Professional sports plays dirty. From performance-enhancing drugs to the NBA fixing the 1985 draft, cheating and out-of-sport advantages have always created unfair playing fields. However, some advantages are more hidden than others. Big market teams like the New York Yankees have been poised to get whichever free agents they want, fast-forwarding the rebuilding process to just a year or two. Meanwhile, for small market teams, such as the Buffalo Bills, it is not so easy to develop into a competitor. A strategy that has been gaining momentum amongst the less fortunate professional teams, however, has finally broken into the mainstream: tanking. In other words, the best way to win in the future is to lose as often as p...

From Aaron Judge’s 500-foot blasts to Aroldis Chapman’s 103 mile-an-hour fastballs, there’s something about Major League Baseball that departs from its place in the bedrocks of American society for over 100 years. While baseball, like all sports, is constantly evolving, its growing overreliance on statistics is rapidly changing the sport’s foundation. Baseball has always been a game whose allure lies as much in the time between actions as it does in the actions themselves. Since there is no game-clock, before each pitch there is a building anticipation, and until the final out, there is potential for something great to happen. All of the life that exists between plays has given the MLB the character and quirk...

The Cleveland Cavaliers completed a four-game sweep of the Indiana Pacers in the first round of the 2016–2017 NBA playoffs, capping off the series with a 106–102 victory on Sunday. LeBron James was superb throughout the series. He played his best in Game Three, when he recorded a triple double, scoring 41 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists. It is hard to remember that just a few weeks ago, many were talking about the possible decline of LeBron James and the Cavaliers. James was largely left out of the MVP conversation this season. The Cavs, who finished 51–31, were eclipsed by the Boston Celtics with one game left in the season, falling from the No. 1 seed — a spot they’ve held almost all year — to No....

With the Major League Baseball season less than a week away, fans and baseball experts are already trying to predict who will raise the World Series trophy in October. Two favorites are the Chicago Cubs, who won the crown last year, and the New York Mets, who went to the World Series two years ago and made a playoff appearance last year. Both teams’ front offices have assembled exciting teams stacked with talent, though they took opposite approaches in assembling their squads. The Mets’ success comes from their plethora of young pitchers, the Cubs from their stockpile of hitting prospects. But while both rebuilding methods have proved fruitful in the past, the Cubs’ method seems more sustainable and less risky. Since...