Column Archive

Slave Labor? Mass Prisons? FIFA Mangles the World Cup and the Beautiful Game

Is it possible to be sickened by everything that goes into staging the World Cup while also loving the tournament itself? For eighty-three years the answer to that has been a resounding yes. The thinking, from FIFA, soccer’s ruling body, down to fans, has been that if a few eggs must be broken, then that’s the price we must pay for a brilliant global frittata. But, with two stories that broke this week, FIFA is truly testing the limits of what people will swallow.

All Players United: NCAA Athletes Take a Stand for Change

A significant group of college football players taking the field on national television this past weekend, including Georgia Tech quarterback Vad Lee and Northwestern QB Kain Colter, wore the letters APU on their uniforms. No, they are not Simpsons enthusiasts. The letters stand for All Players United, and their coordinated action was put together by the National Collegiate Players Association.

Rick Reilly and the Most Irredeemably Stupid Defense of the Redskins Name You Will Ever Read

Living in the Washington, D.C., area. I have many friends who defend the name of our local football team, the Redskins. Even though I disagree with them vehemently, I actually feel bad that their chief advocate in the sports world is now ESPN’s Rick Reilly.

Jonathan Ferrell, Former Football Player, Killed By Police for Seeking Help After Car Wreck

Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old former football player at Florida A&M University crashed his car in Charlotte, North Carolina. Then everything became much worse. 

Not a Game: How the NYPD Uses Sports for Surveillance

Were the NYPD youth soccer leagues as well as the teams that compete for the “NYPD Cricket Cup”—yes, there is such a thing—set up explicitly for the purposes of surveillance? Was the trust of hundreds of families who signed up their children for these leagues violated in the name of intelligence gathering? Were these leagues just a way to practice a more effective form of racial and ethnic profiling

The NFL Concussion Deal: Rotten From All Sides

There is no other way to put it but the NFL is Rollo Tomasi. The NFL always gets away with it. Evidence abounds that the NFL has been running a concussion assembly line for decades. But now that it has settled its high-profile concussion lawsuit with 4,500 ex-player plaintiffs for $765 million, there will be no discovery process.

How Roger Goodell Is Breaking Bad

This past August, sports blogs were littered with articles drawing parallels between different aspects of the athletic world and the television program Breaking Bad. I felt it myself following a weekend of decoding the NFL’s pitiless settlement of the class action concussion lawsuit of 4,500 former players and then, taking a break from the legalese, hearing a particularly poignant lament on Sunday’s episode from Breaking Bad’s star-crossed Jesse Pinkman.

‘I’m Johnny Manziel, and You’re Not.’

The NCAA mandated that Texas A&M’s Heisman-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel had to give a speech detailing all the life lessons he learned during his scandal-plagued summer. Here is a fictional accounting of what he might say.

ESPN Journalists Speak Out on Concussion Documentary

ESPN is the New York Yankees of sports journalism and, as with the Yankees, whether you love them or hate them, they have become a central axis upon which much of the sports world spins. That’s why an industry-wide earthquake was felt last week when The New York Times reported that the World Wide Leader in Sports had abruptly pulled out of a fifteen-month partnership with PBS’s Frontline to produce a documentary about head injuries in the National Football League. I spoke to some of  ESPN's best journalists who vent about their feelings on the situation.

Why Banning Russia from the Olympics is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea

There are few people in the sports world I respect more than Cyd Zeigler the founder of the website Outsports, which deals with the sporting lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender athletes. I tweeted Mr. Zeigler's excellent article titled “Don’t Boycott Olympics Ban Russia From Competing Instead” precisely because it was incisive and made me think. I do however feel that on principle I need to state that I strongly disagree with his central premise.