event, which they apparently aren’t exactly succeeding at right now, though it seems that every host nation of a major sporting event falls behind schedule on stadium and infrastructure projects. But given that over the weekend FIFA held the draw […]
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![Nick Saban]()
Alabama’s Chances of Playing for the BCS Championship Are Better (But Less Deserved) Than You Might Think
Despite Alabama’s loss to last year’s Big 12 also-ran Texas A&M, reports of the SEC’s death are greatly exaggerated. And entirely premature. That conference is like the sunrise. You can’t stop it. From a statistical standpoint, there is only a 1-in-7 shot that all three of the remaining unbeatens in college football — Notre Dame, […]
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![Darrell Royal, Emory Bellard]()
The Man Who Made Darrell Royal
Marcel Meyer was a 17-year-old kid playing football at Westfield High School in Houston, Texas, when the program got a new head football coach. “It was a huge deal because our high school paid him $100,000-a-year salary, plus a ‘company car.’ The other academic teachers were pissed. No surprise there.” While six figures is still […]
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The True Cost of Winning in MLB
With their elimination at the hands of the Tigers, the Oakland A’s once again fell victim to the dreaded small sample size. The things that make them successful over 162 games are less reliable over a five-game divisional series. Less esoteric is the reality that they had to face Justin Verlander twice in those five […]
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What’s the Matter With Charlie Weis’s Kansas?
Things are already not going well for Charlie Weis at Kansas. After KU got beat by TCU over the weekend, only the most Panglossian of Jayhawks could look at the school’s 1-2 record and say, “Hey, we’re halfway to matching last year’s win total.” Kansas’s 20-6 loss to TCU appears deceptively respectable when you normalize […]
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![Tyler Chatwood]()
The Colorado Rockies’ Paired Pitching Experiment
The Mets are bad. The Mets also have the misfortune of being bad in New York, where it’s hard to escape notice. One of the people who noticed was radio talk-show host Mike Francesa; and, after a sweep of the Mets at the hands of the Colorado Rockies, he went on the air and let […]
