From every league's cellar, a Bad Franchise will rise. And then trip and fall down a flight of stairs headfirst into a truck full of manure.

Image by Ed Zurga / AP

In professional sports, Bad Franchises are fun. Sometimes, at least for outside observers, they're even as much fun as the great ones — they have a quality that is the opposite of cachet; they convey to their fans and players and the rest of the league that nothing they do will be done right. From playing football to signing players to play football to creating an environment in which a professional sports team can play football in front of paying spectators, a Bad Franchise will bungle and maim every one of its decisions, actions, and reactions. (The Charlotte Hornets are the NBA's current Bad Franchise, the Houston Astros the MLB's.)

We're at the point in the NFL season in which teams' true ability levels are becoming evident, and it's a somewhat unusual year in that the league doesn't have a consensus #1 team. Atlanta has the best record, but they've won a few games against inferior competition that they easily could have lost; the Texans have looked tremendous in six of their seven games, but got shellacked by Green Bay; the Packers, 49ers, Giants, and Bears have all had bad losses. However, one thing is completely clear, and that's the league's worst team, the current epitome of a Bad Franchise in professional football: the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Chiefs are one of three one-win squads in the NFL right now, alongside the Panthers and the Jaguars. What sets them apart, though, is the degree to which they have lost those seven games. Other than a three-point defeat by the Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City has lost by 16, 18, 17, 28, and 10. And most of those games weren't even that close: 28 of KC's 120 points have come in garbage time.

What makes Kansas City so terrible? It starts in the front office. Scott Pioli, KC's general manager, came over in 2009 after a stretch running the Patriots with Bill Belichick that counts as one of the most successful runs of any team in football history. Whatever. He's been a disaster with the Chiefs, reportedly running the organization like some Midwestern football gulag. Unlike when he was in New England, Pioli has total control of personnel in Kansas City, and what he's done with this coach-wise is hire and fire noted psychopath Todd Haley and replace him with Romeo Crennel, who looks like a cartoon bear and went 24-40 in four seasons as head coach of the Cleveland Browns. So far this season, the most notable thing Crennel has done is admit that he didn't know why Jamaal Charles, far and away the Chiefs' best offensive player, only received five carries in a loss to Oakland. He just didn't know.

Pioli's most significant acquisition since taking over the Chiefs has been Matt Cassel, arguably the league's worst starting quarterback. At the time he was signed, Cassel was at least a plausible NFL player: even though he'd only started 15 games over eight seasons as a collegiate and pro QB, he'd played well when given the chance. But Kansas City gifted him a plush six-year deal, guaranteeing him $28 million, and he's been a dud, with a solid 2010 sandwiched between two seasons of mediocrity. Despite having a 30-year-old QB (i.e. one who was unlikely to suddenly get a lot better) with a mixed-to-bad track record, Kansas City's backup plan going into this year was the perpetually crummy Brady Quinn. Cassel has melted down, and Quinn was an inadequate replacement before being sidelined with a head injury.

In the NFL, the great franchises of the last decade — the Pittsburgh Steelers, the New England Patriots, the New York Giants — have been distinguished by three factors: great coaches, great quarterbacks, and the ability to unsentimentally reload their supporting casts when players get too old. Pioli has nailed the mean-bastard part, but flopped twice on finding a coach and been too stubborn to admit a mistake at quarterback. And he hasn't put together a good-enough supporting cast to make his ruthlessness useful. But the Chiefs organization has kept him around — he was even rumored to be in line for an extension this year before the Chiefs were beaten down in Week 6 by the Buccaneers.

That discussion of extending Pioli sent Chiefs supporters — one of the league's most fervent fan bases — into general hysterics, and it should have. Being a fan of a Bad Franchise is much worse than being a fan of a bad team. Having an owner who's hyperactively involved in personnel decisions and too quick on the firing trigger isn't ideal, but at least Jerry Jones, for example, is TRYING to find good players and coaches (and occasionally succeeding). Bad games and seasons always end on schedule, but the reigns of delusional owners who inherited franchises from their parents can go on forever.

This may be the best series of sports commercials since Jordan retired.

Source: youtube.com

Sergio Romo, relief pitcher for the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants, sported an extremely political shirt during the Giants victory parade on Halloween.

Sergio Romo was born in Brawley, California to Mexican parents.

Image by Ezra Shaw / Getty Images

Toronto: “We're like Cleveland with health care.” BOOM. Roasted.

