TIME - Keeping Score

NFL Fines Tennessee Titans $350,000 for Violating COVID-19 Protocols

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:07:09 GMT

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The NFL has fined the Tennessee Titans $350,000 for violating protocols leading to the league’s first COVID-19 outbreak during the season, a person familiar with the discipline told The Associated Press.

The Titans had 24 people, including 13 players, test positive for COVID-19 between Sept. 24 and Oct. 11. The outbreak led the NFL to postpone two Tennessee games and the rescheduling of a game against Pittsburgh from Oct. 4 to Sunday and the second against Buffalo from Oct. 11 to Oct. 13.

The NFL and its players association sent officials, including infectious disease experts, to Nashville where they reviewed video and interviewed players, coaches and other personnel.

But the NFL found the Titans failed to wear masks at all times and were “insufficiently clear” to players about not meeting or working out once the facility closed. That kept the loss of draft picks or a forfeit out of the possible punishments.

That led to the fine, according to the person who spoke on condition of anonymity because neither the NFL nor the Titans have commented on league discipline connected with the outbreak.

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AP Pro Football Barry Wilner contributed to this report.

This Year’s World Series Isn’t the First Played During a Pandemic. ...

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 22:44:05 GMT

This year’s pandemic means there is no crying—or spitting—in baseball. After a shortened season roiled by attempts to make baseball work in the year of COVID-19, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays are facing off in a World Series as unusual as the games that came before.

But this is not the first instance of America’s pastime facing disruption in a moment of global pandemic.

In 1918, the so-called Spanish flu started to appear in the U.S. by March but Major League Baseball opened without delay on April 15. However, the season would end up shortened—though not due to the disease.

President Woodrow Wilson was an avid baseball fan who had played center field and second base for the Fighting Wildcats at Davidson College as a freshman. As President he attended 10 Washington Senators games and threw out the first pitch in 1913. (It was a much better throw than Dr. Anthony Fauci’s effort this year. “The ball was well thrown and speedy and it went straight as an arrow,” declared the New York Sun of Wilson’s arm.) However, when 1918’s baseball season began, the United States had was focused on fighting World War I. With the country at war, Wilson—who never made any official presidential statement about the flu pandemic—chose not to throw out the Opening Day pitch.

He wasn’t the only one skipping baseball because of the events of that year. Many ballplayers entered the service; for example, by 1918 about a dozen Boston Red Sox players had enlisted. Players and staff were also missing from the roster as they were felled by the flu. During spring training, a number of Red Sox players came down with the grippe, suffering from fevers and sore throats. Soon even Babe Ruth would be struck—but in his case, the treatment was worse than the illness.

As Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith write in War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War, on May 19, 1918, Ruth and his wife Helen went to Revere Beach for a swim and picnic and a pick-up baseball game on the sand. That night, Ruth came down with a 104°F fever, body aches, chills and a raging sore throat; though it’s impossible to confirm that he had the pandemic flu, his symptoms were consistent with it.

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To ease his painful throat, the team doctor administered silver nitrate, a common treatment but one that required careful dosing. Unfortunately the doctor accidentally applied too much and soon Ruth was in agony and choking. After several days at Massachusetts General Hospital, Ruth recovered and returned to the game. Ruth was struck by the flu and survived a second time in the postseason.

By that time, however, many members of the public had begun to wonder why the games, played by healthy young men, were continuing despite the war. Before the season began, many Americans agreed with preacher Billy Sunday, who in 1917 said, “the idea that baseball is a luxury and ought to be postponed until after the war is over is ridiculous.” Even President Wilson had hoped that baseball would continue as a welcome diversion from war and pandemic news. (Team owners, naturally, hoped the games—and the revenue—would continue too.) But by the end of 1917 there was mounting pressure on the owners to shut down the games.

The owners agreed before the season started to reduce the schedule from 154 games to 140, and made an effort to show that baseball was making its fair contribution. In addition to a nine-inning game, there were now drills with bats wielded as if they were rifles, Liberty Bond drives and Red Cross charity events. Then, a “work or fight” order issued by the Secretary of War in July ended up shortening the season even more, to as few as 122 games. As the season was squeezed, there was a series of doubleheaders in both leagues. A commemorative ball from one of those last games between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers is in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame with its inscription: “Season ending on Labor Day on Account of War.”

But what about the World Series?

In War Fever, Smith and Roberts write that it was just a few weeks before the start of the series that Babe Ruth and two other Red Sox teammates got notices from their draft board informing them they had to find “essential occupations” by Sept. 1 or face enlistment. The Series, between the Sox and the Cubs, was scheduled to start on Sept. 5. It would be the only World Series ever played in September.

Ruth’s place on the ball field was about more than just competitive advantage. The 1918 season had been the year that Ruth revolutionized the game from the Ty Cobb “deadball era” of choppy, small hits and bunts used to move the runner around, to the colossal over the fence home runs that Babe excelled at hitting. During this time, says Georgia Tech history professor Johnny Smith, “the sports writers, particularly in Boston, constructed an image of him as all that is good in America. His power at the plate at a time when no one else was hitting home runs or swinging for the fences the way that he did becomes a metaphor for American manpower in the war. The difference in the war is going to be American manhood, American strength. Ruth demonstrates that the powerful American man is what decides the outcome on the ball field just like powerful American manhood will decide the outcome in this war.”

A compromise was reached that allowed the season to end on Labor Day with the Series to be played immediately after—and with Ruth on the roster.

Boston Red Sox historian Gordon Edes called it “the most joyless World Series ever.” Against the backdrop of war, fans were becoming disillusioned with the game. They were also preoccupied by other threats. The flu was thought to be waning by then, but in fact in many places it was still pummeling the population. And the day before the Series started in Chicago, the Federal Building, which housed a post office, was bombed, killing four. (A young postal worker who escaped injury that day was Walt Disney.)

Once the season ended, Ruth joined the labor force at Bethlehem Steel in Lebanon, Pa. By then, the second more lethal wave of the influenza was striking in Boston. Dr. John Hitchcock, the head of the communicable disease section of the Massachusetts State Department of Health, issued a warning on September 5: “Unless precautions are taken the disease in all probability will spread to the civilian population of the city.”

It was already too late. Boston was now the epicenter of the epidemic. The Red Sox won the World Series, but there would be no victory parade or public celebration of the champions.

The U.K. Is Facing a Child Hunger Crisis. A Sports Star Won’t Wait For the Government To Act

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 17:06:03 GMT

On Wednesday night, U.K. lawmakers voted against a motion that would have extended free school meals to children over school vacations, helping to offset a growing hunger crisis in the country that has left as many as a fifth of children in households regularly beset by hunger.

The vote was a disappointment for Marcus Rashford, one of England’s brightest young soccer stars, who plays for Manchester United and the national team. Following his successful campaign that forced the government to feed vulnerable school children over the summer vacation amid the economic disruption caused by COVID-19, Rashford had written a petition hoping to extend those subsidized meals over future school vacations, too. Instead, the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered its lawmakers to vote down the change.

“This is not politics, this is humanity,” Rashford wrote in a statement on Wednesday night. “These children matter. These children are the future of this country. They are not just another statistic. And for as long as they don’t have a voice, they will have mine.”

Job-losses caused by the pandemic have exacerbated an already stark hunger problem in highly unequal Britain, where 22% of people and 30% of children live in poverty despite it being the sixth-richest country in the world by GDP. Before the pandemic struck, 10% of children in the U.K. were living in households affected by “severe food insecurity,” which the Food Foundation defines as poverty that results in hunger. Now, the number may be as high as 20% as the pandemic puts strains on family incomes, according to the Food Foundation.

And with a second wave of COVID-19 infections predicted to crest in the winter, at the same time as the government will pare down the generosity of its job support scheme in November, the hunger problem is likely to get worse just in time for the Christmas holidays, when most students in the U.K. get two weeks off school.

But with a weeklong mid-term vacation set to begin for students on Monday, Rashford is taking the urgent matters into his own hands. He has turned his Twitter account—with 3.5 million followers —into a public directory for food banks, sharing addresses and information about where children can find the food denied them by the government.

Rashford’s campaign

As a child growing up in Greater Manchester, Rashford suffered from food insecurity. “I know what it feels like to be hungry,” he wrote in June, during his campaign to force the government to provide meals for vulnerable students over the summer vacation. “I’m well aware that at times my friends only invited me to eat at their houses for their parents’ reassurance that I was eating that evening.”

Initially the government resisted his requests, but on June 16 it backtracked after the public rallied in support of Rashford’s campaign, allowing 1.3 million children to claim free school meal vouchers over the six-week period.

Getty Images—2020 Anthony DevlinA food bank accepts a donation on October 20, 2020 in Ashton under Lyne, England.

On Oct. 10, Queen Elizabeth II rewarded Rashford with an MBE “for services to vulnerable children in the U.K. during COVID-19.”

Three days later, Rashford started his petition for the week-long vacation set to begin on Monday, calling on the government to to extend free school meals during future school vacations, and expand the eligibility criteria so that more students in poverty can access them. As of Friday, the petition has more than 500,000 signatures.

The U.K.’s child hunger crisis

Since the end of the Second World War, the U.K. has had a social safety net allowing those in poverty to access various government subsidies to improve their lives. But there have always been gaps in that system. Growing up in a poor family in the 2000s, Rashford noticed how social protections failed to stop his mother from “worrying about how she would cover the next round of bills,” he wrote in June. “Even at seven or eight years old I recognized her worry, but I also recognized that she was trying her best.”

Recent government policy has worsened this systemic problem. In 2010, the right-wing Conservative Party came to power and embarked upon a project of cutting public spending, including on welfare for the poorest in society, even as they slashed some taxes for the wealthiest.

In 2018, a U.N. special envoy on poverty and human rights visited the U.K. and found that since coming to power in 2010 the Conservatives had brought in new policies that inflicted “great misery” on the “working poor, single mothers…people with disabilities… and on millions of children who are being locked into a cycle of poverty from which most will have a great difficulty escaping.”

As a result of these policies, the U.K.’s child poverty rate has remained broadly consistent from the time Rashford was growing up in Manchester in the early 2000s: as then, around three out of every 10 children are still poor, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. (“I’ve said it once and I will say it again: this system was not built for families like mine to succeed, no matter how hard we are working,” Rashford wrote in June.)

But for the poorest, state benefits have become harder to access since 2010, making life more difficult in many ways. For the children in those families, the suffering can have long lasting effects. “A significant number of children tonight are going to bed not only hungry,” Rashford wrote on Wednesday, “but feeling like they do not matter.”

President Trump Bet On College Football To Help Win Key Swing States. ...

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 15:15:26 GMT

Going into the home stretch of the 2020 presidential election, President Trump has seized on an unusual political tactic: take credit for the return of Big Ten football to appeal to sports-crazy voters in key Midwestern swing states.

When conference officials announced Aug. 11 that they would postpone the football season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump slammed the decision, lobbying publicly for a return to the gridiron. On Sept. 16, Big Ten officials reversed course. The season opener, between Illinois and Wisconsin, kicks off Friday night, and tomorrow will see a full slate of games. For the President, it’s a chance to spike the football before fans in crucial Electoral College states. “We got Big Ten open,” Trump told sports journalist Jason Whitlock in an interview released on Thursday.

But the play hasn’t worked very well, according to a new poll from Arizona State’s Global Sport Institute that was shared exclusively with TIME.

The survey of undecided voters who identify as college football fans and live in closely contested Midwest swing states with Big Ten schools or other key states found that just 2% of this cohort would be “much more likely” to vote for Trump because he’s claimed credit for Big Ten football’s return. Another 7% said they’d be “somewhat more likely” to vote for him.

But whatever gains Trump appears to have made among this small subset of the electorate were mostly offset by those turned off by his boasting: 7% of those surveyed said Trump taking credit for the Big Ten restart made them “much less likely” or “somewhat less likely” to vote for Trump. In the end, 84% of respondents said the Big Ten strategy had no effect on whom they will support.

The poll, by OH Predictive Insights, a non-partisan public-opinion research company, surveyed 400 registered voters who identified as undecided college football fans in Midwestern battleground states with Big Ten schools—Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Minnesota—as well as the battleground states of Florida, Arizona and Nevada. (The poll has a 4.9% margin of error and was conducted between Oct. 14 and Oct. 21.)

Mike Noble, managing partner and chief pollster at OH Predictive Insights, questions the efficacy of Trump’s strategy of claiming credit for the return of college football during the waning weeks of the campaign. “It’s not moving the needle,” Noble says. “It’s not effective. And frankly, if I was their internal team, I’d be like, stop talking about it.”

The results surprised Noble, a former political consultant and campaign manager. “I actually thought it would have had a bit more of an effect,” Noble says. He figured more of them would be cheering Trump for his role—real or perceived—in the restart. “I feel like if I’m a college football fan, I’m saying, ‘right on.’ This is great.”

In truth, Trump had little to do with the Big Ten restart. (He also claimed credit for the Pac-12’s decision to play a season: schools will kick off an abbreviated schedule starting Nov. 7.) While Trump did speak with Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren in early September and applied public pressure to change course—”Play Football Big Ten!” he tweeted on Aug. 31—Big Ten administrators and school presidents have gone out of their way to credit improvements in testing, rather than presidential hectoring, for the reversal.

“For me, it wasn’t about political pressure, money, lawsuits, or what everyone else was doing,” said Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro, chair of the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors. “It was the unanimous opinion of our medical experts that evolved over the course of weeks.”

That hasn’t stopped Trump from taking a marathon victory lap. “It was dead, it was totally dead,” Trump told Fox Sports Radio’s Outkick The Coverage with Clay Travis on Sept. 17. “And I told my people, look, we got to call, I say, who am I going to call, who’s the head of it? And, it was Kevin Warren who really turned out to be very open about it.”

At the first presidential debate, during a discussion about the economy, Trump pivoted to the talking point. “By the way, I brought back Big Ten football,” he said. “It was me, and I’m very happy to do it. And the people of Ohio are very proud of me.” On Oct. 20, Trump said on Fox & Friends: “I’m the one that got Big Ten and Pac-12 football back. You know, I got that back. That wasn’t coming back. And I got it back. Hope people realize that. That was pure and simple me, or whatever.”

But the message doesn’t seem to be landing with crucial undecided voters. Among the poll respondents who identify as Big Ten fans in key states, just 1% say they’re much more likely to vote for Trump; 8% are somewhat more likely to vote for him. At the same time, 8% of Big Ten fans say they’re turned off by Trump’s message, and are much less likely or somewhat less likely to vote for him. The overwhelming majority—83%—of these Big Ten fans don’t seem to care either way.

The poll also provided insight into what the country thinks about a question at the intersection of sports and politics. While some fans have criticized athletes for speaking out on political issues—“stick to sports,” the refrain goes—they’d also prefer that the reverse hold true: that politicians stay in their lane.

