What is a Woman?
On May 24th, a few dozen people gathered in a conference room at the Central Library, a century-old Georgian Revival building in downtown Portland, Oregon, for an event called Radfems Respond. The conference had been convened by a group that…
We Must Provide Equal Opportunity in Sports to Students with Disabilities
Playing sports at any level–club, intramural, or interscholastic-can be a key part of the school experience and have an immense and lasting impact on a student’s life. Among its many benefits, participation in extracurricular athletic activities promotes socialization, the development…
Want to Get Your Kids Into College? Let Them Play
Every day where we work, we see our young students struggling with the transition from home to school. They’re all wonderful kids, but some can’t share easily or listen in a group. Some have impulse control problems and have trouble…
Wall Street, Penn State and Institutional Corruption
What makes institutions corrupt? Up host Chris Hayes and his panelists examine two examples from this week: Wall Street and the Penn State scandal.
Violence is Deeply Rooted in American Culture: An Interview with Henry A. Giroux
America’s fascination with guns is turning into an ever growing nightmare, with the latest carnage taking place last month at Sandy Hill Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut where 20 young children and six educators were killed. Yet, there is no…
Verbal Abuse From parents, Coaches is Causing a Referee Shortage in Youth Sports
Warren Graver raised the whistle to his lips midway through the second half, bracing to shift his focus from the sideline hysterics to the girls’ soccer game at hand three years ago.
Vancouver Not Typical Sports Riot, Sociologist Says
Riots following big sporting events have become predictable. They happen about half the time following a championship game or series, the experts say. What’s more, sports riots are now the most common type of riot in North America. But they…
Valor Christian Rockets to Success and Gains Its Share of Detractors
Sun rays pierced the fluffy clouds on a late August afternoon, illuminating Valor Christian High School with a seemingly biblical incandescence. Game night. Tailgate. A lively live band. Faces painted with Valor V’s, others with crosses. Parents in the school’s…
US Olympic Medal Winners Get Bonuses and Tax Bill
With many countries in the world facing financial difficulties, there is greater focus on how much money governments are spending on Olympic athletes or Olympic-related events.
University of Texas Professor Explores Cultural Phenomenon of Doping
An expert on sports doping living in Austin wants to help guide cycling’s future and it’s not the guy who raced a bike for a living.
United States Tops Olympic Medal List But is Third to China and Russia In Bonus Payouts
I wrote recently about the rich medal bonuses that the Olympics’ top athletes stand to earn for their performances, and I noted that the United States’ medal bonuses – $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze –…
Unfriendly Confines: The Unsung History of America’s Low-key Hooliganism
Don’t let all of the mascots, cheerleaders, Kiss Cams and marriage proposals give you the wrong idea: US sports stadiums are often as dangerous as European ones.
Ultimate Fighting Dips a Toe Into the Mainstream
Researchers have identified some demands of Canadian National Hockey League (NHL) players, yet there is little direction for players hoping to reach the lucrative league. The objectives of this study were to identify the stages, statuses and demands in Canadian…
UK Sport Rio 2016 Funding Defended by Sports Minister
A record £347m will be available for the four-year cycle to Rio, an 11% increase on funding for London 2012. But basketball, handball, table tennis and wrestling will receive no money. “The money has been distributed extremely fairly. UK Sport…
UFC’s Rashad Evans Comes Out for Gay Marriage
“This isn’t a sex issue, it’s a love issue,” the former light-heavyweight champion tells Outsports about why he is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to approve same-sex marriages.
Too High a Price To Play
It was the unwritten story of the 2011 Women’s World Cup, which had just about every other angle covered, so captivating was the U.S. national team, so pulse-raising its comebacks and penalty kicks, so compelling the ponytailed ambassadors of our…
To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery
The frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating may be here at the testing center of the University of Central Florida. No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cell phone…
To Define Oneself as Less Able: A Prerequisite for a Paralympian?