Source: youtube.com

Baltimore's Adam Jones won the AL Gold Glove over Anaheim's Mike Trout, starting “snub season” off with a bang. Although defense can be harder to measure with concrete statistics, several metrics have been developed to try to quantify how much a player's fielding contributes to his team. Here are five inarguable reasons Mike Trout deserved the award.

Mike Trout's UZR: 10.6

What is UZR? Ultimate Zone Rating is a defensive statistic favored by FanGraphs which attempts to quantify how many runs a player saved or gave up through their fielding. UZR is compiled through a combination of:
- Outfield Arm Runs. The number of runs above average that an outfielder saves with their arm by preventing runners to advance.
- Double-Play Runs. The amount of runs above average an infielder is in turning double-plays.
- Range Runs. How the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity – againcompared to the league-average
- Error Runs. How many more or fewer errors committed by the player compared to the league average for that position.

Adam Jones' UZR: -6.7

Image by Jeff Gross / Getty Images

Mike Trout's Defensive WAR: 2.2

What is defensive WAR (dWAR)? A measure developed by Baseball Reference calculating the number of wins that a player contributes to his team above league-average (which, when it comes to defense, is probably also replacement level). It is compiled based on "defensive runs saved" and "Total Zone Rating."

Adam Jones' dWAR: -1.3

Image by Jeff Gross / Getty Images

Mike Trout's FRAA: 8.6

What is FRAA? Fielding Runs Above Average, developed by Baseball Prospectus is compiled using play-by-play data to judge the number of plays made by this player compared to the average player at the same position. Adjustments are made (to the average) based on position, handedness, park factors, and base-out scenarios.

Adam Jones' FRAA: 6.4

Image by Jeff Gross / Getty Images

Mike Trout's Fielding Percentage: .993

What is Fielding Percentage? The old school defensive metric simply attempts to calculate the percentage of times a player properly handles a batted or thrown ball. Calculated by the sum of putouts and assists, divided by the number of total chances.

Adam Jones' Fielding Percentage: .982

Image by Victor Decolongon / Getty Images

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Figuring out how gridiron matchups could tilt the swing states.

Ohio State quarterback Barackxton Miller dives away from a Mittany Lion.

Image by Gene J. Puskar / AP

One of the more ridiculous phenomena in an American political scene filled with ridiculousness is the fact that football results have been shown to swing races in college towns by as many as three points. Wins help the incumbent and losses hurt, presumably by contributing to voters’ general sense of which direction their lives are headed. Assuming the linked study and others that have found similar results are legit, it doesn’t seem crazy to imagine that a big game in a football-wild and electorally divided state could tilt that state’s electoral votes one way or the other. When economist Tyler Cowen explained this potential Football Effect in Slate, he noted that Ohio State and Florida in particular had big matchups last weekend. (The study above found that games two weekends before elections can have an even bigger effect than the ones directly before.) Assuming that what’s true of college football is true of the pros as well, what do the results of those matchups and the rest of the swing-state football situation say about Obama and Romney’s chances?

Colorado
Colorado Buffaloes
Last week: lost to Oregon. (By a score of 70-14. Yipes.)
This week: 28-point underdogs vs. Stanford Cardinal.

Denver Broncos
Last week: beat New Orleans Saints.
This week: 3.5-point favorites vs. Cincinnati Bengals.

Who wins the football vote? Boulder fans must be in a severe state of misery, but when we’ve visited Colorado we’ve gotten a strong sense that it’s an NFL state anyhow. With Peyton Manning and the Broncos in a serious groove, we’re calling this one for OBAMA.

Florida
Florida State Seminoles
Last week: beat Duke (thanks, Florida State!)
This week: bye.

Florida Gators
Last week: lost to Georgia Bulldogs
This week: 17-point favorites vs. Missouri Tigers

Jacksonville Jaguars
Last week: lost to Green Bay Packers
This week: 4-point underdogs vs. Detroit Lions

Miami Dolphins
Last week: beat New York Jets
This week: 2.5-point favorites vs. Indianapolis Colts

Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Last week: beat Minnesota Vikings
This week: 1.5-point underdogs vs. Oakland Raiders

Who wins the football vote? Filled with expats and a variety of rooting options, Florida doesn’t seem likely to be moved strongly one way or the other by any given game result. (Note: the Miami Hurricanes were excluded from this survey, as I used our mostly subjective sense of a team's fan following to decide who made the cut...and Miami’s attendance has looked terrible on TV lately.) On the whole, though, the state's most prominent game of late was the Gators’ undefeated-season-ruining defeat to Cocktail Party rival Georgia, so this is a slight lean for ROMNEY.

