In recent times, household names have shamed the multi-billion dollar sports industry to an extent that almost no other generation has witnessed.  A 20-year old sports fan has been alive long enough to endure the Tim Donaghy fixed games fiasco, the steroids-era Mitchell Report, the dog-fighting days of Michael Vick and even a Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax. Last week, yet another insult catapulted into the spotlight, hurtled by none other than psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow. His accusation that “[sports] don’t matter to the world, in the long run, when it comes down to it, at all” should nauseate any sports lover or beholder of common sense. What is this Fox News Medical A-Team correspondent choosing to ignore? Only the blatantly obvious, of course.

Dr. Ablow’s first insensible argument stems from the firing of Mike Rice, the malicious head coach of the Rutgers Men’s Basketball team.  He claims Rice’s bullying nature is the “product of a culture that wrongfully deifies sports figures.” Eliminate the word “wrongfully” from his statement, and even history would have to agree. In the fifth century BCE, the Greeks crafted the Riace bronze statues, essentially a pair of naked warrior-athletes. A Stanford professor reasons that “[the figures] simply know that what they do they do supremely well, better than anyone else. It does not even occur to them that we could want to do anything other than admire them.” To sum it up, it is human nature to deify the wonderment of athletic bodies, not a crime. Whatever perverted standards of acceptable behavior Mike Rice abided by are now receiving the harshest media backlash since the Jerry Sandusky child molestation trial. Aside from the colleges that failed to adequately punish both these men’s first offenses, our culture has reiterated that sports figures will only be deified for their athletic accomplishments, and nothing more.

In his second piece of flawed logic, Dr. Ablow boldly demands that “sports fans [get] over themselves” as they are “a glaring symbol of…how willing they are to settle for being fans, instead of fanning the flames of their own passions.” To oppose this opinion, simply let the numbers speak for themselves. Each year, over 40 million children and adolescents in the United States participate in organized sports. Many of these kids grow up with the dreams of playing at the professional level, and acquire valuable life skills throughout their athletic endeavors, such as teamwork, discipline, and self-confidence. Recreational players, both young and old, channel their “fandom” into motivation for bettering their own athletic performance. They aspire to be the Alex Morgan or Peyton Manning of their own particular field, whether or not it is of athletic nature.

Finally, Dr. Ablow oversimplifies the impact of sporting events, stating, “games are games are games.” What he fails to realize is that the sports industry is a multi-billion dollar global giant. In the current economical crisis, the sports world is one of the few that has actually managed to increase revenue by almost four percent.  It is more valuable than the U.S. automobile industry and ten times more valuable than Hollywood. Hundreds of thousands of jobs rely on the media coverage of sporting events—managers, equipment guys, statisticians, athletes, and even doctors need sports to stay afloat. Eliminating this, as Dr. Ablow suggests, wouldn’t solve problems; it would cause them.

Maybe Dr. Ablow is bitter because he was picked last for his recess kickball team. Or maybe he lost his fantasy football league ten years in a row. Either way, his nonsensical opinion on why sports don’t matter, “not an iota,” lacks sufficient evidence and logical grounding to be taken seriously. In the ever-wise words of Ron Burgundy, sports are kind of a big deal.

Hitting a home run in Major League Baseball is as easy as … well, something extremely difficult to accomplish. Most of those who are reading this article would do just as poorly as the author when attempting this feat. As someone who thought T-ball looked challenging, I shouldn’t be the one to criticize the skills of professional ballplayers. But within any sport, fans of the losing team often crave to attribute certain events (such as home runs) to mere luck, a variable nearly impossible to quantify. As the predictive power of statistics becomes ever-present in athletics, the gray area between luck and skill prohibits sabermetrics’ effectiveness.

This past weekend data analysts, economists, and television personalities addressed this conundrum at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston. Notable speakers Nate Silver, Michael Maubausin, and others lead two talks about the predictive ability of sports and its correlation to luck. In one presentation, a number of activities were arranged on a line, a continuum of luck and skill. Roulette was placed deep into the “luck” side, while chess sat opposite, in the territory of  “skill.” Hockey was located at dead middle (sorry NHL fans), followed in increasing order of skill by baseball, football, soccer and finally, basketball.

As a lifelong Mariners fan (who has suffered 11 long years of losing seasons), the idea that luck decided the M’s unfavorable fate felt reassuring, and my thoughts began racing. I knew we weren’t bad, just unlucky. Then the voice of reason chimed in. No, we are bad; “unlucky” is just a bunch of malarkey. So what was I left to believe about my beloved, crappy Mariners?

