Most Expensive Car 2018

Over at The Sports Ethicist, I've posted a guest blog post by Chad Carlson. Chad discusses the nature of fantasy football, its relation to real football, and what value fantasy potentially has.  Here is an excerpt: I have been reminded of all of this most recently throughout the first two weeks of the Fantasy Football, er, NFL, season. I am watching the games very closely and I remember which teams win, but my mood changes based not on which teams win but based on whether my fantasy players have done well or not. As such, I am reminded of how Fantasy Football has the ability to alter how we watch and understand the NFL. However, I have also been reminded of how Fantasy Football can be a very fun and playful way of coming to understand and enjoy professional football. This August, my family decided to start a Fantasy Football league. Most of our league’s members were new to Fantasy Football, and a few in-laws were relatively new American football. Read the full post here .

[Cross-posted from SportsEthicist.com ] In the wake of the devastating shellacking of Brazil at the feet of German side, we saw hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of crying and tearful Brazilians. Many sports fan empathized with these pictures. Part of being a fan is suffering through bad losses. Every true sports fan has been on the losing side at one time or another. We know how those Brazilian fans felt. Others raised the ridiculousness of crying over a game, especially a game one didn’t even participate in. It is one thing if you played in a game, gave your proverbial all, and then were overcome with emotion (such as Columbia’s James Rodriguez). But for fans in the stands or out on street to cry strikes many as silly. Something must be really out of whack. There are really two questions here. One: is crying an appropriate emotional response to a sporting event? Two: is it appropriate to have one’s identity so connected to a sporting event/team? The second question arises becau...

I am a passionate soccer fan. I love to play, ref, coach, and watch the sport. I also am passionate about my job - being a philosopher. One of the great blessings of my life is to be able to combine these two things. And I think that at least some of us who are academics and benefit from the public trust invested in us should try to bridge the gap between our scholarship and public life. To that end, I will begin regularly contributing to a new but quickly growing site devoted to soccer, The Boot Room, at http://tbrfootball.com/ . My focus will be on ethical issues that arise in the game. My first piece explains why I, as an Arsenal fan, don't want the club to sign Luis Suarez: http://tbrfootball.com/no-to-suarez-at-arsenal/ Enjoy, and if you are so inclined comment at CLSoccer. I'd love to get an ethics discussion going over there!

Just ran across this essay by Mark Edmundson in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.  An excerpt: All too often, the players who go all out on the field but can't readily turn it off elsewhere are the best players. They're the most headlong, the most fearless, the most dedicated. And when they encounter a modulated, more controlled antagonist in a game, often they, the more brutal players, win. Lawrence Taylor was one of the best players ever to appear in the National Football League. With his speed and ferocity, and his ability to run down the opposing quarterback, he made football into a different, more violent game. But he was often as much in a fury off the field as on. By his own account, Taylor led the life of a beast—drunk, brawling, high on coke, speeding in his car: He was a peril to anyone who came near him. His coach, Bill Parcells, allowed him to cultivate this off-field character, knowing that it contributed to his prowess when he played. If the best players ar...

Although I'm a Brit, I do enjoy watching American Football and have wondered about the possibility of having the opportunity to play it myself one day; but not if this is the outcome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukV86PAXKGA No, the L doesn't stand for 'Ladies' but rather 'Lingerie'. Can someone tell me if this is really serious or someone's (I am presuming a man here) idea of a joke? Indeed, when one of the rules is that all players must wear low cut bra and short briefs, one wonders whether there is any point in having the helmets and shoulder pads if the rest of the body is open for contact. The controversy raised from the clothing regulations for beach volleyball is one thing but this really takes the biscuit. For me the issue is about the part that clothing plays in sport. Surely it should be for the benefit of the player not for the benefit of the spectators. If someone asked me to play rugby in similar attire I certainly wouldn't think that they...

Article in yesterday's NY Times asking that question:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/weekinreview/24sokolove.html An excerpt: There are some who believe that taking physical risks in pursuit of a communal goal — and even watching people take risks — has its benefits. “We learn from dangerous activities,” said W. David Solomon, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame and director of its Center for Ethics and Culture. “In life, there are clearly focused goals, with real threats. The best games mirror that. We don’t need to feel bad about not turning away from a game in which serious injuries occur. There are worse things about me than that I enjoy a game that has violence in it. I don’t celebrate injuries or hope for them to happen. That would be a different issue. That’s moral perversion.” Sean D. Kelly, the chairman of Harvard’s philosophy department, has a book coming out in January, co-authored with the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus of the University of California, Berkeley, that a...

A nice read, especially the story on Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler: Is it okay to cheat in football?

Following an obvious (to all but the referee and line judges) but disallowed goal by Frank Lampard in England's 4-1 loss to Germany in the Football World Cup , FIFA's president Sepp Blatter has now accepted that there may be a place for goal line technology . The argument given by FIFA in the past is that such technology would unduly disrupt the flow of game and possibly prevent the opposition scoring from a counter-attack. However, as was often seen in other sports that are now using technology to determine outcomes, when replays of events show within seconds whether the officials have made the correct decision, it is the refusal of governing bodies to embrace its use that undermine the authority of officials and not the other way around. However, whether FIFA are serious about reconsidering their position that they so definitively took in March, or whether they are merely trying to sooth the sore feelings of those on the receiving end of an incorrect decision is up for quest...