Keith Lyons in his column gives a short history of disabled people including Paralympians that also participated in the Olympics all the way back to 1904. Very likely that was news to many given that Pistorius so dominated the coverage…
Title IX at 40: Most Schools Still Aren’t in Compliance
Four decades after Title IX went into place, enormous progress for women and girls has been made. But most schools in America are still not providing men and women with equal opportunities to participate and equal treatment in athletics. There’s…
Those “Guest Worker’ of The NBA and NHL
[…]enough, more than half the team — First there would be a low cap on the number of foreign players allowed into the country each year, one well below what the market demands.
The Victims of Larry Nassar Who Dared to Come Forward First
In the summer of 2016, Rachael Denhollander was scrolling through Facebook at her home, in Louisville, Kentucky, when she happened upon the cover story of the day’s Indianapolis Star. It was an investigation into U.S.A. Gymnastics, one of the nation’s…
The Sports Issue: Views from Left Field
Howard Cosell called it rule number one of the jockocracy—the idea that sports and politics don’t mix. Playing the game, and playing it well, is all that matters. And yet the closer you look, the more it becomes apparent that…
The Slowest Generation Strikes Back
“Between being president of my honor society, volunteering at the local elementary school, job hunting, staying on top of my course load, being secretary of my sorority and trying to start a personal financial literacy seminar for women, running has…
The Shame of College Sports
A litany of scandals in recent years have made the corruption of college sports constant front-page news. We profess outrage each time we learn that yet another student-athlete has been taking money under the table. But the real scandal is…
The Ring and The Rings: Vladimir Putin’s Mafia Olympics
Josef Stalin famously uttered the demonically cynical maxim that “the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” In other words, he believed that when faced with the choice of focusing on horrors small…
The Payoff From Winning an Olympic Medal
When Kellogg stamped Gabby Douglas’s hard-to-forget smile on a box of corn flakes, the company kicked off a string of endorsement deals that will likely make her millions. But even without sponsors, the 16-year-old gymnast will leave London with $50,000,…
The NCAA Needs to Let Someone Else Enforce its Rules
A lawyer’s take on how to fix the National College Athletics Association’s broken, capricious system for investigating and punishing schools and student-athletes accused of impropriety
The NBA Standoff Pits the Elite Vs. the Elite
Kevin Garnett, 35, the Boston Celtics forward who has had a stellar career, was with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2004 when a teammate, Latrell Sprewell, augmented the national stock of unfortunate pronouncements. Dissatisfied with a three-year, $21 million contract extension…
The N.C.A.A.’s Nod to Reality
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has acknowledged what everyone always knew — that not all college sports programs are the same.
The Myth of Male Decline
Scroll through the titles and subtitles of recent books, and you will read that women have become “The Richer Sex,” that “The Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys,” and that we may even be seeing “The End of…
The Most Expensive Game in Town: The Rising Cost of Youth Sports and the Toll on Today’s Families
Nearly 50 million kids play organized sports each year, and each of them has a supportive family that digs deep into its pockets to pay for the essentials-uniforms, equipment, league fees, travel to away games. But the buck doesn’t stop…
The Meaning of Football Tough
It also sounds like a false choice, an excuse for bad behavior, for diminishing bullying as hazing, and downplaying the significance of racist language in professional sports (the last a fatuous claim expertly undone by Robert Klemko in an essay…
The Liberating Age of Bionics
Even if progress has been inadequate, Dr. [Hugh Herr] declines to join the doubters. “Technologists, if they’re any good, are always frustrated at what seems to be the snail’s pace,” he says. Yet “there’s a technological arc that climbs upwardly…
The Legacy Fallacy: The Olympics Does Not Increase Sport Participation
This is an edited version of a letter sent to UK Prime Minister David Cameron and a number of other officials with connections to the London Olympics.
