The Wiz of Odds

Wiz Podcast: Chris Nowinski of Sports Legacy Institute

Chris Nowinski, president of the Sports Legacy Institute, knows firsthand what it's like to suffer a concussion. His career in World Wrestling Entertainment ended in 2003 because of a little understood disorder called post-concussion syndrome.

The former Harvard football player began to research his condition and the long-term effects of head trauma. He wrote the book, Head Games: Football's Concussion Crisis, and spearheaded investigations into the deaths of notable athletes, including Chris Benoit and Andre Waters. Nowinski, along with Dr. Robert Cantu, founded the Sports Legacy Institute, which is dedicated to studying the effects of concussions and other sports-related brain injuries. The institute's work will be featured Sunday on "60 Minutes" and next week in a New Yorker piece authored by Malcolm Gladwell. You can view a 2007 report on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" at the bottom of this post.

Nowinski talks about Tim Tebow's concussion and what can be done to safeguard against head trauma in our podcast, which you can listen to by clicking here. The podcast runs 10:34.

Wiz Podcast: Gary Klein of the Los Angeles Times

The biggest game of the young season will be played Saturday in Columbus when USC squares off against Ohio State. Gary Klein, the USC beat writer for the Los Angeles Times, breaks down the matchup and offers a prediction. Gary also outlines potential stumbling blocks for the Trojans the rest of the season should they beat the Buckeyes and offers his opinion on what might become of USC's season if it were to lose.

The podcast runs 12:01 and you can listen by click here.

A reminder that if you've subscribed in the past to our podcasts through iTunes, you'll need to re-subscribe. Our feed URL for iTunes was changed this summer and according to Apple, old subscribers will not be redirected. Click here to go to our link on iTunes or search the iTunes store for "The Wiz of Odds." For a complete list of past podcasts on the Wiz, click here.

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Wiz Podcast: Jim Weber of Lost Lettermen

Jim Weber used to worked at CSTV (now CBS College Sports Network) and ESPN Magazine. "I spent a lot of my job looking through media guides and I always noticed in the back of them was this list of all-time letterwinners and I thought, this is kind of valuable information that people are just ignoring," he said. "And I thought, people always want to know where are they now and stuff about people's college careers.

"So I thought, what if I turn this into a database? Kind of a Wiki-type site where people can just add what they know about players and where are they now and that kind of thing. So the last couple of months I've been building out the database."

Thus was born the insanely great Lost Lettermen, a Wikipedia-like database of 150,000 former college letterwinners. Readers can sign up for an account and contribute, helping to track down the whereabouts of yesterday's heroes, big and small.

One of the most ambitious projects to date involved tracking down the whereabouts of all the living Heisman winners and what became of the winners who are deceased.

Weber also has several former football players blogging for the site, including Charlie Ward, Simeon Rice, Ki-Jana Carter and Tee Martin.

The podcast runs 9:18 and you can listen by clicking here.

A reminder that if you've been a subscriber in the past through iTunes, you'll need to re-subscribe. The feed URL for iTunes was changed and according to Apple, old subscribers will not be redirected. Click here to go to our link on iTunes or search the iTunes store for "The Wiz of Odds." For a complete list of past podcasts on the site, click here.

Wiz Podcast: Paul Myerberg of the New York Times

There are college football junkies, then there is Paul Myerberg of the New York Times. For the second consecutive year, Myerberg is counting down all 120 Division I-A teams for the newspaper's college sports blog, The Quad. He started May 4th with a preview of No. 120 Western Kentucky, and each day added another team to the countdown list. Earlier this week he entered the home stretch with the first of his previews of top-10 teams.

Myerberg detailed how he separates contenders from pretenders in his rankings, why Baylor fans let him have it after he ranked the Bears No. 79, and which programs are on the rise (Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina and Illinois). The one thing he wouldn't reveal is the team he has ranked No. 1, but he did give up his final five in alphabetical order: Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, Texas and USC.

The podcast runs 11:44 and you can listen by clicking here.

A reminder that if you've been a subscriber in the past through iTunes, you'll need to re-subscribe. The feed URL for iTunes was changed and according to Apple, old subscribers will not be redirected. Click here to go to our link on iTunes or search the iTunes store for "The Wiz of Odds." For a complete list of past podcasts on the site, click here.

Wiz Podcast: Brett McMurphy of the Tampa Tribune

Is the Big East Conference deserving of its Bowl Championship Series status? Mountain West Conference fans believe their league compares favorably to the Big East and is just as deserving of a seat at the BCS table. Is there any validity to this argument? Brett McMurphy of the Tampa Tribune answered that question and more as our guest on the latest Wiz podcast.

We also talked about the Big East race, possible expansion by the conference and the likelihood that no league team will be ranked in the Associated Press poll when it is released on Aug. 22. Brett is one of five Big East beat writers who vote in the poll.

The podcast runs 12:30 and you can listen by clicking here.

A reminder that if you've been a subscriber in the past through iTunes, you'll need to re-subscribe. The feed URL for iTunes was changed and according to Apple, old subscribers will not be redirected. Click here to go to our link on iTunes or search the iTunes store for "The Wiz of Odds." For a complete list of past podcasts on the site, click here.

Wiz Podcast: Phil Steele

It started in 1982 when he published his first newsletter. The business grew and 15 years ago, he produced his first magazine. Today Phil Steele employs 30 people and publishes what is regarded as the finest preview magazine in the land. He's also making inroads into new media with Phil Steele.com.

Phil talks about his magazine and how it has evolved in our latest podcast, which you can hear by clicking here. In keeping with your busy digital lifestyle, the runtime is 11:34.

A reminder that if you've been a subscriber in the past through iTunes, you'll need to re-subscribe. The feed URL for iTunes was changed and according to Apple, old subscribers will not be redirected. Click here to go to our link on iTunes or search the iTunes store for "The Wiz of Odds." For a complete list of past podcasts on the site, click here.