Column Archive

NBA Player Royce White: Mental Health Revolutionary

This week, the most famous NBA player yet to play in the NBA finally took the court. Royce White, rookie forward for the Houston Rockets, suited up for their D-League team, the esteemed Rio Grande Valley Vipers. In eighteen minutes, he had seven points, eight rebounds and four assists.  But the bigger story was that White played at all. For months, the 21-year-old has been sitting out the season in protest: a rebel with a cause.

Game Over; How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down: The Sports Illustrated Review

The February 18th issue of Sports illustrated assesses my new book "Game Over". Please check out what they had to say.

Redskins: The Clock Is Now Ticking on Changing the Name

It’s an awkward fact of life in Washington, DC, that we are home to both the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Washington Redskins. One attempts to preserve the Native American cultures that weren’t eradicated by conquest; the other is both a symbol and result of the same eradication. But the presence of a young brilliant quarterback could signal that it's finally time for a change. 

John Harbaugh Summons the Poetry of Muhammad Ali

AS 80,000 Baltimore Ravens fans gathered at MB&T Bank Stadium to rally and celebrate their team's triumph in Sunday's Super Bowl, head coach John Harbaugh had something to say......

'The Blackout Bowl,' or 'The Most Depressing Super Bowl Column You'll Read'

Super Bowl XLVII will be remembered for the Baltimore Ravens’ thrilling 34-31 victory over the San Francisco 49ers. It will be remembered for Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco’s MVP performance. It will be remembered for San Francisco’s remarkable comeback from a 28-6 deficit led by their quicksilver quarterback Colin Kaepernick in just his tenth career start.But more than anything else, the game will be remembered for a thirty-four-minute stadium blackout early in the second half that plunged the New Orleans Super Dome first into darkness and then a kind of eerie twilight.

Is it Getting Better? Homophobia Rocks Super Bowl

When Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo said he hoped this year’s Super Bowl would be a platform to discuss LGBT rights, I don't think this is exactly what he had in mind.

'It's a New World': The Super Bowl Becomes a Platform for LGBT Equality

Super Bowl XLVII is being billed as the Harbaugh Bowl: the battle between Jim and John Harbaugh, head coaches, respectively, of the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens. It also pits two NFL teams connected directly and indirectly to the struggles for LGBT rights. Read that last sentence again, and appreciate for a moment how far fighters for LGBT equality have traveled.

Three Card Manti: Why the Media Is Swallowing Manti Te'o's New Narrative

Manti Te’o has a story and he’s sticking to it. With millions of dollars hanging in the balance, the Notre Dame star whose cancer-stricken girlfriend Lennay Kekua turned out to never exist, has decided that it’s better to look like a doe-eyed victim than a furtive fraud.

The NFL: Where Dr. King's "Dream" Goes to Die

As the United States celebrates the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, with the swearing in of this country's first African American President, there will no doubt be commentary on the great gap between ceremony and reality. It's the gap between the public spectacle of President Barack Obama's inaugural oath and a country still ravaged by what Dr. King called "the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic injustice." In addition to the inaugural festivities, this weekend was also marked by a spectacle that will rival or exceed the inauguration in passion and interest: the National Football League playoffs. NFL football, by a country mile, is the most popular sport in the United States. It also stands as a living monument of the distance we still must travel to slay Dr. King's "giant triplets." 

Crying for Manti Te'o

Two years ago, I called the Notre Dame football program a moral cesspool. Two weeks ago, I wrote a story about the horrible treatment of women who have accused members of the Notre Dame football team of sexual assault, harassment and rape. These strands knotted together Wednesday in a drama that threatens to break the Internet: the incredibly bizarre, but unbelievably true, story of Fighting Irish star Manti Te’o and his fake online girlfriend.