The Hidden Officiating Crisis: How the NFL’s Problems Trickle Down to Youth Sports
Mistakes and minute scrutiny on the biggest stage, and the criticisms that follow from coaches, the media and fans, reverberate down to the lower levels. Spectators are further emboldened to go after already beleaguered refs in youth sports—driving many of…
The Good Men: Inside The All-male Group Taking on Modern Masculinity
In the hometown of Jordan Peterson, the evangelist of white male resentment, a different and thoughtful men’s movement vies to be heard. On a warm Tuesday evening, a dozen men gathered on couches at a Lululemon location in Toronto called…
The Games Warriors Play
Maasai villages devised a test of traditional skills to promote an alternative to lion hunting.
The Footage The NFL Won’t Show You
Every play during an NFL game is filmed from multiple angles in high definition. But there’s some footage the league keeps hidden as Reed Albergotti explains on Lunch Break.
The Final Four, Travel Teams and Empty Pews: Research on Sports and Religion
The Rev. Stephen Fichter understood just how dominant a role sports has assumed in the culture when a family told him they would be out of town Good Friday to Easter Sunday to attend their child’s volleyball tournament.“It’s truly sports…
The Fall of Jim Tressel
An SI investigation found that Ohio State’s disgraced ex-coach, once viewed as a Model of Probity, led a program rife with alleged rules violations dating back to 2022.
The Enlightenment’s ‘Race’ Problem, and Ours
In 1734, Anton Wilhelm Amo, a West African student and former chamber slave of Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, defended a philosophy dissertation at the University of Halle in Saxony, written in Latin and entitled “On the Impassivity of the…
The Damage Done
Peter Grant ’83 played interhall football for Notre Dame’s Grace Hall. Dave Duerson, a classmate and casual acquaintance of Grant’s from the dorm, was an All-American defensive back and an 11-year NFL veteran who won two Super Bowl rings. Their…
The Charitable-industrial Complex
I had spent much of my life writing music for commercials, film and television and knew little about the world of philanthropy as practiced by the very wealthy until what I call the big bang happened in 2006. That year,…
The Case Against High-School Sports
Every year, thousands of teenagers move to the United States from all over the world, for all kinds of reasons. They observe everything in their new country with fresh eyes, including basic features of American life that most of us…
The Business of Voluntourism: Do Western Do-gooders Actually Do Harm?
Baby rescue is the ultimate volunteer experience. At Hope of Life International, a Christian mission in rural Guatemala, a rescue team springs into action when news arrives that a baby is dangerously ill in a nearby mountain village. The mission,…
The Benefits of Physical Activity
Regular physical activity is one of the most important things you can do for your health. Being physically active can improve your brain health, help manage weight, reduce the risk of disease, strengthen bones and muscles, and improve your ability…
The Beautiful Game, a Beautiful Cause: Why I Root for Argentina
No sporting event on earth is more tangled up in politics than the World Cup—so we ought to support a team that epitomizes “the beautiful game” in addition to standing with a beautiful cause. Viva Argentina! Before the start of…
The Awesome Power of Sport
“In 2011 we were working in Uganda with 93 children, most of them former child soldiers and victims of the awful Civil War that has ravaged that region for decades,” said Nick Gates, the founder and CEO of Coaches Across…
The $6 Billion Heist: Robbing College Athletes Under the Guise of Amateurism
The National College Players Association (NCPA) and the Drexel University Sport Management Department published a joint study in 2013 showing that FBS football and men’s basketball players would receive an additional $6 billion between 2011-15 if not for the NCAA’s…
That New $2, $3 Fee on Cable Bill? Sports the Culprit
There’s a new wrinkle in the long-running blame game between pay-TV providers and programmers over the rising costs of TV sports. Some consumers now see separate $2-$3 charges, specifically tied to sports, on their monthly TV bills.