Researchers asked these undecided voters if they agreed or disagreed with following statement: “It is appropriate for elected officials to become involved in the nationwide start/stoppage of sporting events.” Only 5% strongly agreed; 18% agreed somewhat, and 39% were ambivalent.

“It looks like the same fall in the middle type of thing,” says Ken Shropshire, CEO of Arizona State’s Global Sport Institute. “This doesn’t do anything for me.”

College Football Feels All Too Normal During The Pandemic

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 18:08:39 GMT

Normal. That’s a word for what so many of us long for as this incessant pandemic drags on, the end seemingly further away with every passing day. Yet, normal is nowhere to be found in the circus of Washington pandemic politics, of desperate economic crisis, and the surging threat of white supremacist violence.

Nowhere, apparently, but college football. Because, despite the genuine concern initially offered this summer at the prospect of playing college football in the context of a global health crisis, somehow here we are, college football on the television and in the stadiums, and no one seemingly batting an eyelash. Yet, if you look closely, what you see is that universities are right now subjecting unpaid athletic workers to precisely the same health risks that are eliciting such outrage every day on network television and social media. The difference with college football? There is nary the commensurate concern.

No one understands these developments better than the players who live them. One Power Five college football player, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, explained it this way: “I mean the whole goal is to make everyone feel like things are normal, which they definitely aren’t. Even as a player who’s living it, you have to remind yourself that this is in no way ‘normal’. What you’re seeing and hearing on TV isn’t the whole story. It’s a patchwork put together in order to resemble what we tell ourselves is what’s normal. It looks and feels good to watch football again, but it doesn’t mean everything occurring behind the scenes is being done right. Protocols are bulls–t. They just keep quiet, to those involved within the program or otherwise, and do everything within their power to get to the next Saturday.”

And yet, every day seems to bring more news of health crises amid college football programs. At Vanderbilt University, an upcoming game against Missouri will be cancelled because the team is unable to dress the requisite 53 scholarship players mandated by SEC conference rules. Likewise, at the University of Florida, where coach Dan Mullen recently opined that he wanted to “have 90,000 [fans] in the Swamp,” the team was forced to shut down football activities after nineteen players and two assistant coaches tested positive for the virus in just one week. On October 17th, Mullen himself then tested positive for the virus. The University of Mississippi, similarly, is having what coach Lane Kiffin described as “issues” with the virus. At Baylor University, 28 players and 14 staff tested positive, forcing the university to suspend their football operations. And, at Alabama, the most celebrated football program in the country, both head coach Nick Saban and athletic director Greg Byrne tested positive before Saban was cleared to coach prior to last Saturday’s kickoff.

The principal justification for college football during the pandemic is the putative safety of this particular demographic of young people in the face of the disease. As Oklahoma State Head Coach Mike Gundy infamously put it in April: “In my opinion, we need to bring our players back. They are 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22-years old and they are healthy and they have the ability to fight this virus off. If that is true, then we sequester them, and continue because we need to run money through the state of Oklahoma.” While there is truth to the claim that young people fare better against the virus from the standpoint strictly of fatality (although even this is belied by the tragic recent Covid-19-caused deaths of California University player Jamain Stephens and former North Carolina high school basketball star and Appalachian State undergrad Chad Dorrill), this mentality overlooks the crucial issue of complications such as myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that can afflict even those who experience seemingly mild or even asymptomatic cases of Covid-19. In a recent study published in JAMA Cardiology, 15% of the NCAA athletes showed signs of myocarditis after recovering from COVID-19. Indeed, even as evidence of the long-term complications that Covid-19 may inflict upon its victims grows, college football administrators have stood firm in their conviction that the virus presents a low risk to young athletes.

Such surety, however, is not well-founded. “This is a new virus, and we are only beginning to understand the harms it can cause,” Gavin Yamey, Director of the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health at the Duke Global Health Institute, told us. “Studies suggest that about 10% of people of any age who are infected can develop long-term, disabling symptoms that can last many months or more. This long-term illness, called ‘long-haul’ COVID, can cause symptoms like tiredness, shortness of breath, chest tightness and pain, headaches, muscle pain, and heart palpitations.” Yamey says the virus can damage the brain, heart, pancreas, skin, thyroid, gut, kidneys, and musculoskeletal system.

This is not lost on the players forced to work under threat of the virus. One Power Five player told us that he and his teammates weren’t told about the most serious risks, like potential heart damage, when they were given the choice to opt out. “We don’t really feel safe,” he says.

L.G. Patterson—APAlabama coach Nick Saban leads his team to the field before an NCAA college football game against Missouri in Columbia, Mo., on Sept. 26, 2020. Saban and athletic director Greg Byrne tested positive for COVID-19, days before the Southeastern Conference’s biggest regular-season showdown.

An Alarming Picture

Yet, when the Big Ten elected to reverse its initial decision to cancel the season due to health risks, they cited confidence in their ability to produce safe playing conditions. Dr. Jim Borchers, head team medical official at Ohio State and co-chair of the conference’s return to competition task force’s medical subcommittee explained it this way: “Everyone associated with the Big Ten should be very proud of the groundbreaking steps that are now being taken to better protect the health and safety of the student-athletes and surrounding communities. The data we are going to collect from testing and the cardiac registry will provide major contributions for all 14 Big Ten institutions as they study COVID-19 and attempt to mitigate the spread of the disease among wider communities.”

However, it is difficult to take the conferences’ safety claims at face value. Immediately prior to the Big Ten’s unanimous vote to come back, at Michigan State all students were asked to quarantine because of an enormous case spike. Likewise, at the time of the reopening decision, 1,800 cases had been diagnosed at the University of Iowa, 2,100 cases at Ohio State, 458 brand new cases on the weekend before the return decision alone at Penn State, and 2,200 cases at Wisconsin, where the Chancellor nonetheless had said at the time, “We aren’t sponsoring college sports because of its potential to make money.” Meanwhile, at the time of the decision to return, grad workers at Michigan were on strike against unsafe working conditions on campus. In the Pac-12, at least a third of the conference’s schools had elected to go entirely remote for the general student body due to the dangers of the pandemic.

On Oct. 20, the Washtenaw County Health Department issued a stay-in-place order for University of Michigan undergrads due to a spike in cases; the Michigan football team will kick off its season on Oct. 24, in Minneapolis against the University of Minnesota.

A closer look at the experiences of players both this summer and fall paints an alarming picture. Players report feeling stressed out. One told us a teammate who tested positive has complained about how much his lungs hurt. At Utah State, Coach Gary Anderson made the coercive dynamics as clear as day: “At least in our program, we don’t have an opt out. And it’s not an option. If you opt out, you’re not with us.”

Players have reported to us about not knowing if there are cases on their teams. Coaches are regulating the flow of information around testing seemingly in order to evade public scrutiny, and in the process preventing players from receiving the information they need to stay safe. For instance, in September, BYU linebacker Zayne Anderson told The Salt Lake Tribune, “If someone were to get tested, you kind of know the guys that have had it and stay away from some of the guys that might be out and about all the time, but they’re pretty discreet in keeping their privacy of who has it and who doesn’t. Really, you’re out there on your own.”

One of the big problems with college football amidst a raging pandemic is that there are no uniform protocols for how COVID data is collected, analyzed, or shared by athletic programs. For example, after initially testing athletes once per week, the SEC updated its protocols in late-September to match the ACC and Big 12 protocol of testing three times per week, while the Big Ten and Pac 12 have both committed to daily testing. No standard reporting protocol seems to be in place. Missouri Head Coach Eli Drinkwitz, for instance, recently referred to Covid-19 testing in the SEC as being a “free-for-all,” suggesting that he has “no idea” what is happening with other teams in the conference from week to week.

Similarly concerning is the weaponization of virus disclosure as a feature of competition. Oklahoma Football Coach Lincoln Riley has reportedly indicated that he will not disclose infections to gain a competitive advantage over opponents. The lack of uniform testing and reporting protocols allows for programs to disclose—or not disclose—as they see fit. This is particularly concerning when one considers that this disease is a danger to all. Every time someone is infected they put others around them at risk. “I think it is utterly cavalier and irresponsible to be holding college football games during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Yamey, the Duke public health expert.

E. Jason Wambsgans—Chicago Tribune/TNS/Sipa USADavid Haghnaji, owner of Campus Gear in downtown Evanston, Ill., stocks another of his locations—The Locker Room, across from Ryan Field—with new Northwestern gear on Oct. 15, 2020.

The Need For A New Start

We would be remiss to ignore the role of media coverage in this general atmosphere of opacity. While some reporters evinced some concern over the summer, that concern has now been replaced with perfunctory reporting on team COVID numbers as performance impediment. For instance, Sports Illustrated reporter Pat Forde recently tweeted, “Virginia reports seven unavailable players and one infected coach who are out tonight. Not optimal when playing Clemson.” Not optimal, indeed, although hardly for the reason Forde advances. The focus on how COVID makes playing and winning more challenging serves only to normalize the virus as just another inexorable feature of the game, thus absolving universities and broadcasters of responsibility for producing the conditions under which players might be exposed.

Normalization has in fact always been a necessary feature of college football. This is a sport predicated on the systematic infliction of devastating injury to bodies and minds in order to generate revenue for institutions with a putative mandate to nurture rather than harm. The very existence of such a large unpaid labor force is itself a function of further normalization—that of structural racism in US society and the systematic denial of opportunity for non-white people in nearly every arena of American life.

This pandemic forces us to look at everything anew. It is an opportunity either to build racial justice and well-being, or to double down on avarice and harm. For a fleeting moment in the summer, we saw the promise of fairness in college football. But that looks increasingly like a mirage. Every day pandemic sport becomes further normalized as a mechanism for coping with the sheer abnormality of living with a global virus. And with that we are all complicit in the harm that college athletic workers have experienced over the past eight months. Our entertainment and institutional budgets are thus prioritized over the lives of predominantly young Black men who have been, and continue to be, exploited by a system specifically designed to extract value from them at any cost.

The truth is that college football during a pandemic, with all its racialized exploitation, injustice, and harm, is exactly what normal looks like in the United States of America. Can we live with that?

COVID-19 Shutdowns Have Taken a Massive Toll On Elite Athletes’ Mental Health

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 16:43:09 GMT

As COVID-19 began spreading around the world several months ago, sporting events from little league games to elite competitions were cancelled—and for good reason, as close contact among athletes and spectators can foster the spread of the novel coronavirus. A February soccer game in Italy, for example, helped fuel that country’s outbreak, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week said a recreational hockey game in Tampa, Fla. in June was a dreader “superspreader” event. The pandemic also forced the postponement of what was supposed to be year’s signature international athletic gathering—the 2020 Tokyo Olympics—lest athletes carry the virus back into their home countries. While sports have since returned, with measures like bubbles and daily testing and restrictions on spectators, a potential new surge of infections during the winter again threatens events on all levels.

While COVID-19 is particularly dangerous for the elderly and other vulnerable populations, it can still kill otherwise healthy individuals, like elite athletes. Moreover, researchers are worried that COVID-19 may pose long-term risks to heart and lung health, consequences that could derail an athlete’s career.

The sports stoppage, however, came with steep costs for those who’ve dedicated their lives in pursuit of victory. According to a study released Tuesday from Stanford University and Strava, a social network of exercise enthusiasts, 22.5% of professional athletes reported feeling down or depressed on more than half of the days of the week in the period between mid-March and August of this year, while COVID-19 restrictions on athletic training and competition were in place, compared to 3.9% of athletes reporting the same struggles earlier this year before the pandemic hit. That’s an increase of 477%. Researchers also found that those surveyed—who were endurance athletes like cyclists, runners, and triathletes—were 5.9 times more likely to report feeling nervous or anxious for more than half the days of the week during the pandemic period than beforehand; they were 7.1 times more likely to report little interest in doing things.

The pandemic is also taking a mental health toll on pretty much everyone else, of course. But these numbers are startling given that exercise has been shown to help mitigate issues like depression and anxiety.

“It’s pretty obvious that people right now, given everything that’s been going on in 2020, the calamity across the board, that people are going to have mental health struggles and difficulty exercising and a lot of these symptoms,” says Dr. Megan Roche, clinical researcher at Stanford and a lead author on the study. “What was most shocking was the magnitude of that. It’s very rare, in these sorts of studies, to see things like ‘six times increase’ and ‘seven times increase’ and just to see the staggering numbers we were seeing.”

‘I was in such a rut’

While this study was limited to 131 professional endurance athletes, the data has implications across all sports. Considering that runners and cyclists still had relatively easy access to training during the shutdown—you could still go on a long run or bike ride while gyms and pools and other sports facilities were closed—the pandemic’s mental health effects could be worse for other athletes who were locked out of courts, rinks, and so on.

The pandemic is also creating financial anxiety for these pros: 71% of them reported worrying about compensation during the pandemic, and of the athletes surveyed who received compensation from sponsors, nearly half—47%—saw a reduction in paid opportunities during COVID-19 restrictions.

Rebecca Mehra, a U.S. middle distance runner who was preparing for the Olympic trials when the pandemic shut down sports, felt some relief when she saw the study results, as they showed she wasn’t the only one feeling anxious and unmotivated.

“It makes you feel more normal to know other athletes have been frustrated and having a tough time,” says Mehra, who was surveyed for the study. The cancellation of the Olympics—and of her race schedule—crushed her. “I was just in such a rut,” says Mehra. “I didn’t want to get up and go to practice. I barely felt like running.” Mehra also lost a part-time job working in the athletic department at Stanford, her alma mater.

Triathlete Pedro Gomes, an Ironman competitor, felt confused after pools near his Scottsdale, Ariz. home were shut down. “Mentally, I was definitely lost,” says Gomes, another study participant. “I just did not know how long the pool was going to be closed for. The uncertainty of not knowing when this is going to end and being completely out of my control, it was something scary.”

How athletes can bounce back

The good news: athletes like Gomes and Mehra proved resilient. Data from Strava showed that overall, athletes wound up actually increasing their physical exertion during the period of COVID-19 restrictions: they exercised for an average of 103 minutes per day during the shutdown period, compared to 92 minutes a day beforehand. They seemed acutely aware that even if the fruits of running and biking wouldn’t show up in competitions, they’d at least help their mental health. “Right now,” says Roche, “it’s all about finding magic in the mundane.”

Gomes started waking up at 2 am in Arizona to race virtually against his friends in his native Portugal on an indoor bike trainer; on Oct. 19, he finished second in his first competitive Ironman race since the pandemic.

Mehra, meanwhile, hit reset. “I was eating Nutella and ice cream whenever,” she says. After the shock of the cancellations wore off, she returned to running for the sake of running and pursued other interests; she’s now serving as a campaign manager in a city council race in Bend, Ore, where she lives. And in August, she competed in a makeshift meet at a high school track in Los Angeles. There were no screaming fans or prize money. This 800-m race could not have been farther from Mehra’s Olympic dream.

