For the next week, we can concentrate on basketball and marvel at the remarkable athletes playing their hearts out and set politics aside. But perhaps, maybe during the commercials, we can reflect on the fact that the vast majority of these games are being played by teams from public universities in states whose governments are hostile to public universities and whose policies increase the already considerable financial burden on the students at these universities.
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Some 30% of NFL players suffer chronic brain injuries. Coaches won't let their kids play. Time to rethink football.
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Stuart Scott (1965-2015) was a long-time ESPN anchor who was a trailblazer in the freewheeling style of sports coverage. Keith Olbermann tells how Scott had to face down his hidebound bosses to win the right to speak in his own voice.
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The author makes a radical case for cities to buy sports teams and not sports stadiums. Last month Washington D.C. approved the largest public subsidy ever for a Major League Soccer franchise, $183 million for D.C. United's stadium. And soccer stadiums have never been known to revitalize anything. Millionaire owners will resist any attempt to erode their monopoly power over team ownership, but cities need to explore radical alternatives to sports extortion.
The game has changed, and the bosses are operating on outdated software. They are losing in a contest where they barely seem to grasp the rules. Meanwhile players, fans and political activists have been able to take the carefully scripted narrative of corporate sports and engineer a series of dramatic rewrites.
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