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Why The Arguments Against NCAA Pay-For-Play Suck
NCAA president Mark Emmert, speaking Wednesday at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, pooh-poohed the idea of paying collegiate athletes. "There's certainly no interest [among college presidents] in turning college sports into the professional or semi-professional," Emmert said. He added: "I th...
How To Turn A Big Mac Into A Linebacker: The 300-Pounder In The NFL
Football players are massive. But they weren't always. In a chapter from their new book, Newton's Football: The Science Behind America's Game, Allen St. John and Ainissa G Ramirez explain how we came to have so many 300-pound players, and why we don't have, say, 8-foot-tall quarterbacks. ...
How To Turn A Big Mac Into A Linebacker: The 300-Pounder In The NFL
Excerpted from Newton's Football: The Science Behind America's Game....
"Make Way For Brother Mike!": When Tyson Left Prison The First Time
Excerpted from A Savage Business. Republished by permission of the author; his postscript follows....
Rickey, Mattingly, And Racism In The Eighties
Have You Seen Your Brother, Baby, Standing In The Shadows?...
The Good Doctor
There is a long, engaging excerpt from Dr. J's new book (written with the talented Karl Taro Greenfeld) over at Grantland. Worth checking out, for sure....
J.R. Moehringer Talks About The Best American Sportswriting 2013
The guest editor for The Best American Sports Writing 2013 is the acclaimed journalist J.R. Moehringer. He's written a wonderful memoir, was co-author of a classic sports biography, and this year he published his first novel. I recently caught up with J.R. who was kind enough to spend a few moments ...
Book Excerpt: Shane Comes To The Metrodome
We've got a bunch of goodies for you this week on Monsters, Rich Cohen's winning new book about the 1985 Chicago Bears. First, dig this excerpt over at SI.com:...
Book Excerpt: Nicholas Dawidoff On The 2011 New York Jets
Over at Men's Journal check out this excerpt from Nicholas Dawidoff's new book, Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football:...
Campy
Check out this excerpt from Neil Lanctot's 2011 Roy Campanella biography....
Satchel: The Life And Times Of An American Legend
Satchel knew that, despite being the fastest, winningest pitcher alive, being black meant he never would get the attention he deserved. That was easy to see in the backwaters of the Negro Leagues but it remained true when he hit the Majors at age forty-two, with accusations flying that his signing w...
The Main Ingredient: Marcella
Last week, a post about the bluesman Furry Lewis, included this:...
The Gookie
Speaking of cigars, you should know the story behind Harpo Marx's in-case-of-emergence-make-this-face move:...
The Radio Game
Dig this bit from Mark Harris' short essay, “Recalling the Joy of Watching Baseball on the Radio,” which is featured in the collection Diamond: The Baseball Writings of Mark Harris. Most famous for his Henry Wiggens trilogy, Harris doesn’t argue that radio is superior to television, just that they e...
John O'Hara Told The Truth About His Time
My father didn't care much for Fitzgerald or Hemingway or Faulkner. He loved Steinbeck. But the writer he told me to read was John O'Hara. I still have the copy of O'Hara's short stories that Dad gave me when I was in high school. ...
The Sportswriter Who Wrote American Better Than Anyone Anywheres
Below is John Lardner's introduction to a 1959 edition of Ring Lardner's You Know Me Al, a fictional series of letters from professional ballplayer Jack Keefe to his friend Al. Those stories are included in the Library of America's new collection. (There was also a comic strip based on the same char...
Ring Lardner: An American Original
This week gives Ring Lardner who is being honored with a volume by the Library of America (edited by Ian Frazier). We'll run one of his stories from the collection tomorrow, and later today we've got a treat from his eldest son, John. Meanwhile, check out three of his most famous stories at the LOA'...
Great Players Who Never Had A Great Moment
There have been great players who never had a great moment; men who went on year after year, running up formidable statistics, but were no more fearsome than anybody else in the few, crucial moments of their careers. They popped up or flied out in key at-bats, or did not even fail that spectacularly...
The Elements of Style: "I Never Liked Fighting"
My father wasn’t a boxing fan but talked about Sugar Ray Robinson with admiration. Robinson was a brutal and efficient fighter, I was told, “pound-for-pound, the greatest boxer of all-time."...
Althea Gibson and Robert Lipsyte's Forgotten Bookmark
My friend Michael Popek owns a used bookstore and runs a site called Forgotten Bookmarks, devoted to the things he finds in old books. The site did so well Michael published a book of the same name. (Check out this Q&A we did in 2011 and this profile of Michael by Shannon Firth.)...