She ran a personal best.

Hall of Famer Joe Morgan’s Death Adds to Baseball’s Stretch of Grief

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 21:16:03 GMT

Not again.

Yes, sadly: Another baseball legend is gone. Joe Morgan, the Hall of Fame fireplug for Cincinnati’s championship “Big Red Machine” teams of the 1970s—and one of the greatest second basemen ever—passed away on Sunday, at 77, in his Bay Area home. He was suffering from a nerve condition.

Morgan’s death follows the recent passing of four other Hall of Famers: Whitey Ford, the winningest pitcher in New York Yankees history, on Oct. 8 at 91; pitcher Bob Gibson, of the St. Louis Cardinals, on Oct. 2 at 84; Gibson’s ex-teammate Lou Brock, the former stolen base king who spent the bulk of his career in St. Louis, on September 6 at 81; and Tom Seaver, the three-time Cy Young award winner of the New York Mets who died on August 31. Seaver was 75.

This string of bad baseball news counts as nothing more than a sad coincidence. But for fans of these memorable players, these last few weeks have hit hard. Morgan was the back-to-back National League MVP for a Cincinnati team that won consecutive World Series championships, in 1975 and 1976. A generation of Little Leaguers imitated his batting stance, in which he’d flap his left elbow back a few times before the pitch, like a chicken, in order to keep it straight. As the lead ESPN baseball game commentator from 1990-2010, and a postseason broadcaster for NBC in the mid-to-late 1990s, Morgan also spoke to legions of baseball fans who never saw him play.

They didn’t always like what they heard. Morgan stubbornly downplayed the baseball analytics that increasingly influenced decisions in the game; to many, he was an old-school relic who simply refused to adapt to more data-driven times. A group of TV writers including Michael Schur—creator of beloved comedies like Parks and Recreation and The Good Place—started the sports blog “Fire Joe Morgan” in 2005; it was dedicated to lampooning the fuddy-duddy views of Morgan and other media members. The irony of Morgan’s reluctance to embrace analytics was that he was a sabermetric dream: viewed through the numbers, Morgan’s career was even more impressive. As a 5’7″, 160-pound second baseman, he led the NL in OPS—on-base plus slugging percentages — in both of his MVP seasons. He led the NL in walks in four seasons, hit for power and stole bases, all while saving runs with his five straight Gold Gloves, from 1973-1977.

“Joe Morgan was quite simply the best baseball player I played against or saw,” Johnny Bench, the Hall of Fame Reds catcher, writes in an email to TIME. That’s telling praise, especially since Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hits leader, was another Bench teammate on those Big Red Machine squads. Morgan could just do it all, especially in big moments. In Game 7 of the 1975 World Series against Boston, for example, Morgan drove in the decisive run with a two-out, ninth-inning single: the Reds won 4-3.

Morgan was born in Texas but grew up in Oakland. The Houston Colt .45s—now the Astros—signed him in 1962. As a minor league player in North Carolina, he experienced segregation firsthand: he heard racial slurs from the stands and saw Black fans separated from whites out in right field. He considered quitting. “It would be nice to say that I changed my mind because of the example of earlier black players who had it tougher, like Jackie Robinson,” Morgan wrote in his 1993 book. “But my decision came from my own sense of shame and embarrassment. When I thought of facing my father and telling him that I had quit — I simply could not go ahead.”

Morgan made his big league debut in Houston in 1963, and soon became the team’s regular second baseman, making two All-Star teams: he was traded to Cincinnati after the 1971 season, and made eight straight All-Star appearances with the Reds. He returned to Houston in 1980, helping the franchise win its first division title. After two years in San Francisco, he played for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1983, joining former Reds stars Rose, then 42, and Perez, 41, in Philly—they were known as the “Wheeze Kids.” Those Phillies won the NL pennant. Though the Baltimore Orioles beat Philadelphia in five games, Morgan hit two home runs in the ’83 World Series, as a 40-year-old. Morgan played his final season, in 1984, with his hometown A’s.

Morgan has never shied away from speaking his mind. In 2017, Morgan wrote a letter to Hall of Fame voters, urging them to keep steroid users out of Cooperstown. Some read his missive as sanctimonious. Others agreed with his stance. Morgan’s words spoke to his influence in baseball, a game he served with passion and flair, a game now suffering too much loss.

In Winning His Fourth NBA Title, LeBron James Makes An All-Time Statement

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 04:08:03 GMT

In February 2002, when high school junior LeBron James came into the national consciousness and Sports Illustrated ran a cover story calling him “The Chosen One,” what could any reasonable person imagine? Another young athletic phenom, for one—with the potential to fall short of the hype. It had happened many times in sports before LeBron, and many times since: the can’t-miss sports teen who struck out. In fact, America’s premier athletic hype factory, ESPN, heaped even more expectations on James in his senior year, reserving coveted airtime for his high school games.

Given the history of highly tipped athletes falling short, probably few would bet that he’d become the first player to lead three different teams to NBA titles, as LeBron did Friday night when his Los Angeles Lakers steamrolled the Miami Heat 106-93 in the championship-clinching Game 6 of the NBA Finals. LeBron scored 28 points, grabbed 14 rebounds and dished out 10 assists. Can it now be argued that this athletic marvel from Akron, Ohio has a fair claim to dethroning Michael Jordan as the Greatest Of All-Time?

“I played against Michael, and in my opinion Michael is the greatest to ever play,” says former NBA player Rex Chapman, and NBA TV analyst. “But LeBron James, my goodness—if you want to argue that he is, you’re welcome to do that. And you won’t sound crazy.”

Here’s what no one could see coming two decades ago: that James would keep piling up eye-popping statistics for 17 straight seasons, and play in 10 NBA Finals, while simultaneously churning out movies and television shows and seeking to build a Hollywood empire. That he’d open up his own academic institution in Akron —the kind of place never afforded to him while growing up in a disadvantaged part of his hometown—and see kids from his I PROMISE school featured on a Wheaties box.

Something else seemed impossible in 2002, when Jordan’s apolitical superstar athlete model was still the standard: that James would not only become the world’s best basketball player, but that he’d also emerge as one of the most prominent activists in sports. That he’d be told to “shut up and dribble” by political pundits taking umbrage over the fact that he shares his opinions. That his statements about police violence would help shape the national discourse. That he’d be verbally sparring with the President of the United States.

Meanwhile, LeBron keeps winning through it all.

Todd Boyd, professor of race and culture at the University of Southern California, argues that James has joined Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan as the athletes of the past 60 years who’ve best combined all-time athletic performance with a transcendent cultural impact. Ali was an activist; Jordan’s Nike deals and product pitches changed the business of sports; James combines business savvy and social engagement. James’ fourth title, in this year of pandemic suffering and widespread social unrest sparked by a racial reckoning, will go down as his most important.

“You have to imagine how many people there were, who would have been so happy to see LeBron fall flat on his face,” says Boyd. “He didn’t do that. And not only did he not do that, he expanded his sport, and then he was able to make himself this great American who uses all that he’s accomplished on the court as a way of enforcing other aspects of society. People would complain about athletes almost wasting their platform and wasting their resources. LeBron rewrote all that.”

In no way does this Lakers title deserve any kind of asterisk just because the NBA postseason was contested in unusual circumstances (in a bubble, with no travel or fans during playoff series). The NBA played a majority of its season when it shut down back in March—and the Lakers were already elite. In a full slate of playoff games, James fended off all-world players like Jimmy Butler in Miami, and Nikola Jokić in Denver, James Harden and Russell Westrook in Houston and Damian Lillard in Portland. James may have had his best running mate ever, in Anthony Davis, a surefire Hall of Famer. No one at 6’10” should be able to do the graceful things Davis does on the basketball court.

Still, the Lakers run through LeBron James. His Game 6 performance spoke to his greatness: he attacked the rim all night, scoring with ease and demoralizing Miami into oblivion.

“He’s the king,” says Boyd. “We can go back to Shakespeare: ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ It’s not an easy job. It could have easily come off his head. But he’s wearing it, and he’s wearing it proudly, with style and distinction.”

And there’s no reason to think he’ll give it up any time soon. James, at 35, is playing some of the most exciting basketball of his career; he led the NBA in assists, with 10.2 per game, for the first time. The joy he finds in sharing has inspired a generation.

The teen gazing at the Sports Illustrated camera, with a sense of wonder, is a bit more weathered now. The gray in his beard is showing. But his smile on the victory stage on Sunday night showed he still had that youthful verve. It served as a reminder, of how far he’s come since those high school days; further than anyone ever imagined.

New England Patriots Quarterback Cam Newton Reportedly Tests Positive for COVID-19

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 16:13:59 GMT

(FOXBOROUGH, Mass.) — New England Patriots quarterback Cam Newton has COVID-19 and will not play in this week’s game against the Chiefs, ESPN reported on Saturday. The Patriots confirmed that a player has tested positive but did not reveal the name.

It was not immediately known when the team would be able to travel to Kansas City for the game, which was scheduled for Sunday afternoon, if at all.

The team said the player has entered self-quarantine. Players, coaches and staff who were in close contact with him were tested Saturday morning and all were negative, the team said in a statement.

The statement said the team is consulting with the league and medical specialists “regarding our scheduled trip to Kansas City and game against the Chiefs.”

The NHL Had 0 Positive COVID-19 Tests Throughout the Postseason. ...

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 19:19:08 GMT

On Sept. 28, the National Hockey League became the first of the so-called “Big Four” North American professional team sports leagues—the NHL, NBA, MLB, and NFL—to crown a champion in the COVID-19 era; the Tampa Bay Lightning lifted the Stanley Cup for the second time in franchise history, knocking off the Dallas Stars in Game 6 of the Cup finals, 2-0.

After shutting down its season in March, the NHL returned to play in August, with 24 teams competing for the Stanley Cup in a postseason that took place in two “bubble” locations: Eastern Conference teams were stationed in Toronto, while Western Conference teams played in Edmonton (once the playoffs reached the Conference Finals round, the remaining four teams played their games in Edmonton). No NHL personnel tested positive in the bubble.

Before Game 6, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman joined TIME for a phone conversation from Edmonton, to discuss the keys to managing COVID-19 in the bubble, lessons learned from the experience, what the 2020-2021 NHL season might look like, and more. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

TIME: On Sept. 28th, news came out that the NHL has conducted 33,174 COVID-19 tests in its Toronto and Edmonton bubbles, with zero positives. What was the key to getting to that number?

Bettman: We understood that we had a responsibility, in the face of COVID-19, to be as safe and as secure as possible. If you go back and you look at the phases we went through, there were four phases, the first one was self-isolation, phase two as we started up in training facilities, and there was some testing locally, phase three was training camp, and there was regular testing, and our belief was once we got to phase four, if we can get safely into the bubble without any COVID-19, if we’re testing everyday and we’re adhering to all the appropriate protocols, we should be O.K.

There are some people who have said this might be the safest place in North America. At the end of the day, there were the protocols that were developed. Our cooperation with the Players’ Association, our medical people and the health authorities, and it was the players and other personnels’ willingness to adhere to those protocols, to take them seriously, that I believe got us to this point.

Is there anything you’ve learned from this unprecedented season that you may apply to future seasons?

We have no expectations that we can do this for an entire regular season. Because that wouldn’t be fair to the players. What we have learned is if you focus on the medical advice, and you follow the data, you can minimize the risk. We announced with the Players’ Association what the return to play format, what the protocols would be.

There was some commentary that I should have, at the same time, decided where we were going. We made it a point not to do that. We only made the decision where to go when we absolutely had to, at the last minute, to effectuate the return to play plan. And the reason for that was I wanted to know exactly the state of COVID everywhere we were thinking of going. We had 10 different places we could go to. We had been gradually eliminating them. But at the time we had to make the decision, some of the places we were seriously considering were spiking. And we decided to go to two places that were the least COVID-intense of any of the cities and most of the places in North America.

Was Florida a place you were considering?

There were places all over. I think Florida had been—this has now been a while ago, you lose track of time—but there were places all over the United States that had asked us to consider them, including Nevada. Which at the time was spiking. So we wanted to go where we thought we could be safe, and we did that by following the data.

Also, we had great cooperation by both Edmonton and the Oilers, by Toronto and the Maple Leafs, and by the health authorities, particularly at the provincial level. We needed the cooperation of the governments at all levels, including and especially the federal government.

Obviously sports leagues like yours have resources—like daily testing, the ability to create bubbles—that other enterprises don’t. Still, is there anything the world at large can learn about managing COVID-19 from the NHL’s experience?

I’m not one to lecture or give the world at large advice. But what we learned was, depending on the circumstances, you could do things to manage the risks. Which is what we were attempting to do. Other than when the players are playing and people are eating, when you walk around the bubble, you’re wearing a mask. And everybody is adhering to it. People are not trying to get out of the bubble. They understand the importance of staying in. They also understand that if they leave they are not coming back.

There were a whole series of things that everybody here had to be willing to adhere to if it was going to work. And we did the best we could. We got the best advice we could. We collaborated and cooperated with the Players’ Association, which was essential. Because this undertaking, the number of moving parts, was a collaborative effort.

Around the U.S., there have been testing shortages and backlogs in getting results. Some sports leagues have been criticized for doing so much testing while so many people struggle to get access to tests. Is that fair?

Part of the decision was, we wouldn’t go to a place where we would interfere the slightest with the needs of the medical community for testing. We purchased all the testing that we used privately. We paid for it. And there was no shortage in any place where we are. So that there was no interference with our use of testing with what anybody else might have needed from a medical standpoint. We went to a place where COVID was most under control. When you’re the most under control, you have a lesser need for testing.

In response to the Jacob Blake shooting, in late August the NHL took a two-day pause to protest, in solidarity with other professional athletes, racial injustices. What did you think of this action?

Everything that was going on in sports had been initiated by the players. And my view was, if we were going to take a pause—which I believe was appropriate provided that this was what the players wanted—it wasn’t about making a PR statement, it was about having an authentic reaction to what was going on and trying to be supportive. And that was entirely up to the players. I’m proud of the way they reacted.

A recent ESPN report revealed some dissatisfaction with the NHL bubble: players complained of feeling isolated and that some of the amenities fell short of what was promised. What’s your reaction to the article?

Actually, the feedback that I’ve gotten on that article was twofold. One, I was told by a number of people, either from the players or people who work with the players, that it was terribly unfortunate that all of the sources were anonymous. And it seemed to be a very, very, very tiny minority of players who felt that way.

I bump into players all the time in the bubble. You can always, I suppose, get a person or two who have a different view, provided they would identify themselves. But overwhelmingly, everybody was glad to have the opportunity to complete the season, to have an an opportunity to hoist the Stanley Cup. They felt extraordinary safe here.

The Seattle Kraken will start playing in 2021-2022. Does the NHL have any more expansion plans?

