📝 The Week That Was (November 4-8, 2024)

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

Nov 09, 2024

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

Stealing a bit from Will Leitch’s newsletter format, here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance.

🏁 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Odds: Racing to the Finish Line - Ahead of the final race of the 2024 NASCAR season, I updated my forecast model one last time, and broke down each of the Championship 4 drivers’ case for winning the title on Sunday.
🧊 Hockey Bytes: The Canes' Time Is Now - The Carolina Hurricanes are Stanley Cup favorites in my Elo forecast model — but they’ve been a top contender for years without making the Finals. The time for them to win is now!
🏈 Will College Football’s Logjam Sort Itself Out? - College football’s playoff picture is looking quite weird and unsettled right now. What’s the history of previous seasons like this, and how do things get sorted out by the bowls?
🏀 NCAA men's basketball: 2024-25 preseason picks, predictions - At ESPN, I joined an esteemed panel to pick our teams and players to watch before the season tipped off.
🏀 Five big takeaways from the Sixers’ slow start to the 2024-25 season - The Sixers have been struggling so far in 2024-25. Some of that makes sense — their stars are injured! — but given how much this team will probably need to deal with star absences, I looked at what the early numbers say about their strengths and (mostly) weaknesses.
🏀 Basketball Bytes: Who’s Getting the Ball More (or Less) This Year? - It’s always fun to look at early changes in player tendencies, so I compared usage rates from this season to last season to see which players have their numbers called more (or less).