Iowa
Iowa Hawkeyes
Last week: lost to Northwestern Wildcats
This week: 2-point favorites vs. Indiana Hoosiers

Iowa State Cyclones
Last week: beat Baylor Bears
This week: 12-point underdogs vs. Oklahoma Sooners

Who wins the football vote? Iowa State’s win last weekend was a nice one, but they’re probably going to get blown out this week, and Iowa is having a terrible year, most recently punctuated by a loss to Northwestern. Yonder cornfields blow in ROMNEY’s direction.

New Hampshire
New England Patriots
Last week: beat St. Louis Rams
This week: bye.

Who wins the football vote? The Northeast, in our experience, is a pro football zone, and the Pats’ whoopin’ of the Rams last week favors OBAMA.

Ohio
Ohio State Buckeyes
Last week: beat Penn State Nittany Lions
This week: 27.5-point favorites vs. Illinois Fighting Illini

Cincinnati Bengals
Last week: bye.
This week: 3.5-point underdogs vs. Denver Broncos

Cleveland Browns
Last week: beat San Diego Chargers
This week: 3.5-point underdogs vs. Baltimore Ravens

Who wins the football vote? Both NFL teams are seemingly headed for losses, but with interest in those mediocre-to-bad squads likely at low ebb vis-à-vis the undefeated Buckeyes — who are coming off a big win at Penn State and looking to hammer the woeful Illini — the Ohio football scene must be said to favor OBAMA. One mitigating factor, however? The ever present danger that Buckeye fans will get Cheeto dust in their eyes on their way to the polls and drive into a tree. Go Blue!

Virginia
Virginia Tech Hokies
Last week: bye.
This week: 1.5-point favorites vs. Miami

Washington Redskins
Last week: lost to Pittsburgh Steelers
This week: 3-point favorites vs. Carolina Panthers

Who wins the football vote? This one could go either way, and the Skins did just lose, but with the odds saying both of the state's big teams should win this weekend, I have it as a tentative win for OBAMA.

Wisconsin
Wisconsin Badgers
Last week: lost to Michigan State Spartans
This week: bye.

Green Bay Packers
Last week: beat Jacksonville Jaguars
This week: 11-point favorites vs. Arizona Cardinals

Who wins the football vote? It was a downer of a loss for the Badgers last week, but their fan base’s rabidity is nothing compared to the Pack’s. With Aaron Rodgers rolling again, this one’s a DISCOUNT DOUBLE OBAMA CHECK.

Conclusions: Romney snags the biggest electoral prize in Florida and wins a Midwestern bellwether in Iowa, but the state of football affairs in Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, Wisconsin, and the crucial battleground of Ohio favors the current prez. This year, at least, America’s most popular sport looks like it’s lining up with the homosexual Jews who run the media and conspiring to help reelect BARACK OBAMA as America’s Quarterback.

The stadium that once played host to both the Indians and the Browns, and was unaffectionately known as “The Mistake On The Lake,” was destroyed in the mid '90s and dropped in Lake Erie. Hurricane Sandy brought it back.

According to Tremont Electric, Hurricane Sandy's path over Lake Erie brought back memories of one of the worst pro sports stadiums ever constructed. Strewn alongside the shores of the Bratenahl section of Cleveland this morning were pieces of the infamous Cleveland Municipal Stadium that was destroyed in November 1996. The debris was used to make three man-made reefs in Lake Erie — though I'm not totally convinced that that's not a euphemism for throwing your trash in the lake — and Sandy unmade them.

Cleveland Municipal Stadium in 1991:

Source: cavalier92

Cleveland Municipal Stadium this morning:

No word if the most disgusting urinal troughs the world has ever seen have reared their ugly heads. No one has reported any mutations yet so I'm thinking we're still safe on that front.

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How do you say, “buzzer-beater” in French? How about, “If this goes in, I'm definitely never going to a club that Chris Brown is at again”?

Tony Parker is just imagining the bottom of the net is Chris Brown's face. Tony is definitely on Team Drake.

Image by Eric Gay / AP

The NBA has been off to an exciting start so far this season. A big trade. A stupid controversy. Uncle Drew. But until last night, the league hadn't given fans a true game-winning buzzer-beater. There were some close calls on Wednesday night (George Hill's go-ahead bucket with two seconds left in the Indiana-Toronto game and Sebastian Telfair's bricked potential game-winning three at the end of the Phoenix-Golden State game), but no cigar. But then Tony Parker showed up and had sex with every Thunder player's wife. Metaphorically that is, when he hit the game-winning jumper at the horn. (Well, I hope it's just metaphorically, but honestly how can you know with this guy?)