We’re not looking at any more expansion for the foreseeable future.

Is there a market, or markets, where you feel the NHL should be?

We’re not focusing on anything other than what we have and where we’re going, namely Seattle.

Last week, an NHL promo video sent out on the league’s Twitter account that was criticized by some as glorifying violence was taken down. What’s your response to the criticism? Why was it taken down?

It wasn’t supposed to glorify violence. What it was supposed to do, and maybe it was misconstrued, was focus on how intense and how hard it is to win the Stanley Cup. It can be a very intense, physically and mentally, gauntlet that has to be run. And it’s not the first time there was a video like that.

Apparently, one of the sports networks in Canada was doing a piece on injuries and I guess the timing was unfortunate. But I’m not sure that we were in a position to be focusing on what a sports network was doing on its shoulder programming in the middle of the Stanley Cup final. But it was unfortunate, and if it was misconstrued we feel badly about that.

Both Tampa Bay and Dallas held indoor watch parties for the Stanley Cup finals. Did this concern you at all?

Two things about that. Obviously, everything we and our clubs do need to be in compliance with local regulations. And if Texas and Florida are more open than other places, then the buildings can be used, provided the appropriate protocols and social distancing were in place. And I’m told they were.

But you know, the difference between indoor and outdoor, at least in our arenas which are multi-hundred-thousand foot facilities with state of the art air systems, I’m not sure is as accurate as it’s portrayed on a superficial level. Our buildings can be safe. And that’s something we’re going to be working with local authorities on.

The NHL has previously named Dec. 1 as a target start date for the 2020-2021 NHL season. Are you still hoping to make that happen?

December 1 was just a notional date. The likelihood is that we’ll be starting later than that, maybe late December, maybe early January. No timeframe yet has been established. Much like the discussion we had about this return to play, there’s a lot more we need to know about a number of things before we make that decision.

Do you hope to at least be able to phase fans in?

I mean, we certainly would love our buildings to be full. Our fans are an essential part of the energy of our game. Our fans are what make us, among other things, the best sport to attend in person. But tell me what COVID is going to be like. Tell me what the local regulations are going to be around all of our buildings. Tell me what the ease of access is going to be crossing the Canadian-U.S. border. These are all things that are going to have to be accounted for before we can make the decision.

You’ve been a good sport about the booing you annually receive during the Stanley Cup presentation and during the draft. The Draft is coming up on October 6-7. Might some virtual booing be piped in?

You’ll have to tune in to find out.

A New Book Chronicles Kobe Bryant’s Early-Career Cruelty. ...

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 12:00:08 GMT

Author Jeff Pearlman is under no illusions about how some people may react to his new book, Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty. The exhaustively reported and eminently readable book chronicles the combustable Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O’Neal partnership in Los Angeles that led the Lakers to three consecutive NBA titles from 2000 to 2002.

Bryant’s staunchest fans—still in grieving his tragic Jan. 26 death in a helicopter crash that also killed his daughter Gianna and seven others—may despise it. Three-Ring Circus, which covers the early years of Bryant’s NBA career (1996-2004), depicts ugly incidents from the superstar’s past. Through roughly 300 interviews, including talks with O’Neal, other former Lakers teammates like Rick Fox and Bryant’s coach, Hall of Famer Phil Jackson, the Bryant who emerges in the book is mean, aloof and impossible to coach. In other words, Three-Ring Circus shares the unsparing truth about Bryant’s early NBA years.

It’s a truth that’s familiar to Bryant followers; everyone knows he was arrogant and difficult to deal with in his younger days. Still, it’s a truth that many won’t appreciate seeing spelled out, in detail, so soon after his death. It doesn’t fit the narrative that emerged after the helicopter crash: Bryant as a dedicated basketball craftsman who possessed a focus and intensity he dubbed the “Mamba Mentality,” which willed him to all-time greatness. Bryant as a caring father, as a champion of women’s sports, as a Renaissance man who won an Oscar. Three-Ring Circus sits in a precarious position: It’s a book reported and written before a beloved celebrity’s tragic death, that may ring insensitive due to circumstances beyond the author’s control.

On social media, and in an author’s note included in the book, Pearlman pleads with readers not to interpret his work as an opportunistic takedown of Bryant’s legacy. “The Kobe Bryant of 1996 to 2004 is not the Kobe Bryant of 2005 to January 26, 2020,” Pearlman writes. “He was not then the contemplative adult who raved of having four daughters. He was not then the doting husband. He was not then the Academy Award winner. He was not yet comfortable in his own skin.”

Pearlman, however, knows such perspective may get lost in the conversation around the book. “When you’re in the media, you think everyone hears what you’re saying,” Pearlman tells TIME. “So, all right, I’m going to put it out there, so everyone knows I finished his book before he died. You’re talking to 4% of the people. The other 96% just see some guy who capitalized on his death. I really hate that.”

A few of the unflattering incidents depicted in Three-Ring Circus involve Bryant’s treatment of his peers. In 2003, Eric Chenowith, who played collegiately at the University of Kansas, was in Lakers training camp in Hawaii, trying to make the team. Pearlman reports in the book that during an off-day outing, Chenowith felt a palm push into the back of his head. “Rook, you better get me my motherf-cking ice cream,” Bryant told him. But Chenowith, drafted by the New York Knicks two years earlier, wasn’t fresh out of college: he had played in the NBA Developmental League the two seasons before. He felt Bryant was just trying to humiliate him; and yet he also felt like he had no choice but to walk over to an ice cream truck and fetch Bryant, already a three-time champ, some dessert. “You better f-cking run!” Bryant said. “Don’t walk. Run.”

“Kobe was a complete prick,” Chenowith told Pearlman in an interview for the book before Bryant’s death. “Not only is he a douchebag, he’s a douchebag who’s a prick. If he knows he can get something from you, he’ll treat you with respect. If there’s nothing in it for him, he can’t give a sh-t.”

The book highlights the critical opinions of those around Bryant at the time. Jackson is quoted as calling Bryant a “juvenile narcissist.” Over the years, O’Neal has tried to downplay his feuding with Bryant during their Lakers days. And while the two superstars did go a long way toward patching things up as the years went by, Pearlman reports that O’Neal, at times, abhorred his younger teammate. “The truth is nobody wanted to play with Kobe,” O’Neal says in the book, describing the dynamics of the late-1990s Lakers, who struggled to establish themselves in the Western Conference. During one off-season pickup game, they came to blows. Former NBA center Olden Polynice told Pearlman he grabbed O’Neal in an attempt to keep the peace. “And I’m telling you, if Shaq got loose he would have killed Kobe Bryant,” Polynice says in Three-Ring Circus. “I am not exaggerating… He wanted to end Kobe’s life in that moment.”

Pearlman spares no detail in chronicling Bryant’s 2003 sexual assault arrest, which obituaries largely glossed over. Bryant was charged with sexually assaulting a then 19-year-old woman in a Colorado hotel room: prosecutors dropped the criminal case before trial, citing the accuser’s unwillingness to testify. The woman filed a lawsuit against Bryant; it ended in a settlement. O’Neal despised Bryant so much, according to Three-Ring Circus, that during one team flight from Hawaii where Bryant was not present, O’Neal produced a facetious rap verse about Bryant’s involvement in the case, shocking a few teammates who heard his freestyle lyrics.

Hearing of these stories in 2020 may feel strange. But even before Bryant’s death, Three-Ring Circus had a planned September 2020 release date. The book was finished, save for the author’s note, before Jan. 26; Pearlman says he rejected suggestions from friends that he move the publication sooner so it could arrive while Bryant’s death was in the news. He considered pushing the date back further, but ultimately told his agent to stick with September, deciding that waiting a few more months wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Vince Bucci—AFP/Getty ImagesKobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers looks back toward teammate Shaquille O’Neal during their game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Jan. 12, 2001 in Los Angeles.

Pearlman knows that if he had started reporting this book after Bryant’s death, sources would not have been as candid. “It’s impossible,” he says. “Two days before Kobe died, a good number of these people were not Kobe Bryant fans, if we’re being honest. And two days after he died, he was the greatest person to walk the earth. That’s how it works. We try to be respectful people.”

One source called Pearlman after the helicopter crash, expressing reservations about how his candor would be received in the book. Pearlman told his source there really wasn’t much he could do. “With biographies, you have two choices,” Pearlman says. “You can write true, honest, real chronicles, or you can delve into the mythology and the pop and pulp. I’m writing a true story. Presumably someone, someday, will want to go back and know what this period was like. And that’s my job, to chronicle it accurately and honestly.”

Even so, he recognizes the hurt that rehashing bad memories may cause Bryant’s fans, and particularly his family. “What his family has been through is unspeakable,” he says. “I was heartbroken about Kobe’s death. And I am not exaggerating that. But it’s just a book about an era in basketball. And it doesn’t take away anything that guy accomplished—it doesn’t take away from what he did after basketball.”

And he’s right. Three-Ring Circus is a valuable addition to the Kobe Bryant canon—deeply reported and unflinchingly honest. By documenting Bryant’s youthful immaturity and harmful actions, Pearlman offers a fuller picture of a beloved but complicated man.

Naomi Osaka Says She Wore 7 Masks About Black Lives During This Year’s U.S. ...

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 21:02:37 GMT

During this year’s U.S. Open, professional tennis player Naomi Osaka wore seven different face masks for each round of the annual tournament. Each mask, which she started wearing when the tournament began on Aug. 31, named a Black person whose death has been repeatedly cited in nationwide protests about racial injustice.

After winning the U.S. Open’s singles tournament on Saturday, Osaka said the masks were her way of using her platform to protest this injustice and advocate that Black lives matter.

Asked by a reporter after the tournament what message she wanted to send, Osaka responded: “Well, what was the message that you got was more the question. I feel like the point is to make people start talking.”

.@naomiosaka when asked what message she was trying to send wearing 7 masks with 7 names during her 7 matches:

“Well, what was the message that you got is more the question?”🔥👑 pic.twitter.com/WVg3G5d2CW

— Maya Harris (@mayaharris_) September 13, 2020

The seven masks Osaka wore in recent weeks included the names of Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Philando Castle and Tamir Rice, all names that have come up repeatedly as victims of racial injustice.

Raising awareness—even on social media—will hopefully lead to more people talking about them, Osaka said.

Naomi Osaka brought seven face masks to the US Open.

Each mask highlights a different Black victim of racial injustice and police brutality.

– Breonna Taylor
– Elijah McClain
– Ahmaud Arbery
– Trayvon Martin
– George Floyd
– Philando Castile

Today: Tamir Rice

✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/VRyiWFRhyN

— The Undefeated (@TheUndefeated) September 12, 2020

Osaka isn’t the only champion competitor to use their platform to try and keep Black names in the public consciousness. On Sunday, British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, who is considered one of the best drivers of all time, also signaled his support for Breonna Taylor. He wore a T-shirt calling for the arrest of the police officers who killed Taylor after winning the Tuscan Grand Prix at Mugello, Italy.

It’s been 6 months since Breonna Taylor was murdered by policemen, in her own home. Still no justice has been served. We won’t stay silent. #JusticeForBreonnaTaylor pic.twitter.com/7zinVHiYcH

— Lewis Hamilton (@LewisHamilton) September 13, 2020

British F1 driver @LewisHamilton speaks after winning the Tuscan GP while wearing a shirt that reads “ARREST THE COPS WHO KILLED BREONNA TAYLOR.”

He mentions her at the end of his post-race remarks here. pic.twitter.com/xUg4lrL9H9

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) September 13, 2020

Earlier in the U.S. Open, Osaka was given messages from Trayvon Martin’s mother and Ahmaud Arbery’s father, thanking her for raising awareness.

After her @USOpen match tonight, @ESPN showed @NaomiOsaka video messages from @SybrinaFulton, mother of #TrayvonMartin, and Marcus Arbery, father of #AhmaudArbery — two of the five names she's worn on masks before and after her matches. #SayTheirNames pic.twitter.com/1BOyzQbzg9

— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) September 9, 2020

Osaka said in a press conference earlier this week that she was “trying really hard not to cry” when she heard their message.

“I’m not sure what I would be able to do if I was in their position but I feel like I’m a vessel at this point, in order to spread awareness,” Osaka said. “It’s not going to dull the pain, but hopefully I can help with anything that they need.”

Osaka, born to a Haitian father and Japanese mother, was brought up in the U.S. but plays for Japan in the U.S. Open. It was her second U.S. Open win and her third Grand Slam title.

Naomi Osaka’s U.S. Open Masks Showcase One of an Athlete’s Most Powerful Tools for Protest

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 20:09:24 GMT

When Naomi Osaka took the court in the first round of the U.S. Open on Aug. 31, she wore a face mask with Breonna Taylor’s name printed on it. And, she revealed, she’d brought a different such mask for each round of the tournament, each bearing the name of a Black person whose death raised awareness of racial injustice in America. “I actually have seven [masks], and it’s quite sad that seven masks isn’t enough for the amount of names, so hopefully I’ll get to the finals and you can see all of them,” Osaka said after her first win.

On Saturday, that hope will come to fruition, as Osaka faces Victoria Azarenka in the women’s singles finals. Which mask she wears won’t be revealed until the day of, but there’s no longer any doubt that she’ll use the opportunity to make a statement.

Osaka isn’t the only athlete using her clothing to bring awareness to racial injustice this year. Most notably, as part of what has been an unusual basketball season, NBA players were given the option of wearing jerseys with social-justice messages above their numbers in place of their names. The list of 29 pre-approved messages included “Black Lives Matter,” “Say Their Names” and, most popularly, “Equality.” Osaka is also part of a history that dates back far beyond 2020, explains Henry Navarro Delgado, designer and associate professor of fashion at Ryerson University.

Mike Ehrmann—Getty ImagesRussell Westbrook #0 of the Houston Rockets wears “Black Lives Matter” on the back of his jersey on Aug. 2, 2020 in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

In fact, this form of protest—athletes using their outfits to make a statement—in some ways dates back to the Ancient Greeks, Delgado tells TIME. It is very likely that Ancient Greek athletes used dress for political purposes, says Delgado, because “individual athletes often represented rivaling city-states. Those rivalries played out in the games, with each city-state trying to have the most winners to exert their, albeit symbolic, dominance.”

In the centuries that followed, many sports fans became unaccustomed to seeing athletes speak out in this way, Delgado says. That sense of the unexpected lends even more impact to the political messages of recent years—but it is now once again becoming the norm.

Protesting a 2010 Arizona state law that required immigrants to carry registration papers at all times and targeted hirers of undocumented immigrants, the NBA’s Phoenix Suns wore “Los Suns” jerseys in a game against the San Antonio Spurs. “Our players and organization felt that wearing our ‘Los Suns’ jerseys on Cinco de Mayo was a way for our team and our organization to honor our Latino community and the diversity of our league, the State of Arizona, and our nation,” Suns Managing Partner Robert Sarver said in a statement.

