Full Archive

White Blindness: The Winter Olympics and Defending Bryant Gumbel

The right-wing media hordes, in a mad dash to deflect attention from Dick Cheney's shooting spree, may have found their target of mass distraction: Bryant Gumbel.

The Value of a Number

A new push is taking place to honor another legend in a similar way. An appeal has been made by Hispanics Across America (HAA) to retire the number 21of Pittsburgh Pirate Roberto Clemente. the effort to honor Clemente has met resistance from a surprising source: Jackie Robinson's daughter Sharon. In January, she said, "To my understanding, the purpose of retiring my father's number is that what he did changed all of baseball, not only for African-Americans but also for Latinos, so I think that purpose has been met. When you start retiring numbers across the board, for all different groups, you're kind of diluting the original purpose."

Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink

"A celebration of concentrated wealth." That's what Washington Post sportswriter Tony Kornheiser called the National Football League's two-week long pre-Super Bowl party binge. Every Super Bowl Sunday, corporate executives and politicians exchange besotted, sodden backslaps, amidst an atmosphere that would shame Jack Abramoff. Only this year the bacchanalia -- complete with ice sculptures peeing Grey Goose vodka and two tons of frozen lobster flown directly to the stadium -- is happening in the United States' most impoverished, ravaged city: Detroit.

The Slave Side of Sunday

NFL veteran Anthony Prior contends that the NFL is rife with a racism that is both deeply institutionalized and largely unchallenged. "I was frustrated by not seeing the truth in print," Prior told me in a recent interview. "And I believe that if you want to see it, you should write it."

The Xs and O's of Social Change

Opening blurb: THE NEW Disney film "Glory Road" tells the story of a basketball game that put sports in the middle of the civil rights movement. But it also recalls a time when the ordinary actions of coaches could unwittingly transcend sports and make a mark on history.

Crossroads: Race and Coaching in the NFL

Currently there is an opportunity for NFL owners to make a serious dent in the apartheid feng shui that defines the coaching quarters in the NFL. The stats are staggering. In the 16 years since Art Shell became the NFL

Over the Edge: The Year in Sports 2005

This past year that "hermetically sealed divide" has gone well beyond the fraying stage. The delicate division between sports and politics was ripped apart like it was trying to block Dwight Freeney. Discussing the "politics of sports" became in 2005 as popular as sports itself - for better and worse.

Bray of Pigs

Instead of honoring the diversity that has changed baseball forever, Bush played vendetta politics with Cuba's national baseball team.

The Silencing of Carlos Delgado

Sometimes sports mirrors politics with such morbid accuracy you don't know whether to laugh, cry or hide in the basement. Just as the Bush Administration shows its commitment to democracy by operating secret offshore gulags and buying favorable news coverage in Iraq, the New York Mets have made it clear to new player Carlos Delgado that freedom of speech stops once the blue and orange uniform--their brand--is affixed to his body.

The Fight to Save Stan Tookie Williams

Jim Brown: NFL hall of famer actor activist. He has mediated truces between the toughest gangs in Los Angeles and fought racism from South Central to Soweto. But today he is involved in a different kind of fight: the race to save Stan Tookie Williams, who now awaits execution on California's death row. Williams is due to be executed December 13, and Brown has linked arms with a motley crew of activists from Archbishop Desmond Tutu to hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg demanding that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spare his life. Schwarzenegger, who has set a clemency hearing for December 8, recently told reporters he is "dreading" the decision he is about to make.