Sporting Madness

This story from Aaron Wilson of The National Football Post about the accusations of domestic violence against St. Louis Rams' running back Steven Jackson is horrifying. According to the piece(which picks up on a TMZ report), Jackson allegedly attacked his girlfriend, Supriya Harris , in March 2009. She was nine months pregnant at the time and gave birth 10 days later. Here's the key part: "In a complaint filed with the Las Vegas police department, Harris claimed: "Steven became enraged and pushed me to the ground, repeatedly." And she alleged that the Rams runner: "forcibly grabbed my arm and flung me against the door. I was crying and trying to protect my stomach from the blows, as I was 9 mos pregnant. .. continued to shove me against the door until his nephew ... interceded and yelled, 'uncle, she has a baby, stop.'" Harris said she was "bleeding heavily," after being smashed into a door handle." This is a horrifyin...

Here's the second part of the 2002 draft comparison I started the other day , looking at the success rates of players in the NBA and NHL drafts. See that post for an explanation of what I'm trying to accomplish and a discussion of some of the limiting factors of this type of analysis. The format is almost the same, but the ratings are tweaked slightly to allow for the differences in each sport; full explanations are below. I've also included the ratings as a column in the actual spreadsheets to make it easier to see how players performed relative to their draft position. I have an analysis of the differences between leagues at the end of the post as well. NBA: [Table from Wikipedia ] System: 5 – All-star (at least one all-star game selection) 4 – Solid (played in 60 or more games last season) 3 – Marginal (played in the NBA last season) 2 – One-off (played at least 100 career NBA games) 1 – Bust (played less than 100 games) Ratings: 5 – Ming, Butler, Stoudemire: three play...