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Sports IQ

Sports IQ

Written by: Anthony Ciardelli
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About this listen

There are questions we as sports fans sometimes wonder about but never get around to getting the answer for. Sometimes, we don't even think about them unless someone points them out.

Questions like: Why is fighting allowed in hockey? What are college sports more popular in the U.S.? How do we become fans of the teams we love? What even counts as a sport?

At Sports IQ, we're here to answer these questions and more so tune into Sports IQ, a sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, sometimes when I just have the time to do it podcast.

If you have any questions that you want me to try to answer email: ciardellia@gmail.com

Anthony Ciardelli 2025
World
Episodes
  • How did fighting become a part of pro hockey?
    Feb 25 2026

    In episode four of Sports IQ, we explore how fighting become such a normal part of the game of hockey and not other (non-combat) sports. What about the development of the sport made fighting common place and will it always be a part of the game?

    Anthony interviews Michael Robidoux, a professor at the University of Ottawa, school of human kinetics, faculty of health sciences to learn more.

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    41 mins
  • How do we become sports fans?
    Feb 11 2026

    How did you fall in love with your favorite team or teams? Are you a fan of multiple teams in the same league? Do you always root for the underdog? In episode three of Sports IQ, we aim to figure out the emotional and psychological reasons we chose to root for the teams we do. Anthony interviews his daughter Isla and Edward Hirt, who is a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University, to find out some of the psychology behind sports fandom.

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • How did college sports get so big in the U.S. and not other countries?
    Jan 28 2026

    In episode two of Sports IQ, we try to answer why college sports are so popular here, but not in other countries? To find out, Anthony interviews Victoria Jackson, a professor and historian at Arizona State University.

    Find out what the first EVER official college athletics contest in the U.S. was, what role college football played in the college sports industry as we know it today, and what president celebrated the broken nose his son received playing football.

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    38 mins
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