Column Archive

Dave Zirin on the Dan Patrick Show: Roger Goodell & Adrian Peterson

On the Dan Patrick Show today, Dave Zirin called out Roger Goodell for “basically using a beaten 4-year-old child as a stepping stone to reclaim the moral highground that was lost after the Ray Rice scandal.” Zirin points out that you can both be repulsed by what Adrian Peterson did to his son, and see what Roger Goodell is doing for what it is: “a profoundly cynical exercise in personal and professional brand rehabilitation.”- Jessica McKenzie

Kurt Busch, Ray Rice and How Sports Disseminates the Burdens of Racism

Over the weekend, we learned that NASCAR star Kurt Busch was being investigated by police for assaulting his ex-girlfriend Patricia Driscoll. Driscoll has requested both a restraining order and that the court compel Busch to seek counseling after he allegedly“accused her of ‘having spies everywhere and having a camera on the bus to watch him’ ” and then “jumped up, grabbed her face and smashed her head three times against the wall next to the bed.”

Boston Is Already Saying ‘Hell No’ to the 2024 Olympics

As someone who has reported from most of the Olympic sites since 2002, I have written—often—that these games, so treasured by athletes and fans, operate off-camera as a colossal scam. It doesn’t take Naomi Klein to see that the games arrive with a shock doctrine of debt, displacement and militarization of public space. This has always been the case, but since 9/11, as the security needs for the Olympics have exploded alongside the profit margins of private security and tech firms, it has become an utter disaster for host cities. In fact, staging the games has become so burdensome that the only countries which seem to want the them are places that have a more, let’s just say, dictatorial method of handling cost overruns and dissent among the general populace.

FIFA Denies Women’s World Cup Players an Equal Playing Field—Literally

At some point in the near future, a Canadian tribunal will determine whether or not the 2015 Women’s World Cup will be the setting not only of guts, goals and glory but torn ligaments, stretched hamstrings and a profound level of disrespect. A group of the top players in the world, including US stars Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan, are suing soccer’s international ruling body, FIFA as well as the Canadian Soccer Association, over their insistence that the Cup be played on artificial turf.

Why the Movement Against Washington Football’s Racial Slur Is ‘Idle No More’

On Sunday, as many as 5,000 people marched on the Minnesota-Washington football game in the Twin Cities, with a simple message for DC’s seething carbuncle of an owner, Dan Snyder: change the damn name of your franchise. Change your mascot from the dictionary-defined slur of Native Americans and enter the twenty-first century.

A-Rod and Ray Rice: If They Go Down, Let Them Not Be Alone

Alex Rodriguez and Ray Rice: a middle-aged, steroid-addled baseball star from Miami and a young Pro-Bowl running back caught on camera striking his then-fiancée Janay Palmer, have a couple of things in common these days. Owners and masses of fans want to each of these men to just go away, disappear, never heard from again. Each of their respective leagues would love nothing more than to be able to “pull a Stalin” and erase them from every photo, every video and every memory from their respective worlds. But neither is going anywhere, quietly or otherwise.

The Bridge: A Political Appreciation of Steve Nash

Anyone who loves the game of basketball when played to its free-flowing, near-narcotic full-potential is in mourning over the announcement that the career of Steve Nash has in all likelihood come to a close. People will miss Nash above all else, because the future Hall of Famer had the capacity to both control the pace of a game and inspire onlookers like few players of his generation.

Stop Surgical Violence Against Women Athletes—and Let Dutee Run!

Imagine if four female Olympic athletes from extremely poor countries were told that if they wanted to compete, they’d have to undergo a surgical procedure on their genitalia—with lifelong health repercussions—to lower their testosterone levels. Imagine if they were informed by ruling officials that unless they went under the knife, their athletic dreams would go up in smoke. Imagine if the doctors also subjected them to procedures that had nothing to do with their testosterone levels, but were aimed at “feminizing” them, including “a partial clitoridectomy, and gonadectomy, followed by a deferred feminizing vaginoplasty.” This is not the plot of a new sports book by Margaret Atwood. This is an all all-too-true tale from the 2012 London Olympics.

They Need Him, So Why Was Michael Sam Cut From the Dallas Cowboys?

The set-up seemed preordained, written up by a hacky Hollywood screenwriter. Here are the Dallas Cowboys, the surprise juggernaut of the 2014 NFL season. They have all the Super Bowl ingredients: a fearsome offensive line, a healthy and surprisingly calm Tony Romo at quarterback, and a record-breaking running back in DeMarco Murray. The one thing they’re missing, an essential in today’s pass-happy NFL, is the ability to rush the passer.

‘Raiders Night’ Comes to Sayreville

The best young adult sports book that I’ve ever read is Raiders Night, by Robert Lipsyte. It details the dynamics of a big-time New Jersey high school football team, the Nearmont Raiders, and the ways in which a sports hazing culture seamlessly morphs into a sexual assault against a teammate. Raiders Night lays out better than a stack of academic articles how the toxic masculinity embedded in many football teams, when spliced with peer pressure, could lead otherwise good kids to choose silence when faced with a violent crime.