Will Leitch was sitting on a panel when he was confronted by an exasperated ESPN executive. Roughly six months earlier, Leitch, then the editor-in-chief of Deadspin, had published a leaked internal memo from the network – a massive 50-page intra-office Q&A about some programming items as well as tree planting, parking issues, and sleeping security…
“Stand back, Sir, club executives coming through.” Orlando owners? No, it was Stan and Josh Kroenke being ushered into Orlando’s Exploria Stadium via the media entrance. Following them close behind was a smiling Edu, happy to stop and shake hands with fans. You could not wipe the smile off his face. It was the look…
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Simran Jeet Singh, a Union Theological Seminary lecturer who studies religion, racism and justice, recalls his own experience of fighting for inclusion as a turbaned Sikh college athlete. Growing up in Texas, he says his brothers were often denied the right to play college sports because of their turbans, a religious head covering worn by…
Read More “Maryland law allows religious garments in college sports” »
Before he was the title character of an Emmy-winning series, Ted Lasso was the star of a 2013 marketing campaign for NBC after the network was awarded the broadcasting rights for the Premier League in the United States. The ad followed the same fish-out-of-water premise as the show it later inspired: Lasso, played by Jason…
I didn’t set out to be a “sports dad”. None of the risk factors seemed to be present. Through my childhood and into my early 20s, watching or participating in sport struck me as a waste of time. Despite the presence of elite athletes on both sides of my family tree (a former Wallaby and…
After previewing all of the Las Vegas Raiders opponents for the 2022 season, we’re shifting gears and looking into the coaching staff for the Silver and Black. We continue the series by previewing the defensive staff for the Raiders. Senior Defensive Assistant Rob Ryan Senior Defensive Assistant Rob Ryan returns to the Raiders organization. He…
Read More “Las Vegas Raiders’ defensive coaching staff: Senior defensive assistant Rob Ryan” »
The Olympic Games have never been without their controversies — nor is this a new phenomenon. In the 5th century BCE, the Games banned Sparta for violating a peace treaty, leading to one of the many engagements of the larger Peloponnesian Wars, as well as cheating — where they then had the temerity to win…
Read More “Native. American. The greatest injustice in sports history has now been corrected” »
Rewind, briefly, to their heyday. It all feels so fresh because it really was not that long ago that Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi stood alone at the pinnacle of the global game, the two greatest players of their generation — plenty argue of any generation — with the familiar debate revolving more around which…
Read More “Some sports legends don’t want to stop playing. But is that really a bad thing?” »
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The one voice that has been somewhat absent from the week-to-week PGA Tour-LIV Golf conversation has been perhaps the most important voice in golf. Tiger Woods on Tuesday, ahead of the 150th Open Championship, gave his longest and strongest rejection of the Greg Norman-run, Saudi Arabia-backed league. Interestingly, Woods’ rationale was…
A moment I’ll never forget: As UCLA sprints onto the field in Corvallis in 1999, a fan in the north end zone bellows for everyone around him, including a kid from the coast attending his first game, to hear: “They think they’ve already won because they have those blue and gold uniforms on.” Oregon State…
Read More “Bill Oram: What it means to be a sports fan in Oregon amid unprecedented upheaval” »
