📝 The Week That Was (December 9-13, 2024)

A roundup of what I wrote, read, watched, etc. over the past week.

In this space on Saturdays, I do a weekly round-up of sorts: Sifting through what I wrote that you might have missed during the week, what I’ve been reading and watching myself, and some other fun things that have been going on. Let me know what you think about the format in the comments (or email me!¹), and if there are running sections you’d like to see on a regular basis.

What I did this week

Here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance.

• 🏈 UNC Football Has Untapped Potential. Can Bill Belichick Help Them Achieve It? - With the GOAT NFL coach signing on with North Carolina, I wrote about why it made surprising sense — and the Tar Heels’ status as a potential sleeping football giant.

• 🏈 Who’s Got the Best Shot to Win the College Football Playoff? and Who Has the Easiest — And Hardest — Paths in the College Football Playoff? - Using SRS ratings, I simulated the CFP thousands of times to see who wins most often… but as part of that, I also came up with a few ways of measuring which teams got favors (and not) from the selection committee.

  

• ⚾ Juan Soto Tipped the Financial Scales of New York Baseball — But In An Era When That May Matter Less Than Ever - Mets fans are (rightly) pretty excited about stealing Soto away from the Yankees. But how much does he — or any MLB star — really move the needle in today’s game?

• 🏀 Basketball Bytes: Who's Stepping Up In The NBA Cup? - This week’s NBA column focused on the NBA Cup — who’s most likely to win it (hint: the Thunder), which players have played better in its games than otherwise, and a weird Atlanta Hawks trend that may explain their unexpected trip to the semifinals.

  

• 🏀 Men's basketball trends: SEC on top; Arizona uncertainty? - At ESPN, I wrote about the historic dominance of the SEC in men’s basketball, plus notes on Arizona as a confusing bubble team and a preview of the weekend’s best games.

• 🦋 Also, if anyone wants to follow me on Bluesky (ugh 🙄), I did set up an account there to try to drum up more readers for the ol’ newsletter. (But don’t worry — my heart remains here on Substack, of course.)

Some interesting things I read/watched this week

A collection of articles (with a heavy focus on my fellow Substackers), videos and other media that I enjoyed and/or found thought-provoking over the past week.

• 🏈 The Kansas City Chiefs are the luckiest good team ever by Harry Enten …and relatedly…

• 🏈 Meet the Kansas City Chiefs' 3 Unsung Heroes Powering NFL Playoff Charge by

  Matt Lombardo

• 🏈 Down, set, hut! // Explaining variability in snap timing on plays with motion by

  Ron Yurko

• 🏈 The Wildest Football Game That You Did Not Watch by

  Robbie Marriage

• 🏀 All The Point God's Men Breaking down Chris Paul's legendary history of assists by

  Jared Dubin

• 🏀 13 NBA Takes: What We've Learned This Season by

  🏀 5x5 | Royce Webb

• 🏀▶️ The NBA team NOT running pick & rolls (!) by Thinking Basketball

• ⚾ 2024 Gets Remembered, Pt. 1 // What will they bother to know about us 80 years from now? by

  Sam Miller

• ⚾ Blessed With The Best Player In Baseball // Bill James on the 1978 Pirates by

  Daniel Evensen

• ⚾🎲 2024 IS HERE!!! // Schedules, Lineups, Managers and Japan by Pocket Pennant Run

• 🏒 SIDNEY CROSBY & CONOR BEDARD / The critics are doubting the latest generational player. Remembering when they buried No. 87 (& this humble biographer). by

  Gare Joyce

• 🏒 2024-25 Season Spotlight: Brock Faber by

  Vinh Cao
  (Note: Remember when I said I was glad I didn’t have to be canceled for potentially not ranking Bedard as Rookie of the Year? Faber was a guy who might be ahead of young Connor.)

• 🏒 How Much Does Balanced Handedness Matter for Defensive Pairs? by

  Aaron Knodell

• 📝 Chuck Klosterman Asked a Provocative Question About the Media by

  Ethan Strauss

• 🃏 The Making of Balatro (feat. LocalThunk) by Noclip Podcasts

• ⛵ Rap’s Love Affair With Yacht Rock, Explained by Ringer Movies

• 💸 I'll Take the Crypto Industry Seriously When Its Biggest Advocates Stop Saying "What Did You Expect?" by Freddie deBoer

• 📻 The Rise and (Overstated) Fall of Radio. A Statistical Analysis by

  Daniel Parris

• 🏠 You Should Leave Your Home by

  Chris Dalla Riva

• 🎧 Hunks of Discourse by

  Feminine Chaos

• ▶️ Saagar Enjeti: Trump, MAGA, DOGE, Obama, FDR, JFK, History & Politics by Lex Fridman

• 🎅▶️ I made a Christmas album. by jschlattLIVE

• ▶️ What Was on Bin Laden's Hard Drive? by fern

Old YouTube game(s) of the week

Buffalo Sabres vs. Pittsburgh Penguins (December 26, 1995)

Music to play us out

Stevie Wonder - “Do I Do”

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

1. I’m at neil[dot]paine[at]gmail[dot]com.