Column Archive

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.

Lance Armstrong's Discordant Redemption Song

This week Lance Armstrong, our most famous cyclist/cancer survivor/suspected Performance Enhancing Drug user, aims to do something more daunting than ride a bike up the face of the Pyrenees. He is attempting to ride Oprah's couch back into the good grace of public opinion. On Monday night, Armstrong will, after 15 years of strenuous, Sherman-esque denials, “come clean” and admit to imbibing in illegal “performance enhancers” during his record-setting career. This will not go well.If Armstrong was only trying to win back the public support he's lost since the United States Anti-Doping Agency stripped him of his seven Tour de France titles, that could prove challenging enough. But he is attempting the public relations of equivalent of riding his bike through the eye of a needle

RGIII and the Crisis of Liberalism in the United States

Eugene Robinson, the Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal political columnist, wrote that he knows who is to blame for Washington Redskins superstar quarterback Robert Griffin III’s horrific knee injury. He has seen the culprit and it is not team owner Dan Snyder or Coach Mike Shanahan. It is us.  Robinson's analysis actually reveals more than the liberal lion intended. It may say little about how RGIII was hurt, but it says so much about the Washington consensus liberalism that Robinson so ably represents.

Notre Dame and Penn State: Two Rape Scandals, Only One Cry for Justice

Two storied college football programs. Two rape scandals. Only one national outcry. How do we begin to explain the exponentially different levels of attention paid to crimes of violence and power at Penn State and Notre Dame?

Must Be Seen to Be Believed: Kevin-Prince Boateng Kicks Soccer’s Racism in the Teeth

In the middle of a “friendly match” against the club Pro Patria, a mini-mob in the bleachers repeatedly tossed bigoted bombs at the non-white players on AC Milan’s roster, and Boateng decided he’d had enough. He picked up the ball right in the middle of play and punted it directly into their section of the stands. Boateng then began to walk off the field in protest. Here is where, in a matter of seconds, the turn of events shifted from shock to wonder. As Boateng stormed to the nearest exit, the Pro Patria fans, instead of jeering, cheered him for his actions. Then the referees called off the rest of the game and his opponents on Pro Patria walked off with Boateng, shoulder to shoulder, in solidarity. The announcers could only utter a word in Italian easy to translate: “Incredible.”

Roger Goodell: The Wayne LaPierre of the Sports World

As the media finally turns a critical eye toward the National Rifle Association CEO, they might want to follow suit with the commissioner of the National Football League.