The speakers wasted no time in explaining how highly evolved professional sports have become in the past century. Back in the day of the great Ted Williams, batting over .400 was four standard deviations away from the league’s mean. Now, if you haven’t taken Professor McConville’s introductory statistics course, hopefully you take my word when I promise you that most batting averages two standard deviations away from the mean would be significant. Two standard deviations above, you’re doing significantly well; two standard deviations below, you might be worried about your spot in the lineup. Today, professional ballplayers, especially pitchers, are overall much more skilled than they were in 1941. The league’s average batting average nowadays is 0.254. If someone, say Mike Trout, were to hit over 0.400 (the same as Ted Williams), that would be five standard deviations away from our current norm. Of course, these days, the size of each standard deviation is much smaller than what it was seventy-two years ago, because the skills of major leaguers are roughly the same.

Essentially, the line that separates skill and luck is so blurred because the divide between the talented from the rest of the pack is so narrow. The distinction is in fact so slight that some sports have had to create new scoring systems in order to create separation. For example, gymnastics, which once ran on a 10-point scale, now reports scores in the mid-teens, to allow for greater variance in the complexity of routines. Additionally, the Olympic male marathoners have become so fast that a mere seven minutes separates the gold medalist from the 20^th place finisher, whereas only decades ago, this number would be around half an hour. Again, runners have become so advanced that the clock must reach more decimal places in order to separate their times.

So how does any of this sound lucky? Really, it’s not. Athletes today are stronger, faster, smarter, and more skilled than former players. Luck’s presence in sports such as baseball is magnified only because standard deviations in performance (quantified in ways such as batting average) are so miniscule. When data analysts attempt to predict performance utilizing statistics with such narrow margins, the result is can be too close to accurately call, especially when the possibility of a “bad break” or a stroke of “dumb luck” is possible.

If a baseball game was nothing more then rolling a pair of dice, wouldn’t we all be swinging at pitches, earning millions of dollars? As luck would have it, only the truly gifted make it to the pros. Over time, players will become even more skilled, while the role of luck, and its effects on a game’s outcome will challenge our predictive abilities.

Put your imagination to rest if you are reading the latest Sports Illustrated issue. You won’t need it.

The annual “Swimsuit Edition” released earlier this month showcases much more skin than suits. The coveted cover features Kate Upton posing in in a winter coat and bikini bottoms, with her swimsuit top quite obviously omitted. The unzipped jacket covers just enough for the photo to be PG-13, not quite R.

Is this the opinion of a disgruntled female? Yes. But just because I have boobs doesn’t mean I’m opposed to seeing others. However, I am opposed to a magazine dictating what females are allowed to “be,” an idea I will return to later. Simply put, as a girl who has subscribed to SI for nearly a decade, I can’t help but wonder why boobs are granted the right to appear in the same context as sports.

That’s not to say near-nudity is appalling. I also hold a subscription to ESPN The Magazine, a competitor of SI. “The Mag” has its own version of SI’s Swimsuit Edition, which is known as “The Body Issue.” This year will mark its fifth anniversary. I have been continuously impressed with the tasteful representations of their athlete-models, especially of the females. Very rarely do you see a model in The Body Issue clutching her boobs, gazing into the camera with drooping, makeup-soaked eyelids. Instead, she is photographed while running, jumping, dribbling, shooting, tumbling, throwing—you get the picture. Somehow her natural athletic movements cover up enough to secure a PG-13 approval. Athletes both young and old appear in the centerfold, some with surgical scars, botched broken noses, and dry, cracked palms. This is what is meant to be noticed and admired—not by their nudity, but what’s underneath it.

As Associate Professor of Psychology Melissa Clearfield notes, “The key difference between the [two] photo spreads is that the SI issue focused on what women’s bodies look like, whereas ESPN focused on what bodies can do.” While the bodies of the SI models can look seductive, the females pictured in ESPN are the best in their field. In 2011, Team USA’s goalkeeper Hope Solo graced the cover of The Body Issue. The following year she went on to win Olympic gold, which earned her the cover of a regular SI issue. Then, a mere six months later, the Swimsuit Edition reveals Solo’s teammate, Alex Morgan, on the cover, clad in nothing but body paint.

