Column Archive

Why Major League Baseball Owners Will Cheer the Death of Hugo Chavez

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will mean unseemly celebration on the right and unending debate on the left. Less discussed will be that the passing of Hugo Chávez will also provoke unbridled joy in the corridors of power of Major League Baseball.

The Sports Interview Non–Sports Fans Have to Read: My Talk With NBA Player Royce White

Royce White is an NBA player with a cause. The first round draft pick of the Houston Rockets sat out the first half of the season in protest of the ways the team handled issues related to his mental health. Now he is back, playing for the team’s D-League team, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, but he hasn’t stopped speaking out about the NBA, mental health issues and the way capitalism impacts our world. Yes, you read that last part correctly. I interviewed Royce White for my radio show,Edge of Sports, on Sirius/XM. Read an edited version of our interview below. I’ve edited some of my questions for clarity purposes and cut some questions and answers for brevity’s sake but Mr. White’s answers below are verbatim exactly as given. People can hear the full audio of our interview at this link. Royce White considers himself a “humanist” and as you will see, his humanity shines through.

Citizen Mike: Michael Jordan at 50

When Michael Jeffrey Jordan turned 50 years old on Sunday, a series of articles were published about the basketball legend whose athletic greatness was surpassed only by his commercial prowess. From a distance, Jordan’s existence must resemble fantasy: the athlete who accumulated enough wealth to make the ultimate transition from NBA player to NBA owner. Yet there is little to admire about Michael Jordan at 50. If anything, the more you learn, the more you recoil. 

Oscar Pistorius and the Global System of Deadly Misogyny

A professional athlete; a home with an arsenal of firearms; a dead young woman involved in a long-term relationship with her killer. In November, her name was Kasanda Perkins and the man who shot her was Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher. Now her name is Reeva Steenkamp, killed by Olympic sprinter and double amputee Oscar “the Blade Runner” Pistorius. We don’t know whether Pistorius is guilty of murdering a woman he claims to have deeply loved or is guilty merely of being an unbelievably irresponsible gun owner, firing four bullets into the door of his bathroom in an effort to hit an imagined burglar. We do know that this is either an all-too-familiar story of a man and the woman he dated and then killed, or it’s the story of a man who thought a burglar had penetrated the electrified fence that surrounded his gated community to break into his house and use his toilet.

Florida Atlantic's Folly: Why GEO Group Should Not Have Naming Rights

Sometimes the sports world doesn’t just reflect the real world. It mocks our world with a vicious veracity. Recently, we learned that Florida Atlantic University had sold the naming rights to its football field. This isn’t unusual at all, but the company the school chose amongst many suitors certainly was. The stadium will be known as GEO Group Stadium.For those who have never heard about—or protested—GEO Group, it is a highly profitable private prison corporation. Governments across the world, from South Africa to the United Kingdom to Australia, pay the GEO Group to take over their jails and run them as privatized, for-profit enterprises.

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.