Welcome to this week’s episode of Hot Takedown, our podcast where the hot sports takes of the week meet the numbers that prove them right or tear them down. On this week’s show (May 13, 2015), we look at the fallout from the NFL’s investigation into the deflation of balls during last year’s AFC Championship game, which led to the suspension of Tom Brady and the loss of two draft picks for the New England Patriots. We’ll reveal the final results of our crowdsourcing project to fix the NBA lottery and stop tanking in the league. And we’ll discuss our significant digit of the week, which covers mental health and college athletes.
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Below are some links to what we discuss in this week’s show:
- The FiveThirtyEight staff dissects the Deflategate report.
- Benjamin Morris looks at what would have happened if Tom Brady had missed four games every year.
- Why the loss of draft picks hurts the Patriots more than the loss of Brady.
- Our fix-the-NBA-draft crowdsource project: Original Form | First Update | Weird Ideas | Finalists.
- Significant Digit: Suicide is the third leading cause of death among college athletes. Read Kate Fagan’s ESPN The Magazine article on Madison Holleran here.
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