Is the supposed leftward shift in sports reporting the product of vast liberal conspiracy – or what happens when the myth of sports as escapism is dispelled?There has been a lot of buzz lately about sportswriting’s shift to the left. Last month, Bryan Curtis wrote in the Ringer: “There was a time when filling your column with liberal ideas on race, class, gender, and labor policy got you dubbed a sociologist. These days, such views are more likely to get you a job.” Not only have liberal ideas found a foothold in sportswriting, Curtis claims, “now, there’s at least a social price to pay for being a conservative.” Related: Colin Kaepernick is unsigned because NFL coaches still play not to...
The 29-year-old can still be good, perhaps even great – but every day he goes unsigned is an embarrassment for the coaches and GMs desperate to play it safeIt’s hard to believe that Colin Kaepernick can no longer be a useful quarterback in the NFL. The league is filled with too many mediocre passers who possess little skill beyond an ability to parrot the jargon of a preferred system offense to deny a man who actually took a team to the brink of a Super Bowl victory. All you have to do is look at the lackluster play of the NFL’s low-end starters, ball-cap wearers and clipboard holders to know Kaepernick still has a lot to offer. He is 29,...
The San Francisco 49ers have been terrible this season but their controversial quarterback is close to his best as free agency loomsColin Kaepernick is probably not going to be the San Francisco 49ers quarterback next season. This has less to do with his refusal to stand for the national anthem and more to do with the fact he will be a free agent this winter and the Niners need to find themselves a quarterback around whom they can build.But he should be somebody’s quarterback in 2017. In a league filled with retreads, flops and never-really-were’s surely there is a place for a 29-year-old near Super Bowl winner who can beat teams with both his arm and legs. In what has...
The NBA engenders an climate of open dialogue that’s made basketball players more willing to speak on social issues – and it’s more important now than everThe NFL and NBA have roughly the same racial profile with African Americans comprising 68 to 74% of their rosters. They have long been leagues dominated by athletes of color and should be places where essential social issues involving race are discussed. And yet when it comes to the actual expression of their players’ voices the two sports are worlds apart.While NFL players like Colin Kaepernick have spoken out about racial inequalities and police shootings in recent years, their voices are lonelier on those issues than in basketball, where stars feel emboldened to address the problems...
For too long, the league was interested in making itself palatable for a white audience. Under Adam Silver it is listening to its black playersIf there is one thing clear about the current NBA, it is that it is no longer the league of David Stern. As a businessman, the league’s former commissioner was a visionary, building a booming operation that now reaches around the globe. But on social issues he stumbled, creating policies that almost seemed designed to make a league of mostly African American players appear palatable to a white audience.It was Stern, after all, who 11 years ago created professional sports’ first sideline dress code that he called “business casual”. It came at a time when a phrase thrown...