And in case you were wondering, the Thunder looked good in their first outing without James Harden. Kevin Martin contributed 15 off the bench (though he's a terrible defender, so who knows how many points he gave up? Two, three hundred?), and the loss actually came down to what it often has for Oklahoma City: a lapse by Russ Westbrook, who lost Parker on the game's final play, allowing the Frenchman/club violence victim to knock down the winner.

Source: youtube.com

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One of these things is not like the others.

This is what happens when you image search : (the punctuation mark).
Very clever, Google.
But Bartolo Colon looks so lonely.

Source: reddit.com

Yes, that is a soccer player wearing a giant closet costume.

The Royal Dutch Football Association recently released this video to help promote acceptance of LGBT athletes in the Netherlands. It's a little quirky.

The KNVB's effort to promote LGBT acceptance within a rather progressive country that has legally allowed same-sex marriage since 2001 is admirable, but they might have whiffed on the execution. Are we supposed to laugh at a closeted gay athlete showering with his teammates and awkwardly fitting in with the team, when these are very real issues that can keep gay athletes from coming out? What do you think?

H/T Brooks Peck at Dirty Tackle.

Look no further than these storylines to know why the NBA is the best professional sports league going. (That's right — better than the NFL.)

1. The League's Two Most Interesting Guards Now Play For The Same Team

It WOULD be pretty interesting if Rockets GM Daryl Morey (left) signed himself to play point guard alongside James Harden, but despite what this picture/headline imply we're actually referring to Harden and Jeremy Lin.

Image by Pat Sullivan / AP

James Harden is the bearded pick-and-roll savant with the dead-eye shot and ball-handling skills as good as any two-guard's in the league. Jeremy Lin is the fan-favorite floor general who's the basketball equivalent of a running back, barreling down the lane for incomprehensible layups. Together, they've turned the formerly moribund, personality-devoid Houston Rockets into the league's most charismatic squad, that one team that will make you say, damn, I wish I was a Rockets fan. The fact that Houston's not even necessarily a playoff team makes them even more exciting — beyond Harden and Lin, the roster's filled with untested rookies (Royce White, Terrence Jones), three-point specialists (Daequan Cook, Carlos Delfino), and unconventional bigs (Chandler Parsons, Marcus Morris). Nobody knows how this experiment's going to end, except that we'll all have a hell of a lot of fun on the way.

2. The Lakers Must Win The Championship, But They Might Not

Image by Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

If the Lakers, a flock of basketball ubermenschen assembled at great cost and with huge fanfare, do not win the NBA Championship this year, their season will be considered a failure. Steve Nash is 38; Kobe Bryant is 34; Pau Gasol and Metta World Peace are 32; the window for these four guys is closing fast. Plus, the combined weight of their salaries means that the Lakers are paying a tremendous amount in luxury tax to put them all together. When you factor in coach Mike Brown’s questionable-ness, Dwight Howard’s mental inconsistency, and the fact that the Heat appear to be even better than they were last year, you start to wonder: does the Lakeshow even have that great of a shot at winning it all in 2013? Of course they do. It’s just going to be far from easy. After all, they’ve lost ten games in a row (two real and eight preseason) — they should try winning a game first.

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I hope he left this game and immediately went to Vegas, because when you have a gift you better use it.

Source: youtube.com

Ward's IMDb resume continues to blossom after a cameo in “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Hines Ward's latest acting adventure will take place on "The Walking Dead." He said it took a few hours in makeup to get him looking like a proper zombie but did not reveal if he'll be killed off on the show. (But he's a zombie, so probably.)

It's really not that noticeable on your face, Hines.

Theodore "T-Dog" Douglas says Hines will probably be the fastest zombie the show has ever seen.

This is a godsend, because The Walking Dead really needs to generate some pace. They spent an entire season on a goddamn farm. Let's move it along, please.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but the guy actually seems to have the right idea.

Image by Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

I have a tumultuous relationship with Mike Brown. For five years I watched as my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers ran an offense under the Stay-Puft marshmallow man that could best be described as a highway car wreck. Mind you, I don't just mean that it was bad like a car wreck. I mean that it operated under the same basic philosophy as a high-speed automobile accident. Everyone would slow down to look at the perpetrator and sometimes someone would catch on fire. To say that I hated Mike Brown during his time in Cleveland would be like saying male Republicans seem to be having some slight issues addressing the issue of rape. It's true, but it doesn't even begin to describe the severity of the situation. I give you this context so you'll trust me when I say this to Laker fans: Leave Mike Brown alone.

