Why are refs helping the offense during last-minute comebacks?

Next time you’re watching an NFL game in which a team is out of timeouts and trying to score in the last few seconds, watch the officials.
Tell me you haven’t seen this a hundred times:
An offensive player is tackled inbounds.The quarterback waves frantically for everyone to line up.
Tick-tick-tick….
Hurry, hurry!
The offensive players race to the line. [...]

No truly new sports invented in over 100 years — why?

No new popular sports have been invented in more than a century. Calling all inventors to change that.

Becoming all too predictable, tournament should go seedless

I wouldn’t say the NCAA tournament is getting boring, just predictable.

I’m sorry, Cinderellas, but fairy godmothers apparently no longer exist. Or if they do, they must have lost most of their powers. The fairies might get you into the dance, Robert Morris, but only your wicked stepsisters, the high seeds, are going to be occupying [...]

Way better ways to break ties in soccer, hockey and college football

Imagine if a baseball game were tied after nine innings and instead of playing extra innings the contest was decided by … a home run derby.

Each team would send its five strongest sluggers up to the plate. Each hitter would get three swings at balls lobbed in by his own team’s pitching coach. Whichever team [...]

Newspapers, wise up. Stop giving free advertising to companies that buy sports-venue naming rights

We’ve all grown accustomed the intrusion of corporate sponsor names into sporting events: the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the Toyota Halftime Report, the Chevrolet Players of the game.
Companies pay good money to have their brands mentioned during broadcasts that reach millions of people.The typical NFL telecast starts like this: “Welcome to Qualcomm Stadium for today’s game [...]

The Seven Habits of Highly Annoying Football Telecasts

Football and TV – how can you spoil such a good combination? Let me count the ways.
1. The ground-level view
This is where we get to watch the kickoff return as if we were seated in the end zone behind the returner. This used to be a favorite of directors, who considered it the perfect way [...]

Make NBA All-Star Game a pickup game

NBA should go to a pickup format at the all-star game. Poll: which player would be chosen last?

Refs, Super Bowl announcers miss obvious rule violation on TD scramble

The Steelers’ first touchdown, on a scramble by QB Ben Roethlisberger, was disallowed after the Cardinals challenged. The refs decided the replays showed that Big Ben’s knee was down before the ball pierced the imaginary plane rising up from the front of the goal line. The Steelers had to settle for a a field [...]

Where do we start?

How about the URL, domWis. It’s Wisdom spelled inside out, and that’s kind of the point of this blog. It’s the place to play iconoclast, puncture the conventional wisdom, span the globe and call out the constant variety of errors involving sports.