Welcome to the latest episode of Hot Takedown, FiveThirtyEight’s sports podcast. On this week’s show (March 22, 2016), Sue Bird tells us how a lack of data affects women’s sports, we look at the first weekend of the NCAA men’s tournament and marvel at the madness of Texas A&M’s comeback win against Northern Iowa, and we discuss the sexist comments that rocked the tennis world. Plus, a significant digit on the number of extra point attempts NFL kickers missed in the 2015-16 season.
We also take a look at our bracket competition and see how our esteemed hosts are doing after the first round of the tournament.
Stream the episode by clicking the play button above, or subscribe using one of the podcast clients we’ve linked to above. Links to what we discuss are here:
- Sue Bird says data can change the stories of women’s sports.
- Ian Levy on the website that went offline and took most of women’s college basketball analytics with it.
- FiveThirtyEight’s Allison McCann writes that there’s no rich data in women’s sports.
- Neil Paine on Texas A&M’s 1-in-3,000 comeback against Northern Iowa.
- Nate Silver puts Michigan State’s NCAA tournament loss in perspective.
- Equal prize money in tennis isn’t so equal after all, according to the BBC.
- The Guardian’s Kevin Mitchell on why Novak Djokovic is wrong about women’s tennis.
- Hot Takedown’s men’s bracket group in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge.
- Hot Takedown’s women’s bracket group in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge.
- Significant Digit. 71. That’s the number of extra point attempts NFL kickers missed in the 2015-16 season, eight more than the previous seven seasons combined.
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