Column Archive

Breaking the Law? Northwestern Football Coach Pressures Players Not to Unionize

On Friday, the Northwestern University football squad will be voting about whether or not to become the first NCAA team to unionize. The Wildcats - and how perfect a name is "wildcats" - will be voting to have a seat at the table to discuss the manifest issues that come with playing a "sport" that requires as much as 60 hours a week of their time. They are also voting despite ominous warnings from their coach Pat Fitzgerald that a union has no place in their locker room. In Coach Fitzgerald’s world, there will be no dental plan no matter how badly Lisa needs braces.

The UConn Huskies Win ‘NCAA Hunger Games Bingo’

We have a team of majority African-American basketball players not getting an education and not getting paid, but generating billions of dollars for the NCAA, CBS and the assorted sponsors. We have a state college suffering budget cuts and tuition hikes, that has been trashed by students thrilled that their team of unpaid mercenaries has brought them a measure of reflected glory. All the evening was missing was a war in the Middle East to get everyone truly good and frothy.

Why Is Northwestern Football Coach Pat Fitzgerald Playing the Union Buster?

Maybe it is as simple as the words of ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson who said, “Wildcats coach Pat Fitzgerald is now in the position of being an employer whose employees are entitled to vote on whether to unionize.” Like so many bosses, maybe he does not want his workers to have a seat at the table. Clearing the table, maybe, but not a seat.

Men on the Edge of Panic: Boomer Esiason, Mike Francesa and Toxic Masculinity

This is not another shooting-fish-in-a-barrel commentary about the antediluvian swinishness of Boomer Esiason and Mike Francesa. This is not another swipe at their comments criticizing the efforts of Mets second basemen Daniel Murphy for missing opening day to be with his wife for the birth of their child. Well, maybe a little.

Richard Sherman Defends His Dirt

The NFL traffics in rank hypocrisy often without consequence. Stepping into this ethical vacuum we have Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman. Sherman is more than a breath of fresh air. He's oxygen in a moral corpse.

The Northwestern University Football Union and the NCAA’s Death Spiral

The experts said that the efforts of the Northwestern University football team to form a union would crash and burn. The experts scoffed that these naïve jocks would lose their case before the National Labor Relations Board. The experts were proven wrong on Wednesday and the established order in the sports world has been shaken to its foundations.

It’s the Racism, Stupid: Meet the Press’s Epic NCAA Fail

David Gregory's Meet the Press NCAA roundtable was just north of a disaster.

Disrespect in Dodgers Blue: Why Number 11 Should Be Worn Only by Manny Mota

There is a 23-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers rookie of great promise named Erisbel Arruebarrena, walking around spring training wearing number 11, and this bothers the holy hell out of me. There is only one number 11 for the Dodgers, and that is Manny Mota. The 76-year-old Dodger legend, who is not a Dodgers coach for the first time in more than three decades, is also present at spring training still wearing his own number 11. He has responded to Arruebarrena being given his number with nothing but class. Maybe I am just less classy.

My Years of Magical Thinking: Thoughts on the 1980s Showtime Lakers

Jeff Pearlman's new book, Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, is a reminder of just how emotionally connected I was to those Laker teams. 

Major League Soccer to Start Season With Scab Refs

The role of the referee in professional sports is not just making sure play is monitored, penalties get called and the game has a sense of flow. It is to protect the integrity of the product and the safety of the participants. The NFL demonstrated starkly when it started the first four games of the 2012 season with scab—or in the parlance of our neoliberal times “replacement”—referees, that the game was simply not the game when you had untrained eyes in charge of the action. For reasons that beggar belief, Major League Soccer has decided to follow in the tragic trajectory of the NFL and start the season with scabs on the pitch.