Column Archive

More March Madness: The Persecution of Jamar Samuels

This past weekend saw the sharpest possible demonstration of what makes the NCAA basketball tournament, otherwise known as March Madness, so thrilling as a sports spectacle and so repellent as a business. We witnessed two number-fifteen seeds win in the opening round, the first time that’s happened in tournament history. Then came ugly, otherwise known as the case of Kansas State center Jamar Samuels. Samuels, the team’s second leading scorer and a senior, was declared ineligible and summarily humiliated by the NCAA just twenty minutes before the Wildcats’ second-round game against Syracuse. What was Samuels’s crime? He’s accused of taking $200 from his Amateur Athletic Union coach, Curtis Malone. Samuels had to miss his last game as a collegian and watch his dispirited team lose to the top ranked Orange, 75-59. I’m not sure which part of this to be enraged by first. Let us count the ways.

Beneath the Brackets: March Madness and the “Civil Rights Movement for Our Times”

In 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists at the Olympic games, taking a stand against the injustices they saw in their corner in the SportsWorld. The year 2012 is crying out for similar displays of athletic militancy but we shouldn’t have to wait for this Summer’s Olympics. The time for action is right now during the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament. We need young people of uncommon courage stepping forward into what sports sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards calls “The Civil Rights Movement for our times," the inequity and exploitation engineered by the NCAA.

Big Pimpin': Peyton Manning and the loyalty double standard

Professional athletes, we are constantly told, are disloyal souls. They're ungrateful. They’re selfish. They don’t care about the team, the fans, or the community. They are only out for themselves. The perpetual prime example of this egomaniacal archetype is the person author Scott Raab called "The Whore of Akron”: basketball player Lebron James. The Ohio-born James left his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat and overnight became the Sports World’s number one villain. Well, if Lebron James is the Whore of Akron, what does that make Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay?

The NFL, Bounties and the Drive to Hide the Violence

The NFL's powers that be are aghast and appalled. In the words of Commissioner Roger Goodell, “The [anti-]bounty rule promotes two key elements of NFL football: player safety and competitive integrity. It is our responsibility to protect player safety and the integrity of our game, and this type of conduct will not be tolerated. We have made significant progress in changing the culture with respect to player safety and we are not going to relent. We have more work to do and we will do it.”And here we have the problem......

UK Labor Leader Threatens Strikes During the London Olympics

Len McCluskey, the leader of the country’s largest union,Unite, has looked at the looming Olympics and raised the specter of strike-action. McCluskey, in an interview with the Guardian said that the attacks on the country's public sector workers were “so deep and ideological” that they had every right to target the games. He said,“The idea the world should arrive in London and have these wonderful Olympic Games as though everything is nice and rosy in the garden is unthinkable. Our very way of life is being attacked. By then, this crazy health and social care bill may have been passed, so we are looking at the privatisation of our National Health Service. I believe the unions, and the general community, have got every right to be out protesting.”

Our Interview with UVA Football Player Joseph Williams, Hunger Striking for Campus Workers

Rare are the times when an NCAA football player stands up for issues related to social justice. This is the first part of what makes the case of University of Virginia football player Joseph Williams so exceptional. Williams, along with a group of fellow classmates, is currently engaged in a hunger strike organized by the Living Wage Campaign. The group is demanding that the service employees who work on the campus receive wages that keep up with the cost of living in Charlottesville, Virginia. Williams is doing nothing less than risking his football career and his health in order to stand up for the voiceless on campus.What makes this story even more remarkable is Williams’s own voice. His essay on why he joined the hunger strike makes for powerful reading. Our interview with him was no less impressive. This is a jock for justice, laying it on the line for a cause deeply personal to him. If publicity of his stand inspires other college football players to be heard, the NCAA will find itself in difficult and unchartered waters.

Follow the Urine! Ryan Braun Makes a Kind of History

Yes, the reigning National League MVP and arguably the highest profile player to ever test positive for steroids, had his good name destroyed and it was all based around a piss test left in a cold, Wisconsin basement. As Barry Petchesky of Deadspin wrote, “If the procedure is so f—ked up that some dude can keep a jar of Ryan Braun’s pee in his fridge over the weekend, then maybe Major League Baseball should worry less about Ryan Braun’s appeal and more about a chain of custody that relies on a courier knowing the hours of his local Kinkos.”

Jeremy Lin and ESPN’s 'Accidental' Racism

The sports world has no anti-racist mental apparatus for how to talk about an Asian-American player. At ESPN, see the results.

Jeremy Lin! Why the Knicks' New Star Is Not the New Tebow

It’s understandable why the comparison is made. Both players revived depressed franchises just by getting in the game. Both play with a joy that seems to infect their teammates and raise everyone’s level of play. Both had their doubters, no question. And both are devout Christians who aren’t shy about thanking God in post-game interviews. It’s an easy comparison. It’s also dead wrong. The conflation of their stories does little more than burnish Tebow’s credentials at Lin’s expense.

Jeremy Lin! Why the Knicks' New Star Is Not the New Tebow

It’s understandable why the comparison is made. Both players revived depressed franchises just by getting in the game. Both play with a joy that seems to infect their teammates and raise everyone’s level of play. Both had their doubters, no question. And both are devout Christians who aren’t shy about thanking God in post-game interviews. It’s an easy comparison. It’s also dead wrong. The conflation of their stories does little more than burnish Tebow’s credentials at Lin’s expense.