After an off-season that was an orgy of joy, the Lakers have struggled so far this year. Despite adding Steve Nash and Dwight Howard to a starting lineup that already included Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, the God-Mode Lakers have gone 0-8 in preseason and now lost their first two real-live basketball games. This has many in Lakerland (a country with temperate weather, beautiful women, and a strange theocracy built around the The Order of St. Kobe of Lower Merion or Italy) already clamoring for Brown's job. These people are stupid.

Dummies.

First off, Brown is attempting to implement the Princeton offense in L.A. The Princeton offense is built around players constantly passing the ball, players constantly moving without the ball, and players constantly knowing where their teammates are going to run, so that they can pass them the ball. It's a system that thrives on familiarity, which is pretty much the only thing this Lakers team does not yet have going for it, with all of the new players that have been brought in. And though some would argue that it's an offense that works against Steve Nash's skills, that's not really true. Passing is at a premium in this system; it's just that the whole offense doesn't have to run through one guy. It's an offensive philosophy that allows multiple players to share the scoring burden. It's an offensive philosophy that seeks to create scoring angles for every player on the court — which doesn't seem like such a terrible idea when you've got four of the most dangerous scorers in the world playing together.

But most importantly, it's an honest-to-god offensive philosophy. Look back at that first paragraph. Why did Clevelanders so resent the bespectacled Grimace-looking monster that was patrolling our sidelines for half a decade? Because we had the best player in the world and our offensive philosophy was a guy making fart noises with his mouth. That's not what's happening here. Brown brought in former Wizards head coach, reputable offensive mind, and once upon a time cool dude Eddie Jordan to help teach and run this system. This isn't the Mike Brown I knew and loathed, and Lakers fans should stop treating him like he's the same guy who once inspired this cartoon.

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You can't unsee this.

This was Shaun White's Halloween costume this year.

Via: http://@Shaun_White

Shaun just gets Halloween. Here are a couple of his previous costumes.

Via: maymemymomuu

Via: maymemymomuu

The Heat star was not thrilled with the traffic heading into New York City.

The Miami Heat are playing the New York Knicks on Friday night. It is the first NBA game in the city since Hurricane Sandy hit.

Image by Joe Skipper / Reuters

On Thursday night Dwyane Wade tweeted "3 hour traffic just to get into the NY city.. C'monMan..." . Realizing that was kind of a stupid thing to say, he deleted it. Mario Chalmers did not delete his re-tweet though.

Then Wade clarified:

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New York City Mayor Bloomberg had planned all week to move forward with Sunday's marathon, but after receiving much criticism , finally decided to call things off.

Via: nypost.com

The show must go on, but maybe not all the time.

There's been a lot of controversy this week over New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's decision to move forward with the ING New York City Marathon this Sunday, culminating in the New York Post cover today depicting several generators currently resting in Central Park while hundreds of thousands in the city still remain without power.

At the race's start on Staten Island — the hardest-hit borough of New York City — Hurricane Sandy demolished homes and left almost 65% of the roughly 470,000 residents on the island without power. On Thursday morning, Staten Island Borough President Jim Molinaro was in in disbelief over Bloomberg's decision to run a marathon through his ravaged home.

"My God. What we have here is terrible, a disaster. If they want to race, let them race with themselves. This is no time for a parade. A marathon is a parade," he said in an announcement. Later that evening, host organization New York Road Runners (NYRR) CEO Mary Wittenberg went on NY1 news to announce that they plan to donate $2.62 million to Sandy relief from their funds as well as personal pledges.

But Bloomberg and NYRR still seem unfazed by the logistical challenges posed by Sandy's wrath — public transportation to the race's start on Staten Island will be difficult (runners who had signed up for "official transportation" to take the Staten Island Ferry to the start were reassigned to buses leaving from Midtown Manhattan), and the final six or so miles of the race are through Central Park, which remains closed.* Bloomberg seems to be running (pun intended) under the assumption that things will be, relatively speaking, back to normal by Sunday, with power scheduled to be restored to lower Manhattan today.

Both Bloomberg and Wittenberg seem to be banking on the emotional connection between disaster and triumph — the George W. Bush throwing out the first pitch at the World Series after September 11th–type moment. “The Marathon has always been a special day for New Yorkers as a symbol of the vitality and resiliency of this city,” said Wittenberg in a statement.