Christian Petersen—Getty ImagesJason Richardson #23 of the Phoenix Suns high-fives teammates Steve Nash #13 and Grant Hill #33 after scoring against the San Antonio Spurs on May 5, 2010 in Phoenix, Ariz.

Much of the power of the “Los Suns” jerseys, according to Delgado, came from their being worn by the whole team. Acting as a group can be powerful in any form of protest. But that doesn’t mean individual athletes can’t draw attention by acting on their own. As Delgado puts it, both forms of protest send a strong message, but with a different undertone about whether the larger environment—the sport’s league or players’ union, for example—is supportive.

Case in point: former NFL player Colin Kaepernick, whose best-known protest actions include kneeling and sitting on the bench during the national anthem. Kaepernick acted alone, and the response to that choice made a point about not just the broader United States, but specifically the world of football. And he too, Delgado says, clearly saw that the way he looked could be part of the protest. “You can see that this evolution coincides with him becoming more and more aware of the power that he had because of his visibility. When he started wearing his afro and his cornrows, people were recommending that he clean [up] his act and get a haircut. And he didn’t stop,” Delgado says. “This was a clear messaging of taking pride in being Black.”

Similarly, in 2014, Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls stood out by wearing an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt in honor of Eric Garner during the warm-ups before a game. For Rose, his choice came out of feeling a connection to Garner’s story. “My biggest concern is the kids. I know what they’re thinking right now. I was one of those kids. When you live in an area like that and you’ve got no hope,” the athlete said. But though Rose at first acted on his own, he soon influenced others. A slew of other athletes, including NBA players from other teams as well as college and high school players, started to wear “I Can’t Breathe” shirts.

Though this type of messaging can be very effective, according to Delgado, there are moments it might not function in the way it was intended to. Most often, it can go wrong when the person who is trying to send the message is not entirely in tune with what they are promoting. Then, the message is not registered, or it could have a negative connotation and be perceived as a joke. Audiences may also be alienated by the messages.

But the discourse that comes from that disagreement might be exactly what is needed to affect change, Delgado argues.

“Once you put a message out there, you have no control over how the recipient is going to react, but as long as there is a reaction, there is an effect,” he says. “And the goal here is to affect, to create some kind of disruption in whatever narrative is happening at the time.”

As for Osaka, she appears to agree.

“I think tennis, people watch it all around the world and things that we think are common names are probably not common overseas,” she said. “For me, I just want people to have more knowledge. I feel like the platform that I have right now is something that I used to take for granted and I just feel like I should be using it for something.”

Chargers Coach Anthony Lynn on Systemic Racism in the NFL and Why He’s 1 of Only 3 Black Head ...

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 07:18:32 GMT

When Anthony Lynn, head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, was in third grade, his world changed. He grew up in Celina, Texas—the son of a single mother, and one of the few Black kids in what was then a small town north of Dallas. A girl—Lynn thought she was cute—was handing out invitations to her birthday party one day, when Lynn noticed she skipped him and a Black girl in the class. When Lynn asked why, the response left him devastated. It’s because you’re Black and my parents won’t allow you to come to my place.

“After that moment, I never saw things the same,” Lynn, now 51, tells TIME in a video call from his office in Costa Mesa, Calif., where the Chargers are headquartered and holding training camp. “That’s when I knew the world was different. There’s a difference being Black and white. Then I started seeing color.” Lynn says this, and other experiences with racism throughout his life, helped motivated him to reach the top ranks of the NFL, where he is now one of just three Black head coaches. “I didn’t didn’t like the fact that people didn’t think I was equal, or thought they were better than me,” says Lynn. “I can’t say race wasn’t a big part of why I’m where I’m at. Because it pushed me.”

Now, the realities that Lynn confronted head-on in his life are at the forefront of his job as head coach. He sees systemic racism in the NFL, a league in which Black men are 60% of the players, but less than 10% of head coaches. He sees it in the streets, with the killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake. “I was like, wow, again?” Lynn says of watching the video of police shooting Blake in Kenosha, Wis. “It’s always unarmed Black men. And seven times? That just made me sad, man. I got emotional.” On Aug. 26 the Milwaukee Bucks declined to take the court for a playoff game against the Orlando Magic; other teams across sports also staged strikes, effectively shutting down the games. The Chargers were supposed to hold a scrimmage at their new home, the $5 billion SoFi Stadium, the next day. Lynn called a team meeting, and let players express their frustrations. “After that, no way could we take the field and practice,” says Lynn. “Because something was more important than football at that time.” The scrimmage was cancelled.

Lynn’s Chargers will kick off an NFL season like no other this weekend. In the midst of a pandemic and national reckoning on race, L.A. travels to Cincinnati to take on the Bengals and the No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft, quarterback Joe Burrow, on Sunday. While Lynn says he would have supported a player walkout in Week 1, he did not encourage it. “If I thought not playing Week 1 would make a major change, I’d give these boys the whole week off,” says Lynn. “I wouldn’t show up. But we’re football players, we’re not politicians.”

Still, don’t expect silence. In the past, Lynn says he’s tried to keep talk of controversial social issues—like Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the National Anthem—out of the locker room, lest it become a dreaded “distraction.” “We can talk about that s–t in February, in late February hopefully,” says Lynn, explaining his prior philosophy. Not so this year. “If I was to suppress this, I think it would hurt their passion and I don’t think they would play the game that they love well,” he says.

After Los Angeles made the playoffs in 2018, his second season as Chargers coach, Lynn’s team finished 5-11 last year. He’s under pressure to correct the course as the Chargers move into a new home. Lynn’s team will share SoFi Stadium with the Los Angeles Rams while desperately fighting for fans in an L.A. market that has greeted them mostly with indifference since moving from San Diego in 2017. Still, Lynn says his focus is not just victory on the field. “We have committed to winning the championship,” he says, “and fighting for social justice.”

A bunch of plays are diagrammed on a white board behind his Lynn’s desk; he’s wearing a Chargers cap and jacket during our interview, and some gray stubble is peppered on his chin. Lynn’s no typically programmed football coach. He talks in a real, conversational manner, which is all-too-rare in his ranks.

As a kid he played quarterback on youth teams in football-crazed Celina. In seventh grade, however, a coach informed Lynn he’d be moving to running back. “He goes, ‘Black kids can’t play quarterback,'” Lynn says. Lynn asked why. “Well, they’re not smart enough,” the coach responded.

These accumulated experiences with racism “made me more aggressive,” says Lynn; he got into fights in school, but he also channelled his anger onto the football field, eventually earning a scholarship to Texas Tech University and playing in the NFL for the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos; he won a pair of Super Bowl rings with Denver in 1997 and 1998.

Tensions boiled over during Lynn’s senior year at Texas Tech. Lynn says police were gathered at an apartment building where two teammates were staying; when he went to see what was happening, the cops “just jacked me up against a wall.” They asked if he was a drug dealer. “And I just lost it, man,” Lynn says. “The next thing I know I’m fighting with his cop and I’m on top of him and I get hit in the back of the head with a billy club and they got me tied down on the ground and they’re taking me to jail and the one officer kicked me inside my head.” Thanks to Lynn’s football connections, the cops eventually let him go. “Today, I would have been shot,” says Lynn. “I mean, think about that. I said, ‘I would have been shot.’ I was dead wrong going off on that cop. But it was just years of accumulation of this and that. I can’t go to the birthday party. I can’t play quarterback.”

Lynn stresses that he has great respect for police officers. In 2005, after he was struck by a drunk driver while crossing the street in Ventura, Calif., police officers helped save his life. The near-fatal incident left Lynn with temporary paralysis and injuries that required four surgeries. He has remained friends with one of the officers who rescued him. Still, he tires of the constant stings of racism. Just last year, he was pulled over for what he calls a “bogus reason.” Before a white officer asked him for license and registration, Lynn says, he asked if he had been in jail or on probation. “I’m afraid for some people that might not be as strong minded, if they hear something like that too many times, they start to believe it,” says Lynn. “That they’re not better. That they’re not equal. That’s my biggest fear. But for me, it just pisses me off. It always has.”

Lynn’s also irked that only three of the NFL’s 32 head coaches—Lynn, Brian Flores of the Miami Dolphins, and Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin—are Black. “I’m not comfortable with that number,” Lynn says. As recently as 2017, there were seven Black head coaches in the league. (Washington Football Team coach Ron Rivera, who’s Latino, is the NFL’s only other minority head coach). The Rooney Rule, which was implemented in 2003 to guarantee that at least one minority candidate is interviewed for open head coaching positions, seems broken. Is this the product of systemic racism? Lynn agrees that’s a fair assessment. “I played in this league for eight years, and a player knows a head coach when he sees one,” says Lynn. “There were African-American coaches that could have been head coaches but just never got the opportunity.”

How do you fix this? Lynn believes reforming the head coach feeder system will help. Between 2009 and 2019, according to a recent study from Arizona State University, offensive coordinator was the most frequent former position for head coaches: 40% of NFL head coaches were hired from offensive coordinator spots (NFL defensive coordinator, and NFL head coach, were the next most frequent positions). During same period, however, 91% of offensive coordinator hires were white.

“I’ve seen so many play callers get head jobs that have no personality, no leadership whatsoever,” says Lynn, who during his 17 years as an assistant coach in the NFL never entered a season holding a coordinator position (a few weeks into the 2016 season he was named offensive coordinator in Buffalo; that year he took over as interim head coach for one game after Rex Ryan was fired). His coaching career previously saw him as mostly a running backs coach and assistant head coach. Broadening the feeder system would result in a more diverse—and talented—candidate pool. “And then you wonder why every year in the National Football League we are firing anywhere from six to eight head coaches?” says Lynn. “If we open this thing up to position coaches, assistant head coaches, then you’re going to have more African-American applicants.”

He also believes Black coaches have to win faster than their white counterparts to keep their jobs secure. “I’m not happy with the leash that African-American coaches get,” says Lynn. “I had my first losing season last year. And I come home one day and my wife is like, ‘Honey, are you okay?’ And I’m like, ‘Why wouldn’t I be? I’m fine’. And she’s like, ‘Well, do you not know half the country wants you fired?’

When he entered coaching, Lynn understood the hurdles. The memories of being told he couldn’t attend a birthday party because he’s Black, or being asked if he was a drug dealer, were never too far from his mind. Lynn’s grandfather once told him he’d always have to be better because of his skin color. He’s never forgotten those words. “It’s a shame, but I know that going into it,” says Lynn. “I know I’ve got to turn this damn thing around, soon. But at the same time, I’m going to stand up for what’s right. I’m going to speak out when I have to. I’m not going to let that scare me from doing that as a human being.”

To wit: he’s unafraid to say that Kaepernick got a raw deal. Lynn is happy with this current quarterbacks, but did express some interest in Kaepernick earlier in the summer. “I do think there’s a possibility that Kaep could come on somebody’s roster this year because you can hold roster spots for veteran players now because of injuries and because maybe of COVID,” says Lynn. “There’s still a possibility there. But Colin’s busy doing things to help make a change and he’s signing big deals, he might not have the time to come back and play NFL football. But I know over the years he should have been given an opportunity. There’s no doubt about that. We’ve had those discussions. I can say that. We’ve had those discussions.”

Jayne Kamin-Oncea–Getty ImagesHead Coach Anthony Lynn of the Los Angeles Chargers on the sidelines in the first half of the game against the Oakland Raiders at Dignity Health Sports Park on Dec. 22, 2019 in Carson, Calif.

Lynn is facing unprecedented challenges in carrying out his team’s turnaround plan. Start with his own bout with COVID-19; he was diagnosed while on a trip to Dallas, to visit his mother, in late June. “You always say, well, it’s really only killing 1%,” says Lynn. “But when you get it, start thinking about that 1%.” He’s not sure how he got infected. “I mean no one was more paranoid about this than me,” Lynn says. “You’re talking about a guy that has hand sanitizer in his front belt loop everywhere he goes. Wears gloves, masks.” Lynn’s lungs collapsed during the car accident 15 years go, which he feared would make him even more vulnerable. “And so it was some anxiety there for a little while,” says Lynn. “For me it was a really, really bad flu for about three or four days.”

In training camp, Lynn believes COVID-19 has affected team chemistry. “A big part of football is camaraderie,” he says. “When you have to social distance, it’s hard to build a team.” The first full in-person, locker room team meeting Lynn had was on Aug. 27, at SoFi Stadium, to discuss the Blake shooting. “I could just feel the people craving that community, that fellowship,” he says. “We haven’t had it. It’s going to be difficult to build tight teams and trust with new players when you don’t have that. The longer we do without it, the more of us see it. I mean, this is Zoom all year. Are you kidding me? It’s going to be different. But we knew that it was going to be a challenge and we’ve got to figure out a way to still make it work.”

The Chargers enter this season with veteran Tyrod Taylor starting at quarterback. A potential franchise QB, Justin Herbert—the sixth overall pick in this year’s draft, out of Oregon—will be the backup. (Quarterback Philip Rivers, who started every game for the Chargers the last 14 seasons, signed with Indianapolis in the offseason). Preseason games were cancelled this year; in some ways, this made Lynn’s training camp smoother. Because if Herbert shined in preseason games, screams to start him right away would have been pronounced.

In sticking with Taylor as the starter, Lynn cites John Elway and Peyton Manning, two legends who started their rookie years; each threw more interceptions than TDs (Manning threw a rookie-record 28 interceptions in 1998, tops in the NFL that year). “But those guys are two real strong-minded individuals, Hall of Famers,” he says. “Not everybody’s wired that way, man. It’s not everybody that can overcome that. So I don’t expect [Herbert] to come in and play right away. I think sitting him for a year would do nothing but benefit him.”

Does Herbert seem to have the Elway-Manning mentality, or is it too early to tell? “He is a leader in his own way,” says Lynn. “He’s more of an introvert. He quieter, but he communicates when he has to with his teammates. And people try to say that was a knock with him coming out. Said he has all the tools but wasn’t much of a leader. Introverts get labeled that way. I just know these players react well to him.”

The Chargers spent the last three seasons playing in a Carson, Calif. soccer stadium that held just 27,000 fans, by far the smallest capacity in the NFL. Now, they will move into a shiny $5 billion palace playing in front of zero fans, due to the pandemic, making the team’s effort to win the hearts and minds of Los Angeles even more difficult. “L.A. is a hard city,” says Lynn. “You have to be successful here, bro. You’ve got to win. And if you don’t, people just do other things. And there are other sports franchises here that people are attached to. So it’s no doubt a hard market. But people respect that hard work, young men of high character that are helping their communities and doing things that we’re doing. It’s just a matter of time before we have a strong fan base here. But we knew when we moved here it wasn’t going to happen overnight. Just like social justice. It isn’t going to happen overnight.”

