On Wednesday, Major League Baseball (MLB) finally acknowledged the remarkable achievements of players from the Negro Leagues by incorporating their statistics into its historical record. It’s about time! This groundbreaking decision elevates legends like Josh Gibson, now the all-time Major League batting champion, and Satchel Paige, who is third all-time for a single-season ERA. It’s… Read more.
Sports
NCAA Paying Student-Athletes: Fairness Delayed but Not Denied?
Paying student-athletes Amateurism in college sports has always been akin to puritanism in escort services. But on Thursday, college sports finally gave up the charade. The NCAA and the Power Five athletic conferences agreed to pay student-athletes. And the legal right student-athletes won recently to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL) will be the… Read more.
MAGA Chiefs Kicker Harrison Butker’s ‘Handmaiden’ Commencement Address
Make women barefoot and pregnant again The kicker on a football team is like the coxswain on a rowing team — they play a key role. But if you ranked 25 NFL positions by importance, the kicker would be no higher than 22. In other words, they’re among the most expendable players. Indeed, teams famously show little patience if a kicker lets… Read more.
LeBron James, the So-Called GOAT, Looking More Like a Chicken
LeBron forfeited the GOAT title There’s an ongoing debate about whether Michael Jordan or LeBron James is the NBA GOAT. I picked Michael years ago. There’s no denying LeBron’s talents. And they certainly make him worthy of contention. However, he forfeited all claims to this title in 2010 when he abandoned Cleveland and took his talents to Miami to chase his first… Read more.
NIL Money Forces NCAA to Return Bush’s Heisman Trophy
NCAA treated Bush like a servant In 2010, the NCAA made a public show of stripping Reggie Bush of his Heisman Trophy. They condemned him for accepting so-called illegal benefits, claiming that brought the amateur status of college sports into disrepute. Mind you, Bush merely accepted petty cash from boosters to help his poor family make ends meet. Yet,… Read more.
The Masters: Tiger Woods Posts the Worst Score of His Career
The Masters: ‘It’s over, Tiger’ Stephen A. Smith, from ESPN’s flagship show First Take, is arguably America’s most influential sports commentator. Like E.F. Hutton — when he speaks, people listen. That’s why the way he opened his show’s segment on The Masters on Monday spoke volumes. He looked into the camera, apologized for what he was about to say about his boy,… Read more.
South Carolina Humbles Clark-Led Iowa for NCAA Women’s Championship
Caitlin Clark’s record-setting season Yesterday, South Carolina faced off against Caitlin Clark’s Iowa for the NCAA Basketball Championship. And not since Magic Johnson’s Michigan State faced off against Larry Bird’s Indiana in 1979 has a final commanded so much national attention. Of course, the most notable difference is that, unlike Michigan State and Indiana, South Carolina and… Read more.
Super Bowl: The Chiefs Won, but Kelce Lost It. Run, Taylor, Run!
Let’s face it: this whole NFL season was more about the relationship between Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift than the games themselves. So it’s hardly surprising that this Super Bowl was too – from tracking Taylor’s flight from Japan to make it to Travis trying so hard to impress her that he lost it. Chiefs defeat 49ers in overtime Patrick… Read more.
White Activists Sue NFL Because 9 of 32 Coaches Are Black
9 Black NFL coaches? Oh, hell no! Last month, the New England Patriots replaced legendary head coach Bill Belichick with his Black assistant, Jerod Mayo. But most football analysts marked the occasion more by speculation about which team would snag Belichick than by hailing the Patriots for hiring their first Black head coach. That’s why everyone was… Read more.
Russian Figure Skater Valieva, the Doping Diva, Disqualified
Of course, that the notoriously doped-up Russians stole the Americans’ Olympic glory was bad enough. But the International Olympic Committee and the Court of Arbitration for Sport only compounded that unfairness by making the Americans wait nearly two years to resolve this matter. After all, I figured out two years ago the resolution they have finally come. IOC neutral… Read more.