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Here at FiveThirtyEight, we tend to think statistics can add to our understanding of sports. (What a surprise!) From the more mature sabermetric movements of baseball and basketball to growing ones in soccer and hockey, evidence-based examination has led to new thoughts and ideas about the games we love. But there can also be a dark side to analytics. Among other potential pitfalls, interpreting the numbers incorrectly can lead to…

So alarmed were insiders about how dysfunctional the International Olympic Committee-run process had become, one senior figure in the war on drugs with experience of several major events told The Telegraph at the time that it was “by far the worst I’ve seen”.  The report by the IO, chaired by leading British sports lawyer Jonathan Taylor, also revealed that of a planned 5,380 drugs tests, only 4,882 took place. Worse still, just 47 of a planned…

The results are in. Almost half of the 10,000 visitors to our poll yesterday voted that it’s the ‘right call’ by NASCAR to limit Premier Series drivers from competing in the XFINITY and Camping World Truck Series. We had a feeling this would be the response after fans have been frustrated by Sprint Cup regulars, *cough* Kyle Busch, from dominating in the XFINITY and Camping World Truck Series. Following up the 48 percent…

Night races compound the problem. Majors said he once lost his car in the Rolex 24 sports-car race at Daytona. Joey Meier, Brad Keselowski‘s spotter, walks around the garage every Friday morning to verify what sponsor each driver’s car has, including his own, and he does that in part because of what happened during a NASCAR XFINITY Series practice years ago.   As cars hit the track, Meier waited and waited and waited…

DOHA Competitors at a world cycling competition in Qatar this month may have enjoyed the hospitality but they also struggled in a swirl of heat, wind, dust and humidity. If the presence of such top cyclists as Peter Sagan and Marc Cavendish for the UCI Road World Championships fed the Gulf state’s ambitions of becoming an international sporting capital, the event also highlighted some of the strains the country could…

Vine, Twitter’s platform full of six-second looping videos, is dead. Long live Vine. If you’re a devoted follower of Sports Twitter, you know how important Vine is. It was everyone’s go-to platform for sharing sports highlights, and everyone used it because it was so easy. All you had to do was rewind your DVR to a moment you thought needed to be shared, film your TV with your smartphone, write…

Vine announced Thursday that it will be shutting down in the near future, after making the internet a better place for three years. We used Vines constantly at SB Nation, for sports highlights and … other things. (Please read that sentence with Ginuwine’s “Pony” running through your head.) Now, we wish it farewell with a few of our favorites, in no particular order. Seth’s Vine Corner COKE HORSE: ♫ This…

Here at FiveThirtyEight, we tend to think statistics can add to our understanding of sports. (What a surprise!) From the more mature sabermetric movements of baseball and basketball to growing ones in soccer and hockey, evidence-based examination has led to new thoughts and ideas about the games we love. But there can also be a dark side to analytics. Among other potential pitfalls, interpreting the numbers incorrectly can lead to…

Ken Griffey Jr. is having a good 2016. Earlier in the year, Griffey Jr. was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. On Thursday, Griffey Jr.’s enshrinement into another part of baseball lore became official, as he was announced as the cover athlete for the video game MLB The Show 17. Here’s the official announcement video: Griffey Jr. will be a playable legend in the game, which is set to…

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Hot-hitting Cubs second-baseman Javier Báez. Photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images According to Major League Baseball, the league’s namesake object has an objective reality. “The ball shall be a sphere formed by yarn wound around a small core of cork, rubber or similar material, covered with two strips of white horsehide or cowhide, tightly stitched together,” the official rulebook reads, and it shall weigh in at about five ounces with a nine-inch…

ANN ARBOR – During his college search, Jordan Nwogu was looking for the right fit athletically, but more importantly, the right fit academically. The Ann Arbor Pioneer senior had received interest from several Division 1 schools during the past year to play either baseball or football. However, when the University of Michigan offered him a scholarship to play baseball, Nwogu’s search quickly ended. He committed to Michigan on Sept. 3…

The public often wants athletes and coaches to stay out of politics. But many sports figures are Americans, too, and in this highly contentious campaign, they’re weighing in with endorsements and donations for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. While Trump has received some money and many endorsements from high-profile sports figures, Clinton dominated the number of donations from people in sports, according to a CBS Sports analysis of data at…

Starting next year, Africans will be able to watch more American sports than ever before. Kwesé TV, a sports website owned by Econet Media, has partnered with American cable TV channel ESPN in a deal which will see Kwesé exclusively air hours of licensed content from ESPN including its iconic SportsCenter show across 19 countries in Africa. Kwesé and ESPN will also collaborate to launch an African edition of the…

Only one professional sports team is named after a 300-year-old devil. When the Colorado Rockies moved to New Jersey in 1982, they traded mountain peaks for the boggy swamps surrounding the Brendan Byrne Arena, and needed a new nickname. Local newspapers ran a contest, and more than 10,000 fans chose the nickname Devils – named after the state’s most twisted, violent legend. Why would New Jersey, the second-most Catholic state…

USA TODAY Sports’ Lorenzo Reyes looks at the three biggest story lines heading into Week 8.