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Combine-ing Football and Physics

There are many ways football analysts can describe a player.  He's a high energy player...hits with a lot of force...has exceptional power…puts in the work. For the most part we all understand what is meant when these types of words are used to describe some physical attribute of a player. However, in the world of physics each of the words I used above has a specific meaning and, you guessed it, a formula. This is going to dive into what is sometimes referred to as Newtonian (or Classical) Mechanics , which looks at how forces applied to objects create and influence motion. This is, of course, named after Sir Isaac Newton , the founder of gravity and partially credited with inventing calculus (I'm team Leibniz , but that's maybe for a later time). You may have heard of Newton's Three Laws of Motion - that's what we're going to explore here and relate the mechanics of motion to the NFL combine.  Newton discovering gravity by getting donked in the head by an...

Hitting the NBA Jackpot

Lotteries are typically really tough to win. Powerball, Mega Millions, and even state lotteries are all damn near impossible claim the jackpot. Even winning anything is pretty unlikely. Getting a Pick 5 (numbers 0-9) exactly right is 1 in 100,000. Getting luck enough to draft the next phenom like LeBron, Anthony Davis, or perhaps Zion Williamson? That's much, much easier than getting a few digits in the right order. NBA Draft System and Protected Picks A quick refresher: The NBA determines the selection order of the first 14 (of 30) teams for an upcoming draft of new players by a lottery system. These are teams that didn't make the playoffs. The rest of the draft order is determined by inverse order of regular season record. The NHL also has a lottery system for non-playoff teams but differs for teams in the post season where order is determined partially by playoff performance and regular season point total. In the NFL, non-playoff teams are ordered purely by regular sea...