Nerds on Sports

Here’s some Boston-related sports news:

First, some kind of marathon. The ESPN coverage hints at but doesn’t really spell out how close the final half-mile was between the Russian, Alevtina Biktimirova, and the Final Fantasy VII villain Dire Tune. Tune and Biktimirova covered that last eight blocks in a dead-out sprint. They wove in and out of each other’s paths. People screamed. It was epic.

On the men’s side, the race belonged to four-time winner Cheruiyot from at least Newton on. He led a small knot of about four runners for a good stretch, then just broke away from them a second at a time. After that, nobody could even touch him for the remaining miles. He pumped his fist after crossing the finish line and counted out one-two-three-four, thus proving he’s no stranger to Boston post-victory culture. Bill Belichick’s got his eye on him.

Not all was joy in Mudville, however: the Canadiens trapped, shot and skinned the Bruins last night, knocking them out of the championship contention. Montreal rookie goalie Andrei Kostitsyn had the game of his life, not letting a single one of Boston’s 25 shots on goal get by. Thus another Bruins’ season ends in disappointment, which isn’t really “news” in the traditional sense. Think of a workplace safety board being updated - “X Days Without an Incident”; that’s the kind of story this is.

Finally, undaunted by their stunt’s unexpected success last year, Jordan’s Furniture is once again offering free furniture. This time, though, the Sox can’t just win the World Series - they have to sweep the first four games. They paid for this with an “insurance policy” last year, which I have to imagine is secret code for “gigantic sports book” as I can’t picture Citigroup writing off baseball-related furniture losses.

Can this stunt pay off?

The MLB.REDSOX contract is going for 14.00 on Tradesports. There’s no “REDSOX.SWEEP” contract posted, but let’s assume, for the sake of blogging, that the odds are similar. A contract on Tradesports pays $100 $10 if the conditions it describes come true. So to “insure” one million dollars worth of furniture, Jordan’s Furniture would need to buy 10,000100,000 shares of MLB.REDSOX. If they bought today, that’d cost them $140,000. (Edit: fixed some math)

I don’t know much about inventory and wholesaling, but I say that’s not a bad bet.

(If there’s any interest, I’ll talk more about Tradesports and other “idea futures” in another post)

I titled this post as “Boston edition,” but it’s not like there’s going to be another edition. I live in Boston and root for Boston teams. Then again, there is always the hope that someone else here will be a fan of another team and write a competing entry.

New England Patriots
Hey, the team is still undefeated. And peoples around the blogosahedron are waiting to watch the Patriots again when they are 16-0 (Deadspin, Bleacher Report, Blown Coverage, You Been Blinded, ArmchairGM). Now we can add Nerds on Sports to that list becaus: New England Patriots: 16-0 (18-0 if you count postseason).

So, it looks like the Patriots-Colts Pumped Soundgate Noisegate The Skipping Crowd Conspiracies Speakergate was just an issue with the broadcast. But, as a Patriots fan, I can’t believe that this is the truth until I get a bit more closure on the situation. I want a team of investigative reporters to sneak into the RCA Dome and set up some noise meters (like you would find at a terrible talent show to measure who the winner is) and record during games. If that doesn’t work, perhaps some sort of non-football competition between Manning and Brady. Maybe something involving being sexy and making shitloads of commercials. My money is on Manning - Brady may out sexy him, but Peyton’s commercial making prowess is impressive. Read more »