More than ever, social justice will be a major theme of the NFL season. An Alicia Keys rendition of “Lift Every Voice And Sing,” a song known as the Black National Anthem, was played before Thursday night’s season-opening Kansas City Chiefs-Houston Texans game. At least some players are likely to kneel during the National Anthem or utilize some other form of protest when the NFL kicks off this weekend. Lynn recalls the reaction of his players after Blake’s shooting. “I’ve been dealing with this s—t since since I was nine years old,” says Lynn. “I was more sad that day for how they felt. We’ve got to move beyond it. We’re certainly not going to forget about it. But I wish I could do something to make them feel better in moments like that.”

Still, the Chargers coach remains confident that his recent powerful wave of sports activism will bring change, both inside and outside the NFL. “I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never seen so many people from all different backgrounds and colors come together and want change,” says Lynn. “So man, I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful.”

Tom Seaver and the Miracle Mets Reminded America That Anything Can Happen in Sports

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 05:35:37 GMT

Sports fans learn a basic lesson at an early age; almost anything can happen on the field. After all, the 1969 New York Mets—the Miracle Mets—won the World Series.

Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver—whose death at age 75 following complications from Lewy body dementia and COVID-19 was announced Wednesday—was the unquestioned star of that much-remembered team; Seaver was nicknamed “The Franchise.” He won the first of his three Cy Young Awards the Mets in 1969; the Mets were 10 games behind the Chicago Cubs on Aug. 14, but went 38-11 the rest of the way. After Aug. 5, Seaver did not lose a game for the rest of the season.

The Mets, an expansion franchise awarded to New York City after its two National League teams, the Dodgers and the Giants, switched coasts, were a joke before Seaver arrived in 1967 and won Rookie Of The Year honors. “Can’t anybody here play this game?” manager Casey Stengel uttered while managing the inaugural ’62 squad, which finished 40-120. The Mets never had a winning record before 1969; thanks to “Tom Terrific,” they were honored with a ticker tape parade that October. For a generation of Americans, Seaver and the ’69 Mets showcased what’s possible in sports.

Supremely confident and unafraid to speak his mind, Seaver knew he had sway. Seaver, who grew up in Fresno, Calif., and attended the University of Southern California, said before the Mets faced the Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series that if the Mets won, he was going to buy an ad in a newspaper saying “if the Mets can win the World Series, then we can get out of Vietnam.”

“I think it’s perfectly ridiculous what we’re doing about the Vietnam situation,” Seaver said. “It’s absurd.”

On the mound, Seaver studied his mechanics and the habits of his opponents with a scientist’s eye. He famously dragged his right knee on the mound when unleashing a fastball. “As Seaver fans are well aware,” wrote Sports Illustrated, “when he gets a dirt smudge on the right knee of his pants, it means he’s sharp.” In 1970 against the San Diego Padres, he struck out 10 straight batters in a game; no pitcher has done so since. The Mets reached another improbable World Series in 1973—the team finished the regular season with just an 82-79 record, but still won its division, but lost to the Oakland A’s in Game 7. Seaver collected another Cy Young that season, and a third in 1975.

But, after a feud with Mets management and New York sports columnist Dick Young, who wrote that Seaver’s wife was jealous of Nolan Ryan’s wife since Ryan was making more money, Seaver demanded a trade. In today’s struggling sports media environment, the notion of a local journalist running a star out of town seems absurd. In 1977, Seaver was dealt to the Cincinnati Reds; two other Mets players were also moved to other teams. Seaver gave a tearful press conference: it was dubbed the Midnight Massacre.

Without Seaver, the Mets entered a late-70s/early-80s malaise. He returned to the team in 1983, and made a memorable opening day start at Shea Stadium. After finishing his pre-game warmups, Seaver walked from the bullpen to the dugout as a packed house roared, welcoming him home. The Mets won that day, but finished last again; they failed to protect Seaver that off-season in a free-agent compensation pool, thinking no team would take the 39-year-old. The Chicago White Sox selected him—shocking and saddening both Seaver and the Mets. In 1985, Seaver won his 300th game in a White Sox uniform—at Yankee Stadium, no less. It was a cruel twist for Mets fans convinced Seaver should have accomplished this milestone in Queens, with their team. Losing Seaver, however, opened opportunities for New York’s promising young pitchers of that era. In 1986, the Mets won the World Series. They haven’t won the title since.

Baseball historian Bill James, godfather baseball analytics. defined the 1970s as the “Tom Seaver Era” in a 2019 article about pitchers of that time. Seaver was just that good. He’s sixth on the all-time strikeout list, finishing with 3,640 strikeouts over his 20 seasons. He K’d more than 200 hitters for nine straight seasons, from 1968 through 1976, his last full season with the Mets before the Midnight Massacre. In 1992, Seaver was named on 98.8% of Hall of Fame ballots, a record percentage at the time.

After engineering an early sports miracle, and establishing consistent excellence over a decade, Seaver will long be remembered. “He is the greatest Met of all-time,” former Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez tweeted Wednesday. “No one will ever surpass him who wears the orange and blue.”

Why Activist Royce White Thinks NBA Players Should Get Out of the Bubble and Onto the Streets

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 20:12:17 GMT

Former NBA player and Minneapolis native Royce White has emerged as an influential activist following the death of George Floyd. In late May, the 29-year-old led a peaceful protest that swelled into the thousands down Interstate 35. He now plans to walk from 38th St. and Chicago Ave.—the site of Floyd’s death—to the White House starting on September 11, crossing battleground states like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania while advocating for economic investment in the Black community.

White, who’s also pursuing a career as a pro MMA fighter, spoke to TIME from Minneapolis about how he’s confronting his anxiety to lead marches through the streets (he was open about his mental health struggles upon entering the NBA), his criticisms of the current wave of athlete activism, and the idea of defunding the police.

(This interview has been edited and condensed)

Starting out September 11th, you’re walking to the White House. Could you explain for our readers why you are walking and what you hope to accomplish along the way?

It’s the right evolution of my role in this whole civil rights movement, as somebody who can do it, who’s able-bodied to do it, who’s young enough to do it, who has the time to do it. I do speaking engagements for a living. I played with the Big 3, which only happens 10 weeks out of the year. And I’m transitioning into mixed martial arts, which only happens four times a year at most, if you’re a pro-fighter.

When you have that type of professional life, then you make your own schedule. That’s one of the blessings of my life. I think that when we go on this walk, we will be able to touch millions and millions of people. I think we’re going to be able to have a lot of great conversations, and ultimately the President of the United States will grant me the audience because of the nature of the physical gesture of walking 1,100 miles. And if he doesn’t, then he’s saying something about himself ahead of this election.

We’re walking across the battleground states. Regardless of where you fall, it’s humanity versus time. That’s for all of us. It doesn’t matter what your beliefs are. It’s us versus time. Every last one of us. Humanity versus time, man. Humanity versus time.

What was your reaction to seeing Jacob Blake’s shooting?

The state has a monopoly on violence. That’s clear. That type of situation, where you’re shot in the back, and when you’re a Black man, the historical context of America makes it an especially egregious act.

We’ve had a national reckoning after George Floyd and other recent incidents. Still, after so much conversation and activism, when you see something like what happened to Jacob Blake, what does it say about where we are as a country right now?

It proves that these awareness campaigns are just not fruitful. And we become a society where we think, because of the nature of being connected online, that awareness means everything.

And it’s just true. Action means everything.

Can you speak a little bit about what you’ve done to take action?

People need to be on the front lines. Everything else is for naught, you know? People who are on the other side of the line will not be moved by us putting sayings and phrases and names on the backs of our jerseys. People who are on the fence aren’t going to be moved by it either. It’s just such a cheap form of action that people aren’t moved by it. That’s clear.

In Minneapolis, we took a plunge into the real form of activism. The real form of action. We really started to renegotiate the social contract between the state and the people. We’re going to continue to try and do that.

But even here at home I think that the energy has died down. So there’s a lot to be hashed out. I think we’re in a bad spot in this country, and it’s leaning toward the worst.

One of the things you did was lead a march from U.S. Bank Stadium (home of the Minnesota Vikings) shortly after George Floyd’s death. What spawned you to hit the streets in such a dramatic way?

Well, at that time, in response to George Floyd, we had a narrative that the protests in Minneapolis, the people of Minneapolis, were being barbarians and hooligans. And just anarchists in their revolt against the establishment here. I was out there the day where the [initial] protests escalated from peaceful protests to eventually the first flames being seen; I saw the escalation of violence on the part of the police. I’ve never actually been to a protest on the front line like that and seen—I’ve seen video of it, but there’s something different about it when you’re there in person and you see the police just indiscriminately lob tear gas, flash bangs, shoot people with rubber bullets, et cetera, et cetera.

And so, part of [the protest I led] was to show the people that we could come together in like-spirit and like-mind, and take dominion where we want. And we proved that. You know, you get 10,000 people together, the state’s monopoly on violence shifts pretty quickly. They’ve got to become overtly violent in order to dominate 10,000 people. And people need to understand that that’s the true battleground right there. That’s the true nature of where this fight has to go. The free people of this country and all around the world have to rise up in great numbers against the state, just to make it even. Not to overthrow. Our point was not to overthrow the government, our point was to say, ‘Look, you have not earned the right to have authority over where we go, what we say, what we do. And that’s why we’re going to be where we want, when we want, and how we want.’

Was there any violence at the protests you led?

There was a tanker that came onto I-35. Nobody was injured, but that was depressing. He claimed that it was an accident, that he just couldn’t slow his truck down in time. We were informed that the highway had been closed down. So we were pretty shocked that he was able to get through that far to the protest.

But ultimately, aside from that, we haven’t had one fight, one arrest, one fire, or anything of the sort, at any of our protests, which is another important point to note. Because the premise of policing in our country, and its over-militarization, would have you assume that any time you gather a large number, you have to have a police presence or else somebody’s going to get killed. Well, we’ve now done eight or nine protests and there was no police presence at all, and nobody’s gotten hurt. Nobody’s gotten into a fight. Nothing bad has really happened. So, I think what it does is it puts the onus back on the state to try and provide proof of why it is that we need to be over-policed the way that we are—why the police training and the way that they operate and their methods are so aggressive and just assume the violent intent of the people.

You can see that in the Blake situation. There’s a sense of urgency on behalf of the police that assumes the worst about the situations that they engage in. I mean, there’s this frantic urgency, and you know, it’s the way that they’re trained, too. And I’ve had former cops tell me that: “It’s the way that we’re trained is you’ve got to make it home.”

A lot of these cops are suffering from mental health issues. That’s no secret. And they’re going day-to-day with no rest, burning the candle on both ends, and they’re walking into situations and sometimes making them worse. I mean, that idea shouldn’t be seen as abstract or a reach. It just is.

Do you support defunding the police?

I don’t think the police need to be defunded. I think we just need to take back control of our sovereignty. Is this ‘defund the police because they don’t deserve to be funded by our tax dollars?’ Well, I understand that. Are we saying we should live in a society where there are no police? I wouldn’t agree with that. I don’t think that that makes sense. I think that the community should start to wrestle with the idea of what it means to police themselves, and what it means to have a bigger hand in the institution of policing. There should be a Community Watch on the police in every single jurisdiction. The question becomes, at the point of conflict, who still owns the monopoly on the violence? I would say that, no, we don’t need to defund the police. We need to modify the monopoly on violence.

How do you do that?

To assume that the state as a formal institution or as a formal entity inherently carries any more competence than the civilian on the street is patently insane. And that’s what we’re seeing: that in real-time, these individual officers and the badge that they carry do not carry the competence of decision-making that separates them from any regular American citizen. So why should the monopoly on violence lean in their direction? There’s a paternalism to it, right? It carries a special type of disgust for Black America because we have a lived experience where we know the dark side of the state. So we really can’t reconcile like, ‘Oh, this guy has a badge. Well, he’s probably just inherently competent.’

Athletes like LeBron James have received a lot credit for their activism. Do you think they’re doing enough?

There should be people outside of the bubble protesting. Why are you all back playing basketball in the middle of a pandemic? And on top of it, we have a radical situation with Black men, and these Black men are going to go back and play basketball? Just to square the bottom line? Are we going to say that, what, basketball brings people together? Not enough for George Floyd not to be murdered.

It’s not a sacrifice to put these things on the back of your jersey when the NBA laid it out ahead of time to say we’re going to allow people to put it on the backs of their jerseys. That’s not a thing. In my letter to Kyrie Irving, I said what they should ask for is that the owners contribute $15 million from each organization to put a Black Bank in their city. That would have been change. That would have been restructuring Black America’s economic fabric in an instant.

So somebody like LeBron, for example, if he wanted to speak to the importance of self-sacrifice, the thing for him to put on the back of his jersey would have been Free the Uighurs. That would have been profound. That would have brought an immediate shape of self-sacrifice to him in this moment. Somehow, we’ve gone backwards. And what makes this so bad in sports is that we associate ourselves with the self-sacrifice and discipline to push our bodies and push our being to the limit…but we don’t bring that same approach to our activism. Because if you were bringing that same approach to your activism, you wouldn’t begin post-game interviews muttering through why the Blake case is such a problem. You’d be out there. You can’t miss a game in the bubble to go and protest? What are we talking about? Muhammad Ali would not have sat idly by and fought while there were a million Muslims in concentration camps. It wouldn’t have happened.

What we’re asking you to do is to uphold the same value structure across the board, and especially in the places where you stand to gain the most. You’ve been silent there. And so we can’t overlook that. We can’t overlook all these other media institutions that have propped him up as the leader of this pro-Black movement.

What did you think of the NBA players striking in protest of the Jacob Blake shooting last week?

I think what Giannis [Milwaukee Bucks player Giannis Antetokounmpo] and the Bucks did, it sent the message that if players actually do sit out, that the institution comes to halt. But the other players would have had to fall into the fold, and they didn’t do that. They didn’t show up. CP3 [Chris Paul, President of the NBA Players Association], he didn’t show up. LeBron James, he didn’t show up. Hell, Barack Obama didn’t show up in that moment. The entire NBA playoffs should have been done.

What does it say that George Floyd has been killed, they decided to go back and play in the bubble in the first place after one of the most disgusting police murders that we’ve seen to date? OK, we go back to the bubble, we put the name on our jerseys, Jacob Blake gets shot in the back, now we’re going to say, ‘OK, let’s sit a game.’ But we all didn’t say let’s sit a game, just the Bucks did it. Then everybody went back to play days later. Now the bad part is, you’re having the conversation about what did it really do? Let’s just say another George Floyd happens tomorrow. Are they going to sit out then? What would be enough for them to sit out the season? And if that is not enough for them to sit out, then they’re not fit to lead this movement.

