While some folks poured over stat sheets deciding which players to draft for their rotisserie baseball teams and others huddled around televisions worrying over turnovers and blown calls, more than a hundred Washington & Lee alumni gathered to look at the world of sports from a different perspective this weekend. Several different perspectives.

"Moneyball" author Michael Lewis, Major League Baseball vice president Sandy Alderson, ESPN The Magazine senior writer Buster Olney and history professor Barry Machado were guest speakers at W&L's two-day seminar on Sport and American Culture, part of the annual Tom Wolfe Lecture series sponsored by the class of 1951.

"Why are people so wrapped up in the outcome of sports contests," mused Wolfe, a member of the '51 class. "I used to be a Tigers fan. I lived and died with the Tigers. ... I had never been to Detroit.

"What is it in us that wants to be championed by some team?"

While there were no clear answers to Wolfe's question, Lewis and Alderson, former president of the Oakland Athletics, provided an inside peek at how Alderson and general manager Billy Beane switched to statistics-based talent evaluation in order to save money while still fielding a winning team.

Olney explained that not everyone in baseball was impressed.

"I have no doubt that the majority of scouts are rooting like crazy against Oakland," Olney said. "They see that book as Billy's voice telling them they are stupid."

That resistance to change, Machado said, was as true in college sports as in baseball. He pointed out that the winningest coach in college football, Division III St. John's John Gagliardi (421-117-11), subscribes to the theory that less practice is better.

"And he wins," Machado said. No one follows Gagliardi's lead because "they are hobbled by theology."

"They believe that they have to practice more and longer to get better," Machado said.

Machado took the long view of collegiate sports, pointing out that commercialism and corruption are nearly as old as the games themselves. It started with Harvard and Yale, and Grantland Rice and Amos Alonzo Stagg, not with SMU and Fresno State, nor ESPN and Bob Huggins.

Machado said his skepticism of the latest attempts to clean up college sports is not cynicism but "historically minded."

His own solution would be to have "genuine" minor leagues, so that Ann Arbor, Mich., would still have a football team, but it would not be affiliated with the University of Michigan. He suggested that Division III athletics programs, like W&L's, could hold themselves up as examples for their Division I brethren. Machado had to admit that not all Division III schools could stand up under the scrutiny.

Olney turned some scrutiny on himself and other baseball beat writers, who despite having extraordinary access to major-league players, did not report the suspected use of steroids over the past 15 to 20 years.

"We blew the steroid story for more than a decade," Olney said. "We were all waiting for that smoking gun. We were waiting for someone to get arrested with syringes."

Olney told of a suspected steroid user walking shirtless through the locker room at the 1997 All-Star game, exposing his bloated upper body and back acne. Another player tossed him a shirt, Olney said, and said "Stop being so obvious."

"I wish I had found a way to write that story then," Olney said.

Wolfe thanked the panel for delivering all the "drama and passion" of sports along with the "nuts and bolts."

"It's been two marvelous days," Wolfe said. "Thanks for making me look good."