Sports

The Web breeds fantasy.

It lets us become different people. It lets us impress those we never thought we'd ever have a chance of impressing. And it lets us believe that we are just as wily, difficult, and very slightly obnoxious as the most successful people in the world. The New England Patriots' coach Bill Belichick, for example.

Yet now that fantasy football has become more prevalent in human minds than, say, learning a foreign language (some say 25 million people will have teams this season), a couple of NFL players have come out and expressed some heartfelt--and not … Read more

Who needs a lightsaber when you can kick, punch, and twist the living daylights out of your enemy?

This seems to be the charming ethos of Mixed Martial Arts. It is one that is being espoused by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas' daughter, Amanda.

I am grateful to the hard-working informants at Yahoo Sports, who have mined the depths of their metier to bring me news of Amanda "Powerhouse" Lucas' latest attempt to skywalk in the world of MMA.

It seems that she performed last night at a profound event called DEEP 55 in Japan. (I … Read more

I am a diehard baseball fan. Wait, let me clarify: I am a diehard Oakland Athletics fan. And now's a good time to throw in a full disclosure: I also work for the team on game days as their in-stadium host. I know--it's the greatest job ever for a baseball fan! When I saw that my CNET colleague Erica Ogg was writing a piece about mobile apps for baseball, I thought it would be a perfect way to combine my passions--baseball and tech--into one cool and useful story for our CBS audience.

As an LA Dodgers fan, Erica … Read more

Baseball is a team sport, but for fans of the major leagues, there's never been a good way to play along in real time.

Until now that is, say the creators of GameSlam, a real-time social predictive baseball game that allows fans to get in on the fun even as the balls and strikes are being thrown and the home runs are clearing the fences.

For years, baseball aficionados have been able to take part in Major League Baseball by joining a fantasy league. And there are 10 million people in leagues like this, as well as 20 million … Read more

ARLINGTON, Texas--NFL teams including the Dallas Cowboys could soon be abandoning their traditional paper playbooks and game-day printouts of plays in favor of iPads or other tablets.

Pete Walsh, head of technology for the Cowboys, said his team and at least a "couple" of others are currently considering abandoning their playbooks in favor of iPads, a move they feel could save them as much as 5,000 pages of paper printouts per game.

Walsh explained this potential philosophical and technological shift to CNET during a discussion about Cowboys Stadium technology at Super Bowl Media Day here Tuesday. The … Read more

There are some who believe American football would be nothing without Vegas.

And the folks in Vegas seem a little unsure who might win Sunday's football game between Green Bay and Pittsburgh. The line is tight and the professionals are sweating in the Bellagio Sports Book.

Fortunately, the Web has allegedly been a foolproof indicator recently of which team will clutch the Vince Lombardi trophy and try not to say "F*** yeah!!" as did San Francisco's Tim Lincecum when his team won the World Series.

The folks at Infegy, which appears to be a sort of … Read more

ARLINGTON, Texas--In my role as a reporter, I've had the good fortune to visit a number of control and/or command centers, such as those running a massive radio telescope, a nuclear submarine, a national laser fusion facility, and several others.

For anyone who remembers the Matthew Broderick vehicle "War Games," the bar for what a control room looks like is high: massive screens, dozens of workstations, long tables, and people moving around everywhere. But in the commodity PC era, that kind of room is mostly long gone. While I've seen NASA control centers that approach … Read more

It's World Series time, and if you're a fan of either the San Francisco Giants or the Texas Rangers looking for tickets to any of the sold-out games being played over the next few days, don't despair: You can get in.

Of course, it's not going to be cheap. Since the only tickets that are available are on the secondary market, they're going to cost substantially more than face value. For example, in San Francisco, where tonight's game two, and games six and seven (if necessary) will be held, the average price for all … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Like a lot of people who live in or near the city by the bay right now, I'm trying to figure out the answer to a really tough question: how in the heck can I get a World Series ticket?

The answer, of course, is not pretty: you must have money, and lots of it. And since I don't really have any, and wouldn't really be willing to fork over hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a single ducat anyway, I'm having to face facts: I likely won't be getting to see the World … Read more