Portside

We deserve to know, and we are obligated to know, the cost of America’s love for football.

Football has never been more popular. And it has never felt less like a game.

With zero African-American managers and only one Latino manager, baseball needs an affirmative-action policy with actual teeth. And now we are all the way back to where we started. It's time for change: a change many thought had already been achieved. Rob Manfred: You're up.

After the NYPD broke his leg and charged him with resisting arrest, NBA star Thabo Sefolosha cleared his name in court. Here's what we learned. The NYPD has a racism problem that was just proven in open court. One of the least covered aspects in this trial was the surveillance footage of the initial approach by police. They passed Thabo's white teammate Pero Antic and making a beeline for Thabo. He was in their sights. He was their target. His skin was a bull's-eye.

The forthcoming film Concussion, starring Will Smith, is coming for the NFL. If Concussion came out now, it would get less coverage than the Washington quarterback controversy. But tragically, we know that by December, another season of injuries, another season of tragedies will be winding down and the film will amplify all of those renewed concerns.

As a political symbol and an athletic powerhouse, Serena Williams is 'the greatest' in her sport. After her Wimbledon victory, Serena Williams was asked which athlete she admired the most. She said that it was Muhammad Ali. Not for his boxing but for 'what he stood for' outside the ring. For years people have asked who would be "the next Muhammad Ali." If we dare to lift our heads, it will be clear that she is right in front of us.

The Washington football team's name is a dictionary-defined slur—and now the federal Patent and Trademark Office has been ordered to cancel its trademark registration.

This story may very well end with the seventy-nine- year-old FIFA Boss finding a new home inside a U.S. prison. But no, the United States is not the well-oiled machine Putin and others imagine, and sometimes the simplest explanations are in fact the best ones.

He writes, “I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’ And when good soccer happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.” That’s Galeano: he made you believe it was not only possible to be both an internationalist and fan, but also a necessity if you hope to have your feet planted in this world with your mind on the next.

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.