Author Archive | Prof. Mitch Berman (University of Texas), guest-blogging

I started on Monday with a puzzle – what might be said in favor of enforcing at least some rules of sports less strictly at crunch time? – and tried to develop a solution. That solution turned out to be two solutions, or two variants of a single solution. All competitive sports, I have claimed, […]

Recall Tuesday’s contention: Competitive sports go better, all else equal, insofar as contest outcomes reflect the competitors’ relative excellence in executing the particular athletic virtues that the sport is centrally designed to showcase, develop and reward. Call this “the competitive desideratum.” If something like this is so, then we should identify the athletic challenges that […]

First, let me thank the many readers who have commented these past few days. I did not know what to expect when I accepted Eugene’s invitation to blog about my article, and have been impressed by, and grateful for, the number and incisiveness of the comments. Unfortunately, there have been too many to permit me […]

At first blush, we might suppose that the analysis I provided yesterday applies, mutatis mutandis, to foot faults in tennis and therefore that tennis officials should call foot faults less strictly at crunch time. But this conclusion would be premature. It could be that foot faults in tennis differ from fouls and similar infractions in […]

Although the Serena Williams episode provoked my interest in the puzzle of temporal variance, I’ll start not with tennis, but with other sports in which a practice of temporal variance might seem more secure – sports like football, hockey, and basketball. In each, whistles for minor physical contact toward the end of tight contests predictably […]