Usually your weekly curated list of sports betting tips, this is the mid-summer, Ed is on vacation list of best recommendations.
Podcast on finding value – Sequoia, one of the most venerated names in Silicon Valley, spent most of 2022 gushing about Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of FTX. Then SBF turned out to be a fraud, and the collapse of FTX led to the failure of banks such as Silicon Valley Bank.
On an episode of Risk of Ruin, John Reeder not only tells the story of how investor Marc Cohodes profited from his early identification of SBF as a fraud but also the mass hypocrisy of Silicon Valley. In particular, he calls out the All In podcast for promoting government intervention when they usually side with the free market.
Risk of Ruin has become one of my favorite podcasts because of the This American Life style stories on finding value. You might also be interested in episodes on:
- How Rufus Peabody got his start in sports betting (there is also a Part 2)
- The New York City institution that inspired Rounders
- Making money on the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter (so good)
NFL mania in Germany – Tickets for Miami vs Kansas City on November 5 in Frankfurt reportedly sold out in 15 minutes. To understand the German passion for American football, check out the documentary Unicorn Town.
Produced by Christian McCaffrey, the documentary follows the Unicorns (not a typo) from the tiny town of Schwabisch Hall as they pursue another German Cup. They deal with the rule in German football that limits the number of Americans on the field, who all have a huge A on their jersey (again, not a typo).
I loved this documentary, which has 100 on Rotten Tomatoes. You can check out the trailer of Unicorn Town on YouTube.
The Miracle of St. Anthony – While Adrian Wojnarowski is most famous for breaking NBA news, he has also written my favorite sports book. I had always wanted to read Woj’s book on high school basketball coach Bobby Hurley Sr., but I finally dove in this April as his son Danny stormed to a national championship with Connecticut.
Hurley Sr. is a fantastic coach and teacher, and he won countless New Jersey state championships at St. Anthony. But the book is more compelling because of his flaws. His old school approach includes yelling and challenging his players to fights (no joke, and no takers).
In addition, the stories about the overbearing basketball mom and the player who got kicked off the team before the state playoffs make The Miracle of St. Anthony an incredible read that I could not put down.
Coffee – At the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference this March, I bumped into Harry Crane, Professor at Rutgers. We started chatting soccer analytics, but then the conversation turned to coffee.
After that passionate conversation, we had a coffee exchange. I sent him coffee from Anthology in Detroit, and he returned the favor with modcup from Jersey City.
If the word Folgers does not make you throw up, then you can skip these recommendations. However, if you obsess about water temperature and bean to water ratio in making a pour over, I highly recommend trying both Anthology and modcup.
Football humor – “Their job is attempted murder.” An amazing clip from Neal Brennan, a comedian most famous for writing The Chappelle Show.
This clip is from 3 Mics on Netflix, one of my favorite stand up comedy specials ever.
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