Column Archive

Tim Tebow and CBS: United Against “Choice”

The cultural power of the Super Bowl cannot be overstated. That's exactly why CBS' utterly hypocritical decision to air an anti-abortion ad funded by Focus on the Family and starring Tim Tebow was both wrongheaded and revealing.

An Idiot Among Us: Paul Shirley on Haiti

In most cases, I've believed strongly in the right of professional athletes to state their political beliefs loudly and proudly. The concept that jocks should just "shut up and play" denigrates our collective freedom to stand up and be heard. But defending an athlete's right to speak is far from defending the political content of their words. Case and point: former NBA journeyman Paul Shirley.

The Vancouver Olympic Blues

When I arrived in Vancouver, the first thing I noticed was the frowns. The anger wasn't far behind.

Silver Lining for Vikings Fans (Politically)

Yes, there is misery in Minnesota. But there is also a silver lining, and I'm not talking about the joy in Green Bay at the spectacular fall of Minnesota QB Brett Favre. It's about the politics of stadium funding.

NFL Owners Stiff-arm Fans/Union

Call it the Super Bowl for lawyers and the reckoning for football fans. On January 13 the owners of all thirty-two NFL teams asked the Supreme Court to shield them from anti-trust laws. Their argument is that the league does not comprise, despite all evidence, thirty-two individual competing units but is made up of one "single entity."

MLK wasn't an athlete, but he understood importance of sports

One thing about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: the man understood sports. I don't mean that King was any kind of a star athlete. The only sport that the young, roundish "Mike" King was known to excel at was pocket billiards, which isn't exactly a sport (the golden rule: anything that you can gain weight or smoke cigarettes while doing is not a sport). But Dr. King understood with remarkable acuity the political and symbolic power of sports. He understood that the athletic field -- and athletes -- could be a powerful megaphone for civil rights and racial justice.

"We are a Forgotten People": An Interview with Haitian NBA Vet Olden Polynice

Olden Polynice played center in the NBA for 15 seasons. During that time, he distinguished himself as more than a hardnosed rebounder. He was the most visible Haitian athlete in the history of the United States. In 1993, Polynice was the first U.S. athlete to ever join a hunger strike during the season to protest the treatment of H.I.V. positive Haitian refugees imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. Today Polynice lives in Los Angeles and runs the Olden Polynice Hoop Foundation. He calls himself "an activist for Haiti until the day I die.... whether it's chic or not." I spoke with him about the current post-earthquake calamity.

Mark McGwire's Pound of Flesh

For anyone who hoped that Mark McGwire's steroid confession could spark an opportunity to have an honest discussion about how we understand "the Steroid Era", these hopes have been quickly liquidated. Now is the time of the Sunday morning hangover and everyone is a born again zealot.

Sport for Sport's Sake

This has been quite the winter of discontent in the world of sports as many of the stories blaring from the top flap of your local sports page often have nothing to do with what's happening on the field.What is with the US-Weeklyification of sports?

Faculty Protest Texas Football Coach's Raise

There is no state in the union more synonymous with football than Texas. From the Dallas Cowboys to the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs and Texas Longhorns, to Friday Night Lights, pigskin has long defined the Lone Star State. Yet one group is determined that in a time of serious economic crisis, football know its place: the faculty at the University of Texas, Austin.