Portside

Two middle-aged men, former residents of Favelo do Metro, sat around a plastic table between the sidewalk and a demolished home. We asked them why the city would hastily evict this community, only to leave wreckage behind: “They didn’t give us a reason why we had to leave. They just came, pushed us out, and knocked the buildings down. Brazil spends and spends on ‘the future.’ Meanwhile, there’s nothing for the people of today.”

The Palestinian team has had to confront a lack of resources, poverty, isolation, but above all else, obstacle after obstacle imposed upon their development by the state of Israel. The national team has been crippled for decades by the violent targeting of soccer players on both the Olympic and national teams by the Israeli Defense Forces.

As a sportswriter, I try to look at the ways in which violence against women is excused and glossed over in professional sports, sending messages to their young, male audiences that this is somehow just part of being like their game-time heroes. This weekend, the day before the shooting, saw yet another one of those moments that should make the National Football League burn with shame...

By criticizing the 2014 World Cup and the spending priorities of the Brazilian government, soccer legend Pelé has accomplished the rarest of feats in twenty-first-century sports media: he has shown the capacity to shock and surprise. The fact that he feels compelled to actually speak out about the carnival of injustice FIFA and the Worker's Party are creating with the 2014 World Cup only underscores just how deep the crisis remains throughout the country.

It takes an enormous amount of chutzpah for Fitzgerald to so strenuously oppose the efforts of his players to have a seat at the table when he is making $2.2 million per year and received a $2.5 million loan from the school upon signing his most recent contract. Yet Fitzgerald's stance is not only distasteful. It may be illegal.

Sports have the capacity to communicate a toxic, destructive brand of masculinity. In the last two years, these poisonous, narrow definitions of "manliness" are being challenged.

It is March Madness, after all, when the NCAA makes 90% of its billion-dollar budget. As the business of college football and basketball expands, and as more and more players find themselves used up and spit out with neither compensation nor education to show for their time, this is the moment to talk about the future of the so-called "student-athlete."

Meanwhile ... we have the specter this weekend of games that could be a train-wreck waiting to happen.

For all the gay players that have played in the NFL, Michael Sam is the first to "live his truth" openly.

Athletes are going into the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics knowing that protesting homophobia may entail a sacrifice. It’s a stunning comment on our times that so many seem not only willing but eager to make it.