Column Archive

Big Pimpin': Peyton Manning and the loyalty double standard

Professional athletes, we are constantly told, are disloyal souls. They're ungrateful. They’re selfish. They don’t care about the team, the fans, or the community. They are only out for themselves. The perpetual prime example of this egomaniacal archetype is the person author Scott Raab called "The Whore of Akron”: basketball player Lebron James. The Ohio-born James left his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat and overnight became the Sports World’s number one villain. Well, if Lebron James is the Whore of Akron, what does that make Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay?

The NFL, Bounties and the Drive to Hide the Violence

The NFL's powers that be are aghast and appalled. In the words of Commissioner Roger Goodell, “The [anti-]bounty rule promotes two key elements of NFL football: player safety and competitive integrity. It is our responsibility to protect player safety and the integrity of our game, and this type of conduct will not be tolerated. We have made significant progress in changing the culture with respect to player safety and we are not going to relent. We have more work to do and we will do it.”And here we have the problem......

UK Labor Leader Threatens Strikes During the London Olympics

Len McCluskey, the leader of the country’s largest union,Unite, has looked at the looming Olympics and raised the specter of strike-action. McCluskey, in an interview with the Guardian said that the attacks on the country's public sector workers were “so deep and ideological” that they had every right to target the games. He said,“The idea the world should arrive in London and have these wonderful Olympic Games as though everything is nice and rosy in the garden is unthinkable. Our very way of life is being attacked. By then, this crazy health and social care bill may have been passed, so we are looking at the privatisation of our National Health Service. I believe the unions, and the general community, have got every right to be out protesting.”

Our Interview with UVA Football Player Joseph Williams, Hunger Striking for Campus Workers

Rare are the times when an NCAA football player stands up for issues related to social justice. This is the first part of what makes the case of University of Virginia football player Joseph Williams so exceptional. Williams, along with a group of fellow classmates, is currently engaged in a hunger strike organized by the Living Wage Campaign. The group is demanding that the service employees who work on the campus receive wages that keep up with the cost of living in Charlottesville, Virginia. Williams is doing nothing less than risking his football career and his health in order to stand up for the voiceless on campus.What makes this story even more remarkable is Williams’s own voice. His essay on why he joined the hunger strike makes for powerful reading. Our interview with him was no less impressive. This is a jock for justice, laying it on the line for a cause deeply personal to him. If publicity of his stand inspires other college football players to be heard, the NCAA will find itself in difficult and unchartered waters.

Follow the Urine! Ryan Braun Makes a Kind of History

Yes, the reigning National League MVP and arguably the highest profile player to ever test positive for steroids, had his good name destroyed and it was all based around a piss test left in a cold, Wisconsin basement. As Barry Petchesky of Deadspin wrote, “If the procedure is so f—ked up that some dude can keep a jar of Ryan Braun’s pee in his fridge over the weekend, then maybe Major League Baseball should worry less about Ryan Braun’s appeal and more about a chain of custody that relies on a courier knowing the hours of his local Kinkos.”

Jeremy Lin and ESPN’s 'Accidental' Racism

The sports world has no anti-racist mental apparatus for how to talk about an Asian-American player. At ESPN, see the results.

Jeremy Lin! Why the Knicks' New Star Is Not the New Tebow

It’s understandable why the comparison is made. Both players revived depressed franchises just by getting in the game. Both play with a joy that seems to infect their teammates and raise everyone’s level of play. Both had their doubters, no question. And both are devout Christians who aren’t shy about thanking God in post-game interviews. It’s an easy comparison. It’s also dead wrong. The conflation of their stories does little more than burnish Tebow’s credentials at Lin’s expense.

Jeremy Lin! Why the Knicks' New Star Is Not the New Tebow

It’s understandable why the comparison is made. Both players revived depressed franchises just by getting in the game. Both play with a joy that seems to infect their teammates and raise everyone’s level of play. Both had their doubters, no question. And both are devout Christians who aren’t shy about thanking God in post-game interviews. It’s an easy comparison. It’s also dead wrong. The conflation of their stories does little more than burnish Tebow’s credentials at Lin’s expense.

Feel the Lin-sanity: Why Jeremy Lin Is More Than a Cultural Curio

When frighteningly fickle hoops fans are chanting “MVP” after your first career start, then you know you might be something special. When you become the first player since Lebron James to have at least twenty points and eight assists in your first two NBA starts, then you know the sports world will take notice. When you provide an infectious glee to a group of teammates who look at you with naked, near tearful gratitude like you’ve dragged them from basketball purgatory, then you know you have made an impact. When you are also the first American-born player of Asian descent ever in the NBA as well as a Harvard graduate, and you play with a black-top flair that defies preconception and prejudice, then you know you’re poised to draw unbridled attention. When you do it all in New York City, then you have to know that the hyperbole will not be constrained or contained. Welcome to Lin-sanity, otherwise known as the feverish outpouring of adulation heaped upon the new starting point guard for the New York Knicks, Jeremy Lin.

In Egypt: How a Tragic 'Soccer Riot' May Have Revived a Revolution

There are no words for the horror that took place in Port Said, Egypt last week. A soccer match became a killing field, with at least seventy-four spectators dead, and as many as 1,000 injured. But the aftermath has had the unexpected ricochet effect of reviving a revolution.