This whole notion that you lose the biggest platform that you have if you don’t got back and play, actually fortifies what Laura Ingraham said about shut up and dribble. LeBron and Obama are actually saying that if we don’t go and play, we have no voice. We can’t actualize any change. We can’t be as effective. It’s a racket on two fronts. Number one, if you believe you need the system that oppresses you to actually create change, then you’ve already lost. Number two is, why in the world would they actually believe that if LeBron James doesn’t go play, that TIME magazine wouldn’t come follow him back to Akron, Ohio? He might get more press coverage than he’s ever gotten if they decided to leave the bubble.

You’ve been open with your experiences with anxiety during your basketball career. Kevin Love, who has come out and shared his own experiences, tweeted his thanks to you. How have you been able to manage mental health while taking on responsibility as an activist?

Self-sacrifice, right? It’s not easy. You’ve got 20,000 people and you feel responsible for them. And not in a paternalistic way, just in a leader-way. Like, if I hadn’t organized this, we wouldn’t be out here in this number and in these places. So, if something ultimately does go wrong, it doesn’t all fall on you. But there is a level of responsibility that you have in that. So, it is an anxious situation to be a leader. But at the end of the day, it absolutely has to be done. And facing my own anxiety is actually where the chain has moved.

What do you mean by that?

Well, I mean me actually saying to myself and having the internal conversation to go, ‘This is going to make me super-anxious. This is against everything that I would come up with for a wellness plan.’ It wouldn’t be in my wellness plan to march 20,000 people through downtown, with the security detail, with long guns. Open carrying. That wouldn’t be a part of my plan to just live a sound, safe, productive, anxiety-free life.

But it has to be done because we are where we are. And all respect to Kevin Love. I am all for people sharing their stories. I thought it was such an egregious thing for him to win the Arthur Ashe Award for mental health.

Why?

Well, number one because Arthur Ashe was a Black man. Number one. And not that you can’t be a white person to win an award named after a Black man. But there are actually Black men—myself—that actually put my career on the line to talk about mental health. And didn’t get a red carpet rolled out and have America’s media, say, ‘Wow, this is so courageous what this guy is doing.’ What was the difference between what I said and what Kevin Love said? The only difference is that I said it at the beginning of my career. He said it 10 years into his.

And on top of that, the difference was I challenged the status quo. I challenged policy. He didn’t challenge policy. And it’s not by accident that the American media would prop up a figure who wouldn’t challenge the fundamental structure of society. That wasn’t a light switch that he turned on. It was a light switch that the media helped shape like he was turning on. They helped shape it, like he was turning it on, and that’s patently dishonest. We can’t have true change when we have that type of dishonesty.

And if you go back and you look at the collective bargaining agreement, they still don’t have a real concrete mental health policy.

Where does the NBA fall short?

Where they fall short is, you can’t tell a body of players to use the mental health services you’re now mandating teams have, when they are culturally aware of players in their recent history that were blackballed for talking openly about their mental health. And then tell them at the same time that you can’t promise them that mental health won’t be used against them in their free agency. Adam Silver said that. What he should have said is, ‘I can’t decide for these owners what they do with the information regarding your mental health. But I can say as a leader of this institution, if they mishandle that information or if they weaponize that information against you, in an economic way, I will bring down the full wrath of the NBA office on that organization. And on that individual.’

Kevin Love proved that you could actually play at a high all-star level from a productivity standpoint with anxiety. What I would have done is gone, ‘OK, wait a minute. What’s been the narrative so far? OK, that people with anxiety or mental health problems in our league are unreliable and we associate them with character issues of all sorts? And that they can’t be trusted to be there or show up? OK. Well, I’ve been showing up and I have anxiety, so does that change the cultural thinking?’

Then people are starting to come out ad nauseam talking about their mental health struggles, and most of whom were high-caliber, productive players. And not once has the NBA come out and said, ‘You know what? Internally, our cultural thinking that mental health issues make you a liability in performance was off.’

How John Thompson’s Proudly Black Georgetown Teams Changed College Basketball – and America

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 08:01:21 GMT

John Thompson Jr. won a single NCAA basketball title. He never appeared in another Final Four after his Georgetown teams reached three national title games in four seasons from 1982 through 1985. And he hadn’t coached a team in more than two decades, since stepping away from Georgetown in 1999.

But that, ultimately, never mattered. His power never waned. Thompson, who was the first Black coach to win an NCAA basketball title, died Sunday at age 78. Other coaches have hung more banners. But no coach of his generation, in any sport, was more influential than the 6-foot-10 man who roamed the sidelines of the Big East conference with a white towel draped over his shoulder in the 1980s and 90s. His rise signaled the emergence of college basketball as a multi-billion dollar enterprise—and helped to usher in a new Black influence on American culture that was as unmistakable as it was irreversible.

Thompson’s all-Black teams, who came to prominence in President Ronald Reagan’s 1980s America, relished playing an uncompromising full-contact style that made many college basketball fans, in particular white ones, uncomfortable. While hip-hop ascended in the entertainment sphere, Georgetown made its statement in the sports world: Thompson touted how Georgetown sold more hats, jackets and other merchandise than any other program. And when racial resentment came his way, he didn’t play nice. Thompson fought it head-on.

He spotted systemic racism far before the term became part of the vernacular, walking off the court right before a game in 1989, in protest of NCAA eligibility regulations he felt were inherently stacked against the young Black athletes that college basketball, as an institution, was purporting to uplift. His passing is even more acute, and instructive, in this moment. He took social stances at a time when few sports figures sought to do so.

Today’s athletes walking off the courts and fields of play, in protest of the shooting of Jacob Blake and other instances of police violence, are carrying on his legacy. John Thompson helped pave the way. “In the world of college basketball, Coach Thompson is certainly in a class by himself,” says Todd Boyd, professor of race and culture at the University of Southern California and author of Young, Rich, Black and Famous: The Rise Of The NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture. “He didn’t win as any titles as John Wooden and Coach K. But what he meant to the sport of college basketball is in many ways far more important than championships.”

Not that Thompson’s impact on the game itself wasn’t profound. In his nearly 27 seasons as Georgetown coach, Thompson compiled a 596-239 record, winning the 1984 national championship over Houston, and reaching the national title games in 1982 and 1985; for 19 straight seasons, from 1978 through 1996, his teams reached at least No. 16 in the AP national polls; 10 times Georgetown broke the top five.

Teams like the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), which won the 1990 NCAA championship; Michigan’s Fab 5, who reached two straight title games in 1992 and 1993—and introduced baggy shorts to gyms across the U.S.; and Arkansas, whose pressing “40 Minutes of Hell” style catapulted the Razorbacks to a national title in 1994 and runner-up the following year, borrowed Georgetown’s DNA. These teams all defined an era of college basketball, and the allure of March Madness, for a generation of fans. “We had a very nasty disposition,” former Georgetown center Alonzo Mourning told TIME in a 2014 interview. “We played hard-nosed, rough, very defensive-minded, in-your-face basketball. But a lot of teams kind of stole that persona to help them win. UNLV. Arkansas. ‘Wow, it worked for them, maybe it’ll work for us too.’”

Mitchell Layton–Getty ImagesAllen Iverson is pictured with John Thompson, head coach of the Georgetown Hoyas, during a basketball game on Jan. 10, 1995 in Landover, Maryland.

Thompson can also be credited with helping to build ESPN into the behemoth it is today. In the early 1980s, college basketball games, particularly Big East rivalry matchups like Georgetown-Syracuse, were the crown jewel of the upstart network’s programming: the Hoyas were always a draw. Future NBA Hall of Fame players, like Mourning, Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo and Allen Iverson, were mentored by Thompson. On social media Monday, both Mourning and Iverson said Thompson “saved my life.” Thompson particularly molded Iverson; during his senior year of high school, Iverson was convicted for his role in a bowling alley brawl. For many programs, he became untouchable. Thompson took a chance on Iverson: his convictions were overturned, Iverson was a first-team All-American at Georgetown, and went No. 1 in the loaded 1996 NBA draft.

Thanks For Saving My Life Coach. I’m going to miss you, but I’m sure that you are looking down on us with a big smile. I would give anything just for one more phone call from you only to hear you say, “Hey MF”, then we would talk about everything except basketball……. pic.twitter.com/03yj4gZv5q

— Allen Iverson (@alleniverson) August 31, 2020

The world has lost a revolutionary icon and a leader.⁣
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Today, I have lost a father figure, life long coach, and one of my greatest mentors. Coach Thompson, saved my life…. continuously motivating and molding me into the man that I am today. ⁣
⁣ pic.twitter.com/jM7vqYOPLX

— Alonzo Mourning (@iamzo33) August 31, 2020

Mutombo calls Thompson a father figure. Thompson made Mutombo, who didn’t start playing basketball until his late teens, do sprints with the point guards so he could learn how to outrun lumbering big men. “From the day I walked in, he says, ‘Son, I don’t care how many points you score,'” Mutombo told TIME in an interview Monday night. “‘As long as you go out there and block as many shots as you can, and get as many rebounds as you can, I can make you a millionaire.’ And I think he didn’t lie to me.” (When Mutombo’s foundation built a $30 million hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the four-time NBA defensive player of the year who played 18 seasons in the NBA says he personally contributed more than $24 million to the effort.)

“All of that comes from the work ethic I learned from John Thompson,” Mutombo says. “Five to six hours a day in the gym. Don’t be a quitter. He made me into the famous Dikembe Mutombo I am today.”

And Thompson, according to Mutombo, was fond of reminding of his former center of this, in nearly every conversation they had. “You were his son,” says Mutombo. “Never a stranger.” Mutombo says he wasn’t able to sleep Sunday night or do much on Monday; when he joined a Zoom meeting Monday, he grabbed a sport coat he last wore while visiting Thompson for a Georgetown game in March—before the pandemic shut-down. He found a pass to the Georgetown locker room hanging on the jacket. “Oh, Big John,” Mutombo says. “Big John. Big John.”

Mitchell Layton–Getty ImagesJohn Thompson, head coach of the Georgetown Hoyas, and Dikembe Mutombo during a game on Dec. 15, 1991 at Capitol Centre in Landover, Maryland.

Thompson’s influence extended far beyond the court. In the 1980s, “there was a new generation of Blackness that was circulating through the culture,” says Boyd, who walked around campus with a towel over his shoulder to emulate Thompson as a student at the University of Florida during this time. “To own a Georgetown Starter jacket was a huge status symbol. You got all kind of props in the streets. It was a real strong statement of Blackness. Georgetown is the first hip-hop team. It’s that moment when sports and popular culture are coming together, in a way that we kind of take for granted now.”

Thompson had played as a backup to Bill Russell with the Boston Celtics in the 1960s and witnessed his legendary teammate advocate against the overt racism of that era. During the conservative Reagan-era, there were few outspoken Black college basketball coaches at the highest level. “Here’s a coach who is unapologetically Black,” says Boyd. “He’s not raising the octaves in his voice when he speaks. He’s not scratching when he doesn’t itch. He’s not laughing when things aren’t funny.”

Georgetown’s style, says Boyd, was “so Black … They played basketball the way it was played in the streets. No easy layups. Hard fouls. There was a swagger to them. It was more than the fundamentals of basketball. It was, ‘We are going to get in your head, and make you uncomfortable to the point where you’re going to question how bad you really want this.'” Boyd doesn’t remember hearing the word “thug” gaining notable usage until it was applied to Georgetown basketball in the 1980s. Thompson, however, used such loaded language to his advantage. “If you’re going to call us ‘thugs’ and ‘brutes’ and ‘animals,’ OK, we’ll embrace that,” says Boyd. “And we’ll use it against you. So you have a reason to be afraid. This was a sentiment that was very popular at that time. And I think that Georgetown informed a great deal of that sentiment.”

According to Boyd, rappers of the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, took some cues from Thompson and Georgetown. Thompson, meanwhile, sought to turn stereotypes inside out. “This idea that we’re not going to bend over backwards to prove to you we’re not what you say we are,” says Boyd. “Instead we’re going to embrace that, and now you figure out what you’re going to do.”

“Pops didn’t go out of his way to try to say, ‘We aren’t hoodlums, we aren’t thugs,'” Ronnie Thompson, who played for his father from 1988-1992, told TIME in a 2014 interview. (His other son, John Thompson III coached Georgetown from 2004 to 2017 and reached the 2007 Final Four). “We just did what we did. He would always say, ‘You don’t have to spend a lifetime explaining to people who you are, because they’re going to have their own opinions.’ We would laugh, because we’d hear what we were supposed to be, and we’d go to the Big East banquet and see other teams that just looked horrible, teams that would show up in sweatsuits and T-shirts, and we’d be in coats and ties, and we’re supposed to be the ones with no class.”

During Thompson’s tenure, 97% of Georgetown players who stayed for years earned their degrees. “I couldn’t have given a damn,” John Thompson once told TIME, “what people thought about Georgetown basketball.”

Mark Tillmon, a starting guard for the Hoyas during most of his four years, remembered Thompson conducting “mental practices” with his team; he’d sit down with his players and ask them about issue facing the world. He once asked the team what the thought about the controversy embroiling Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, the NFL studio analyst for CBS who was fired in 1988 after making racist statements about the superiority of Black athletes. “Everyone answered, and I pretty much said nothing,” Tillmon said. “Boy, did he light into me. ‘All you want to do is read your own press clippings. You need to have an opinion about something, whether it’s right or wrong.’ From that day on, I’ve had an opinion about everything.”

A former Hoya basketball manager (now actor and writer) Markhum Stansbury Jr., wasn’t considering attending Georgetown until he saw how Thompson handled a 1985 incident at Syracuse, when a fan threw an orange towards Patrick Ewing while he was at the free throw line: Thompson took his team off the court. Thompson was a fierce protector of Ewing, the current Georgetown coach, who endured disgusting racist taunting during his playing career. In Philadelphia in 1983, a Villanova fan threw a banana peel on the court when Ewing ran out for pregame introductions. Thompson also took his team off the court after a Providence fan held up a “Ewing Can’t Read” sign that same year. “Sooner or later, I’m going to tell my players to go up and get the sign and then see what happens,” Thompson said.

Georgetown University/Collegiate Images/Getty ImagesPatrick Ewing and John Thompson, head coach of the Georgetown University Hoyas, pose for a photo during a game at McDonough Arena in Washington, D.C.

“It would have been very easy for him to just try and get along,” says Stansbury now. “He stood up for Patrick in that way, when he could have very easily said, ‘Hey, you know, this is what we’ve got to do.’ He used to talk about Jackie Robinson, and how Jackie Robinson wasn’t necessarily the best Black baseball player at the time, but he had the right temperament. Branch Rickey said, ‘Hey, you’re going to have to go through X, Y and Z. There were other guys who were better baseball player, but they weren’t going to take that s—t.’ And when he was at Georgetown, he’d say ‘We’re past Jackie Robinson. We’re not going to take that s—t.'”