Television: Inflated Assets
The Super Bowl has always been the high point of the US sports calendar but this year’s game was of a different order. The battle last month of American football’s Green Bay Packers – a team many thought had seen…
Teams Face Workers’ Comp Threat
National Football League teams are facing a significant threat to their finances because of a legal option available to nearly every janitor, teacher and cashier in America — workers’ compensation. Playing professional football is inherently dangerous, but the known risks…
Tackling Injuries in the NFL
Football is a violent sport. For the last four years, about three hundred players per year suffered season-ending injuries that put them on the Injured Reserve (IR) list. These players suffer injuries that you can’t tape up and there’s no…
Superhip To Supercrip: The ‘Trickle-down’ Effect of the Paralympics
Sport is seen as important for the quality of life, self-esteem, independence and social integration of people with disabilities, and the Paralympics are one expression of this importance. But what effect do they have for the “average” person with a…
Students with Disabilities Have Right to Play School Sports Obama Administration Tells Schools
When Kareem Dale, now a special advisor to President Barack Obama, was in high school, all he wanted to do was wrestle. But as a student who was partially blind, that wasn’t easy. Dale’s school made it possible for him…
Striving Together: Celebrating Competitiveness in Sport
With the Commonwealth Games taking place in Glasgow in 2014, sport is set to have a prominent profile in Scotland. Competitiveness in sport can draw out the best in people, but can also give rise to other behaviours which may…
Super Bowl Ad Will Stress Safety
To the usual lineup of beer and car commercials on Super Bowl Sunday, add this: one about player safety. For the first time, the N.F.L., currently the target of more than a dozen lawsuits accusing it of deliberately concealing information…
Stick Route
IT’S BEEN A WEEKLY — and sometimes daily — headline in Dallas: Tony Romo Gets Pain-Killing Injection. Ever since he fractured a rib during a Week 2 win over the 49ers, Romo’s pregame shots have been news, mostly because he…
Stanford Analyzes Athletes’ Concussions
The brains and the brawn at Stanford are teaming up to figure out how concussions are caused. Stanford researchers have turned the school’s football practices into a living laboratory in an effort to understand the mechanics of what happens to…
Sports Medicine’s New Frontiers
Surgeries that were once repairs are now reconstructions, enabling athletes to return to the field sooner and even better. Novel prostheses are allowing maimed soldiers to compete at the elite level of sports. Researchers of motor skills and pain tolerance,…
Sports Genes
Who has the speed gene, and who doesn’t? How much of performance is genetic? How did early humans become athletes? And can the Perfect Athlete be genetically engineered?
Sporting Masculinity on the gridiron: Construction, Characteristics, and Consequences
This paper draws on interviews with 81 Canadian football players and administrators across junior, university, and professional football, as well as 20 published autobiographies of football players, to examine the development and consequences of sporting masculinity. In this paper, the…
Sport Spirituality and Religion: Muscular Christianity in the Modern Age
An overview of the key features of the ways in which the relationship between sport and religion has developed during and since the nineteenth century. In Victorian Britain, long-standing religious values began to permeate and underpin sporting endeavour but these…
SPIEGEL Interview with Orlando Cruz ‘I Couldn’t Accept Being Gay Because I Was Too Afraid’
Orlando Cruz is the world’s first professional boxer to come out as gay. In a SPIEGEL interview, he describes the relief he has since felt and his hopes that it would make him a better boxer. He also shows some…
Special Report on Oklahoma State football: (Part 5) – the Fallout
It was a suffocatingly hot July afternoon in Bryan, Texas, and inside a chain restaurant on the North Earl Rudder Freeway, it wasn’t much cooler. An angular African-American waiter in his mid-20s slogged through his four-hour shift, his eyes bloodshot,…
Special Report on Oklahoma State football: (Part 4) — the Sex
In 2003 one of the nation’s top high school recruits pretzeled his large frame into an airplane seat and embarked on his official recruiting visit to Oklahoma State. Though several big-time schools were pursuing him intensely, the recruit was intrigued…
Special Report on Oklahoma State Football: (Part 3) — the Drugs
At around 5:30 a.m. on Feb. 8, 2009, Stillwater police executed a search warrant at the off-campus residence of Oklahoma State junior wide receiver Bo Bowling. An ex-girlfriend, whom police officers found inebriated outside Bowling’s home, had told them that…
Special Report on Oklahoma State Football: (Part 2) — the Academics
Shortly after Les Miles took over as Oklahoma State’s football coach in December 2000, he introduced an exhortation that he would use often at the end of team meetings during his four years in Stillwater. “Academics first,” Miles would say.…
Soccer Match Fixing: All the World is Staged
ON THE MORNING of Feb. 20, 2011, a man from Singapore walked into the central police station of Rovaniemi, Finland, a town that sits along the Arctic Circle. The man told officers that another Singaporean, Wilson Raj Perumal, was in…
Soccer and Egypt’s “State of Emergency”
If you want to understand why Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has declared a “state of emergency” or if you want to understand why the country’s defense minister warned Tuesday of “the collapse of the state”, you first need to understand…
Snowmobile Athletes Say Injuries Are Part of the Sport
Snowmobiler Levi LaVallee had seen Caleb Moore land the trick many times. It’s a Superman Indian Air Backflip, one that Moore had done repeatedly before crashing during the X Games in Aspen.