One may think that Solo and Morgan’s spreads have no real difference. However, it wouldn’t be the SI norm for Morgan to pose as Solo did, kicking a ball with all her strength, jaw clenched in focus. On the contrary, Morgan’s main objective was to blend in with the other models’ “pretty.” By posing nearly nude swimsuit models in passive, non-athletic poses, SI contributes to the separation between a body, ownership, and practicality. While ESPN illustrates the body’s responsibility to provide strength, the Swimsuit Edition claims that the body’s purpose is satisfy others. Professor Clearfield reveals this mindset that fuels the Swimsuit Edition’s popularity: “Objectification theory is the idea that women are treated as bodies, specifically as bodies that exist for the use and pleasure of others.” Research shows that this objectification occurs for women substantially more than men. How does this translate into cognitive functions? In one study, women who were asked to take a math exam in an empty room while wearing a bathing suit fared much worse than when clothed in a sweater. Men who performed the same task in swimming trunks did not vary substantially from the clothed male participants.

What’s the matter here? Girls aren’t testing poorly because of cooties, nor are they bad at math (a math major is writing this so don’t tell me otherwise). Women have learned, through devices such as the Swimsuit Edition, that they can be included or excluded in certain arenas based solely on their bodies. It may manifest itself differently for different people. To me, the models’ poses and nudity in SI remind me that society claims that I shouldn’t be “one of the guys.” It makes me hypersensitive to the fact that I write a sports blog, attend baseball games, play fantasy football, and host a sports talk show—almost as if I was in some way “breaking the rules.” This year’s multiple pages of topless models only heighten this sense of detachment.

Surprisingly, I will not be canceling my subscription to SI. The other 51 weeks of the year, I value the insight, photographs, and articles about athletes that the magazine typically contains. I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my interest in sports in order to avoid one issue of boobs, and the feeling that I should be apathetic to sports. The change starts with a little skin, and a little more fabric. A bathing suit top wouldn’t hurt anyone, especially SI’s female readership.

Here’s a secret: professional sports aren’t all about the athletes anymore.

Those nerds that your high school yearbook named “most likely to succeed” have finally found their niche in the world of sports. They might not be quarterbacks leading their teams to the Superbowl or pitching perfect games like Felix Hernandez, but their latest contributions are just as powerful within sports culture.

There may be no better sport for nerds than than fantasy football. Since it became accessible via the Internet in 1997, private and public fantasy leagues have attracted millions of people to diversify their interests in the NFL. For example, a fantasy team could potentially include New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady, Seattle Seahawks’ running back Marshawn Lynch, and the San Francisco 49ers’ defensive. Since a fantasy team’s total points are calculated by the performance of each of these entities, it is crucial that the team’s manager (you) root for more than your hometown team each weekend. You want your fantasy quarterback to pass for over 200 yards and 3 touchdowns, your fantasy running back to rush for 100 yards and score, and your fantasy defensive to force fumbles and catch interceptions.

Seems like a lot to keep track of, right? Now imagine playing fantasy football, fantasy basketball, and fantasy baseball every year. Heck, now that the National Hockey League (NHL) is back, you can probably throw fantasy hockey into the mix too. That’s four different scoring systems, four different teams to manage, and hundreds of players and games to watch.  In other words, major headache material. That’s when the best and the brightest turn to statistics.

Enter Nate Silver, statistician extraordinaire. He recently published his book The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t. Before that, he gained national attention after correctly predicting 49 states in the 2008 presidential election and all 50 states in 2012. Silver makes use of statistics in several fields, explaining the recession, the election, and, inevitably, sports. In an interview with New York Magazine, he relays his fantasy football strategy: “You kind of figure out which players are overvalued or undervalued, and you take advantage of peoples’ biases in that way.” While Silver is playing by the numbers, the rest of us are playing by a vague, indescribable gut feeling.

Thus, the key to success is to quantify a player’s performance. No one is demanding that you invent a novel model of statistical analysis (leave that to Silver and other nerds). Simply stay informed and quantify. Each week (or day, depending on the sport) take time to check basic statistics, such as a running back’s yards per carry, or a defense’s average points allowed per game. Check the numbers of a free agent, re-evaluate your starting lineup, and don’t allow emotional biases to quantify a gut feeling into a trade or unjustified benching.

Fantasy teams may seem like a jock’s outlet. However, as long as fantasy football remains the NFL’s best marketing tool, statisticians will be equally praised for their predictions concerning an athlete or team’s performance.