"I was all set for running the marathon until yesterday, when I went to Coney Island — I had no idea it was quite so bad," Kai MacMahon, a conflicted runner, told me. "And the thought of there being search parties less than a mile from the actual start line...I don’t know what I’m going to do."

Pictures of the destruction on Staten Island.

Source: s3-ak.buzzfed.com

New York Times sports writer Lynn Zinser is aghast at the thought of police officers or resources being diverted to the marathon, especially after Bloomberg was quick to cancel the Nets vs. Knicks opener at the Barclays Center scheduled for Thursday night. "For some reason, the uplifting value of the New York City Marathon, however, is so off the charts in Bloomberg World that nothing trumps diverting countless police and sanitation resources to marathon duty, even when parts of the metropolitan area lie in ruins and the city is mired in transportation hell," she writes.

Bloomberg, however, said in a press conference Wednesday that none of the city's resources would be taken away to be put toward the marathon, and that much of the organizational efforts are through private companies hired by NYRR. Still, it's hard to justify when help is needed elsewhere.

"You cannot spare a policeman, you cannot spare a first responder to stand on a street corner to police the marathon," WFAN sports talk radio host Mike Francesa said Thursday, and ESPN analyst Darren Rovell tweeted:

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Here is a video of Jake the Snake Roberts and Diamond Dallas Page greeting trick or treaters on Halloween. This is maybe the weirdest thing I've seen all week.

Apparently former pro wrestler Diamond Dallas Page is really into yoga now, and is helping his friend Jake the Snake Roberts get back into shape by teaching him yoga at his house. Jake has moved into DDP's house, and they passed out candy to neighborhood kids on Halloween. Yeah, I'm confused too.

According to WrestlingInc.com, Jake showed up drunk to an indie wrestling event in Texas last Saturday night. Jake denied that he was intoxicated.

Best part of this video is when one of the kids' dad fans out on Jake.

The Bloomberg Administration has relented and postponed the marathon. The NYC Marathon starts in Staten Island just before the Verrazano Bridge. South Beach, a neighborhood nearby, suffered tremendous damage from Sandy. Here are 21 photos of what it looks like in some places there.

Via: silive.com

The following two photos were taken during the storm:

Via: @nycarecs

Via: static

These were taken after the storm:

Via: gramfeed.com

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Two running experts and marathoners explain how a delay of even a week could have affected those trying to win the marathon.

Source: upload.wikimedia.org

Pictured above is Geoffrey Mutal, who won the New York Marathon in 2011 with a course record time of two hours, five minutes, and six seconds. For runners like Mutal — the elite, the competitors who are trying to win the race — everything from training to nutrition to physiological needs like sleeping are, for months, tailored precisely to the specific day when they expect to run the marathon. And had this year's New York Marathon been delayed because of Sandy, it could have had a huge impact on the top competitors' chances at winning the race and its $853,000 purse.

Had the race — which will raise $340 million for a city that will have to deal with billions in damages because of Sandy — been postponed more than a week, it wouldn't have been worth the while of the world's best runners to still compete, said Dan Pinter, a marathoner and the assistant manager at New York's the Running Company. "For most of these runners, training is very meticulous, sometimes down to the hour," Pinter told me. "One week maybe wouldn't be a huge deal, but it's hard to say. It would definitely hurt [the runners]." For more casual runners, he said the effect would have been mostly mental.

Although it does heavily involve coordination with the city, most of the New York Marathon's managing and strategy is done by the New York Road Runners. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said that the drain on the city's resources — and its 35,000 police officers — would be minimal. Also, the logistics of postponing a citywide marathon likely would be a nightmare: rescheduling would involve new permits, working around other scheduled events, and the fact that the weather will only get colder from here on out. (For more on the debate over whether the marathon should happen, read Allison McCann's story for BuzzFeed earlier today.)

Adam Jolley, a marathoner and a manager at Super Runners Shop's 7th Avenue flagship, was even more equivocal about the effect a postponement would have on the elite runners.

"In my opinion, it would affect them tremendously," Jolley told me. He said that even a week delay would throw off to a significant degree the training regimen of these runners. In addition, competitors training at elevation would lose the lung capacity that they'd been building after coming down to regular altitude; the longer the delay, the greater the effect would be.

As far as the rest of the 47,000 expect runners in the race's rank-and-file, Jolley is less worried: "As we've shown during Sandy, New Yorkers are a resilient bunch. I don't think they'd have a problem adjusting."