Smack Epidemic: How Painkillers Are Turning Young Athletes into Heroin Addicts
It is, by any measure, an epidemic. Heroin is not new or chic, but its use and abuse are spiking. According to data from the CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics, heroin-overdose deaths rose gradually from 2000 to…
Skating League Returns to Huntington Beach
Kick flip, varial kickflip, heel flip, “the variations are endless,” says Darrell Norman, the man behind the microphone, as kids competed during the California Amateur Skateboard League contest in Huntington Beach on Saturday. “We’re saving the world one kid at…
Shut Up And Play? Patriotism, Jock Culture, and The Limits of Free Speech
Some athletes have dared to buck the patriotic trend, and in the process have learned a tough lesson about the limits of free speech in the jockocracy. In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s assassination, the sports world embraced the…
Should Parents Nix After-school Sports?
High school athletes devote a lot of hours to practice and games. Parents and coaches say playing sports builds character and teamwork. But do sports take too much time away from the classroom? In a recent article for The Atlantic,…
Sex Sells Sex, Not Women’s Sports
Last winter, champion alpine skier Lindsey Vonn won the downhill gold medal at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the first American woman to achieve gold in this prestigious event. From 2008 to 2010, Vonn also won three consecutive World Cup championships,…
Schools That Train the Enemy
As NCAA Teams Subsidize World-Class Instruction for Foreign Olympians, Some Cry Foul
Scant Evidence That Football’s Popularity is Declining
More football is coming. The football industry allegedly is facing diminishing interest from Americans because of a number of reasons. A President constantly carping about players kneeling during the national anthem presentation which combined with people’s disgust with players kneeling…
Saudi Sports Commentator: `Allah Slaughter Me’ Before Saudi Women Enter Olympics
While a few Americans might find women’s Olympic sports to be a little less exciting than men’s, likely none would take death over watching their country women participate on the international stage. That does not appear to be the case…
Saez & Piketty Income Inequality Update: Top 1% Have Received 121% of Income Gains Since 2009
Just under a year ago, I posted this: “Saez’ 2010 Inequality Update: Incomes of 1% Grew 11.6%, Incomes of 99% “Grew” 0.2%.” We’re now learning that, arguably, the world’s top income inequality expert, UC Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez, has…
Richard Sherman Defends his Dirt
The NFL traffics in rank hypocrisy often without consequence. Profess concern about head injuries, while demanding an eighteen-game season? Decry racial slurs while profiting off of a team called the Redskins? Say you are role models while ignoring domestic violence?…
Religion in the Ring: Death, Concussion: and Brain Bleeds
In an interview for the Catholic Herald (2013, Sept, 16, p. 7), UK heavyweight boxer and Roman Catholic, Tyson Fury, comments on how he prays for his opponents before a fight.
Redefining the Sexes in Unequal Terms
The good news is that the International Olympic Committee and the International Association of Athletics Federations, the governing body for track and field, have worked hard to come up with a new policy to deal with athletes whose sex development…
Red Nails Black Skates: Gender Cash and Pleasure on and off the Ice
In her forties, Erica Rand bought a pair of figure skates to vary her workout routine. Within a few years, the college professor was immersed in adult figure skating. Here, in short, incisive essays, she describes the pleasures to be…
Recruiting Confidential
You are 18 and extremely talented. Your highlights are all over the web. They’re calling you the next Peyton Manning or Joe Mauer or Candace Parker. Famous coaches beg for face time. (Coolest note ever to get from your principal:…
Protest and Parkour – on The Streets of Gaza
Deutsche Welle reports on a parkour team developing despite harsh conditions in Khan Yunis, a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.
Probe Target Global Match-fixing in Soccer
Europol said the probe included qualifiers for the sport’s two biggest international tournaments–the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship, as well as Europe’s top club competition the UEFA Champions League and top-flight domestic match-ups.
Pro Football’s Violent Toll
Pro football left me with a neck injury. Watching pro football, I mean. At least three of the games that started at 1 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday went thrillingly down to the wire, two of them bleeding into overtime,…
Private Schools Defining Colorado Prep Sports’ Shift in Power
High school sports, once viewed as a bastion of wholesomeness, is being transformed into a cutthroat business at the highest levels of play, with teenage athletes the prized assets. Colorado private schools — notably upstart Valor Christian, in addition to…
Praying for a Super Bowl Win is a Hail Mary
I live in Nashville, where the city hasn’t had a rooting interest in the Super Bowl since 1999, when the Tennessee Titans lost to the St. Louis Rams. So on Sunday I’ll leave the praying-for-victory to fans in Seattle and…
Practical Application for Long-term Athletic Development
Developing a comprehensive long-term athletic development program in the United States is critical. The program must start at the youth level. This article will focus on ages 3–14 years. The following information is for coaches, parents, and sport organization directors.…
Politics and Sports: Strange, Secret Bedfellows
So, are you more Super Bowl or Super Tuesday? No matter how you answer, if you are like most Americans, you probably think the two—sports and politics—are unrelated. You might even object to the suggestion of a tie on principle…
Playing With Fire, Barbed Wire and Beer
A year ago, Tough Mudder was a semifinalist in the Harvard Business School’s annual Business Plan Contest. A British student named Will Dean thought he could attract 500 people to run a grueling race through mud and man-made obstacles. Professors…
Plaintiffs’ Master Administrative Long-Form Complaint
Master complaint in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia that coalesces the claims from more than 85 lawsuits involving over than 2,000 former NFL players — from negligence and fraud to wrongful death and civil conspiracy — into a single document…
Pay for play
The mission of Universities is to educate, but college sports is big business, and no one wants young athletes exploited.
Overcoming ‘Physics Envy’
How scientific are the social sciences? Economists, political scientists and sociologists have long suffered from an academic inferiority complex: physics envy. They often feel that their disciplines should be on a par with the “real” sciences and self-consciously model their…
Take it From a Former Division I Athlete: College Sports Are Like Jim Crow
Now that the bowl season and College Football Playoff have concluded, college sports fans are shifting their attention from football to basketball in anticipation of March Madness. Although I’m a huge sports fan and ran track at school, I won’t…
On the Team: Equal Opportunity for Transgender Student Athletes
This groundbreaking publication is the first ever to thoroughly address the complete integration of transgender student athletes within high school and collegiate athletic programs. It provides comprehensive model policies and a framework for athletic leaders to ensure equal access to…
Olympics judo: Saudi Arabia Hijab Dispute Resolved
Saudi Arabia judoka Wojdan Shaherkani will compete at the Olympics after a dispute over a hijab was resolved. The International Judo Federation said the 16-year-old must fight without the headscarf for safety reasons, but the Saudis threatened to withdraw Shaherkani.…
Olympic Charter
The Olympic Charter (OC) is the codification of the Fundamental Principles of Olympism, Rules and Bye-Laws adopted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It governs the organisation, action and operation of the Olympic Movement and sets forth the conditions for…