Thompson was also tough on his players. “He wasn’t shy about using his profanity,” says former Hoya Jaren Jackson, who played a dozen seasons in the NBA from 1989 through 2002 and won an NBA title with the 1999 San Antonio Spurs. He recalls Thompson screaming and cursing him out, on national television, for letting out a smile late in a victory by Villanova, even though Jackson had played great, and the game was all but over.

“Anybody you talk to will tell you that for the first year, maybe even two, that they thought that their name was ‘motherf—r,'” says Stansbury.

Mutombo lets out his familiar loud, gravelly guffaw when asked if he agreed with this observation. He heard such language loud and clear when he missed a couple of classes one day. Mutombo says he had tooth pain, and forgot to call the basketball office to report he’d have to miss class. When he arrived for practice, Thompson cursed him out, and told him that there was a cab waiting outside to take him to the airport back home to the Congo. “I thought ‘What the heck, is this man serious?'” says Mutombo. “Or is he playing?” Mutombo cried by his locker when he found a one-way plane ticket home. He went to Thompson’s office and begged, through tears, that Thompson not send him home. Thompson finally said he’d forgive him, before instructing to “Get the f—k out'” of his office. “I never missed class no more,” Mutombo says.

At the same time, Thompson had a light and caring side. He had an ongoing joke with his players, taking credit for their love interests. “You’re a college kid, and you have the interest of girls on the campus or whatever, he felt like the reason [you] got that interest was not because of you, but because of him,” says Jackson. “I’m like, ‘This big dude, he’s talking some stuff; I’m like come on, coach.'”

Thompson put his arm around Fred Brown after the 1982 championship game, when Brown threw a pass right into the hands of North Carolina’s James Worthy in the final seconds, costing Georgetown a shot at the championship. Mutombo insists he was most concerned with his players’ lives after basketball. “For him, it was like what would you do when the ball stops bouncing?” says Mutombo. “Are you secure? Do you have your degree so you can go somewhere and get a job? That was more important to him than anything else. What kind of man are you going to become in society? What kind of contribution will you make?”

After George Floyd died, the Georgetown basketball alumni released a collective statement, demanding, among other things, “increased voter protection, an end to voter suppression and an end to gerrymandering.” Jackson thought of Thompson. “He would be so proud in a moment like this, his players speaking up in this manner,” Jackson says.

It’s not just the Georgetown players inspired by Thompson’s example. On TNT Monday night, former NBA players Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, plus studio host Ernie Smith, wore towels over their shoulders as a Thompson tribute. The dramatic actions across sports in the last week—strikes, walkoffs before games, demonstrations on behalf of Jacob Blake—carry Thompson’s imprint.

“Using his platform, using his visibility, coach Thompson famously walked off the court to make a point,” says Boyd, the USC professor. “So he understood that the cameras were on him, people were paying attention. What we saw last week with the NBA, which has been building for several years, is this recognition of the platform that playing professional sports provides someone with. This generation of Black athletes, and others who have decided to follow them, recognize that they’re visible. They have decided to take a stand. Coach Thompson is part of the lineage that brings us to where we are today.”

Tour de France Begins With Strict Anti-COVID-19 Measures

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 19:19:22 GMT

(NICE, France) — Delayed but alive again and out on French roads, the strangest Tour de France ever set off Saturday in a bubble of anti-COVID protocols to try to keep the 176 riders virus-free for three weeks of racing through the country’s worsening epidemic.

Only after riders peeled off their face masks and raced off from the start in the Mediterranean city of Nice, serenaded by a uniformed band playing “La Marseillaise,” did the Tour begin to look like its old, pre-COVID self, immediately delivering thrills and spills as storms made the roads as slippy as ice.

But with fans kept firmly at arm’s length, told by the government that it was best to stay home and watch the racing on television, the Tour lost much of its festive atmosphere. There was very little of the usual up-close communing between athletes and their adoring public that made the venerable 117-year-old rolling roadshow so unique among sports events in more carefree times.

Powering past thin crowds on the finishing straight in Nice that would usually have been crammed with spectators rows deep, Norwegian rider Alexander Kristoff won the first stage with a fearsome final sprint. He celebrated by giving a COVID-sensible fist-bump to a teammate.

Winning Stage 1 earned Kristoff the first yellow jersey of the 2020 Tour, which he will wear as the race leader on Sunday’s Stage 2 that loops into the mountains behind Nice. Usually, a race official or a VIP would have helped him slip into the iconic jersey, one of the most coveted and recognizable in sports. But not this year, with social distancing the priority.

Kristoff stood alone on the winner’s podium, flanked by a host and a hostess a safe distance away. He then disappeared backstage to wriggle into the jersey himself, before coming back out to pose for photos. Still, the thrill of wearing the jersey for first time in his eight Tours more than outweighed the weirdness.

“An amazing feeling,” he told reporters at the finish. “It means a lot for my career and a stage win shows I can still be up there even at 33 years old and with four kids.”

With infections rising steadily across France, the Tour has no guarantees of reaching the finish in Paris on Sept. 20. Riders will have daily health checks and coronavirus tests during the race, and can be tossed out if they fail them. Entire teams could be sent home if two or more riders or staff test positive for COVID-19 within a week. Fans have been told not to approach riders for selfies or autographs and to always wear masks.

Jean-Michel Blanquer, the French minister in charge of sports, was upbeat at the start Saturday, saying the Tour only has a “very slim” chance of being canceled before Paris but also cautioning that “everything is possible.”

“That type of thing could happen but of course I hope that it won’t and I think that it won’t because the Tour organizers have done an extraordinary job,” he said.

Fans who have waited for Tour action to resume, after the race was pushed back from July, were rewarded with high drama on the 156-kilometer (97-mile) first stage that did three loops around Nice and hilly backcountry to the city’s north. Rain storms turned the tarmac so slick that riders eventually made a pact between themselves out on the road to dial back the pace after multiple crashes.

Among the most dramatic was Colombian rider Miguel Angel Lopez skidding headfirst into a road sign. He labored on to the finish. Another crash took out a heap of riders in the dash to the line on Nice’s splendid seafront.

“People were crashing almost on every corner,” said Kristoff. “It was really slippy out there.”

The Milwaukee Bucks Led the Way as Athletes Took a Stand Over Jacob Blake. ...

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 20:31:02 GMT

When the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court for their scheduled playoff game against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday night, in protest of the police shooting of a Black man named Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., they were not alone. On Wednesday and Thursday, not only were NBA playoffs and WNBA games delayed, but athletes from Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer also refused to take to the field; football practices were nixed and hockey games postponed. And the Bucks’ decision to strike was also part of a longer history of intersecting race and labor struggles in the NBA. In fact, decades ago, another Milwaukee Buck, legendary guard Oscar Robertson, played a key role in establishing the political power of basketball players—and without his earlier actions, the current team would likely have been unable to make this week’s powerful statement.

Back in the 1970s, Robertson became the face of a major antitrust lawsuit against the league. After years of legal wrangling, the NBA finally chose to settle out of court in February 1976. Previously, when an NBA team drafted a player, they acquired the exclusive right to sign him, and then, thanks to the reserve clause, the player remained effectively bound to that team until it decided to trade or release him. The settlement virtually swept away pro basketball’s reserve clause, setting the stage for unrestricted free agency. Although there were 13 other named plaintiffs, both Black and white, as National Basketball Players Association president, Robertson’s name appeared first and became identified with the suit. The fact that the suit had a Black face attached to it was significant. Alongside other suits attacking the reserve clause such as Curt Flood v. Bowie Kuhn, et al. and Bob Mackey et al. v. NFL, Oscar Robertson et al. v. NBA came to represent the shifting racial and labor politics of professional basketball, and pro sport more generally, in the ’70s.

The story began a few years earlier, in 1967, when the establishment of the rival American Basketball Association (ABA) opened up an opportunity for the growing number of Black professional ballplayers to sidestep the NBA’s draft and reserve systems, which had, for years, kept the players underpaid and under the thumb of the team owners. The talent war between the leagues also helped to lift the informal racial quotas that had heretofore limited the number of African Americans on NBA teams. Black players took advantage of the situation to demand contracts that were both more lucrative and more secure. However, instead of being seen as shrewd businessmen, Black players who exerted their power were criticized for being greedy, disloyal and ungrateful—a narrative that continues to plague the likes of LeBron James and others who choose to exercise their right to move.

Reports of a merger agreement between the NBA and ABA spurred the players to lodge their lawsuit in April 1970. The Robertson suit charged the NBA with “conspiring to restrain competition for the services and skills of professional basketball players” through the college draft, the reserve clause and other informal practices of boycotting and blacklisting. The players’ suit also argued that the NBA and ABA sought “to effectuate a non-competition agreement, merger or consolidation.” In taking away the option of a second league, while upholding the existing draft and reserve systems, a merger would not only “impair [players’] competitive bargaining powers,” but also “bind the players involuntarily to one team for their entire pro basketball career.” In May 1970, a New York District Court granted the NBA players’ request for an injunction against the merger until the players’ grievances were addressed. After the suit was settled in February 1976, the two leagues finally merged that June.

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At the time, the league’s players, a growing percentage of whom were Black, saw the struggle against the reserve clause as more than just a labor struggle. It was a racial struggle that could radically reshape the balance of power between the white team owners and the majority-Black players. They would no longer have to just shut up and play, with little say in the trajectory of their careers or their working conditions.

In the 1970s, some Black activists questioned whether basketball was a distraction from the Black freedom struggle. They argued that Black players who spent their time entertaining white folks only hindered the movement. They criticized the players for not being political enough. Yet, as the players pointed out, many saw their situation as emblematic of the need for change. In a 1972 interview with Black Sports—a short-lived, Black-owned magazine that covered Black athletes for Black readers—superstar New York Knicks guard Earl “the Pearl” Monroe acknowledged, “You have a lot of players who want to do a lot of things, but they’re not in the position. People have to realize that if I’m a professional basketball player, and I can’t do too much other than play professional basketball, I’m going to have to do something to try to keep my job, like keep my mouth shut.” This was especially true for fringe players. Economics played a big role in how overtly political a Black professional athlete could be. After the Oscar Robertson case gave more economic power to the players, they also gained a greater ability to speak out.

More recently, with the emergence of Black Lives Matter off the court, Black NBA players have shown just how powerful that speech can be. In 2012, LeBron James posted a photo on social media of the Miami Heat wearing hoodies in honor of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, whose killer was acquitted. Players league-wide wore “I can’t breathe” shirts during pregame warmups in 2014 to raise awareness about Eric Garner’s death, after police put him in a banned chokehold on the streets of New York City. In 2016 at the ESPY awards, James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul spoke out about police brutality and racial injustice in America. Now, in the NBA bubble, players are wearing uniforms donning political and social messages, rather than their names.

In recent years, the NBA has emerged as the major professional league most concerned with social justice. Rather than go against the very powerful players’ association, the NBA has decided to embrace its players’ political statements. But if the NBA has a progressive reputation, that’s because the players made it so. And, if players today can simply refuse to play a game in the name of racial justice, it is because their forebears made them more secure as workers.

Historians’ perspectives on how the past informs the present

Theresa Runstedtler is an associate professor of history at American University who is currently writing a book about race and basketball in the 1970s.

Why Jacob Blake’s Shooting Sparked an Unprecedented Sports Boycott

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 05:57:24 GMT

Athletes are no longer here purely for our entertainment. If you were enjoying the NBA playoffs before Wednesday, when a boycott led by the Milwaukee Bucks sparked he postponement of three NBA playoff games—and a stunning ripple effect throughout the athletic world—tough luck. Players have made it clear: Sports are no longer here to serve as some sort of panacea for tough times, some unifying force, some pleasurable distraction.

Ever since Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence and racial injustice in 2016, and especially in these past few months, since the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, pro sports stars have been consistently saying “we’re people before we’re athletes.” On Wednesday, they showed that to be true like never before.

In a historic display of collective power, athletes in the NBA, WNBA, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer declined to play their games Wednesday, in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back by police in Kenosha, Wis. on Sunday. The Milwaukee Bucks, whose arena sits around 30 miles north of Kenosha, did not take the court to warm up for Game 5 of their opening round playoff series against the Orlando Magic: it was soon announced that the game, and the other two playoff games scheduled to be played in the NBA’s Walt Disney World bubble Wednesday, would also be cancelled. The WNBA also postponed its games; in baseball, the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds decided not to play. “With our community and our nation in such pain,” Brewers and Reds players said in a joint statement, “we wanted to draw as much attention to the issues that really matter, especially racial injustice and systematic oppression.” The Seattle Mariners, who have more Black players than any other team, voted not to play their game against the San Diego Padres. A game between the Los Angeles and San Francisco Giants was also postponed.

Late Wednesday, tennis organizers sent out a statement saying that the entire Western & Southern Open would pause play on Thursday, and resume the tournament on Friday. Earlier Wednesday night, tennis star Naomi Osaka had announced on social media that she wouldn’t play her Thursday semifinal match. “As a black woman I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis,” she wrote.

pic.twitter.com/miKzgSdGxY

— NaomiOsaka大坂なおみ (@naomiosaka) August 27, 2020

“I respect the hell out of them for doing that,” John Carlos, the American sprinter who famously raised his fist along with Tommie Smith, on the medals stand, at the 1968 Olympics tells TIME. “Because you have to squeeze the toothpaste tube to get people to respond. And their boycotting lets the powers that be, whether it’s the NBA or any professional organization or corporate entity, know that they need to raise their voices. They need to get serious about the situation.”

John Dominis–The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAmerican track and field athletes Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right), first and third place winners in the 200 meter race, protest with the Black Power salute as they stand on the winner’s podium at the Summer Olympic games, Mexico City, Mexico, Oct. 19, 1968.

Carlos’ Black Power salute is iconic, and speaks to late-60s unrest. Similarly, high-profile sports boycotts could come to define these times. “This is unprecedented,” says Harry Edwards, emeritus professor of sociology of the University of California, Berkeley, who’s been studying athlete activism for decades. Edwards played a pivotal role in organizing the Black Power salute. “Now, we’re into a thing where athletes are sending a message,” Edwards says. “That’s an escalation of the movement.”

In the lead-up to Wednesday’s NBA playoff games, players and coaches shared their frustrations on witnessing police violence, again, against a Black man. “We keep loving this country,” said Clippers coach Doc Rivers, who is Black, “and this country does not love us back.” Players began to question whether one of their stated goals before the NBA’s summer restart in July—to use their platform to enact social change—was being met. Should they have even gone back to playing after George Floyd? “I really don’t regret a lot of things in my life,” Toronto Raptors forward Pascal Siakam said Wednesday. The Blake shooting, however, “makes me question if this was the right decision. Are we really making a change? Are we doing something meaningful?”

Doc Rivers with so much insight and honesty on the state of our world pic.twitter.com/Zdyla2adsh

— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) August 26, 2020

After the Bucks refused to play their game, the team joined a conference call in their locker room with Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barns, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski first reported. “When we take the court and represent Milwaukee and Wisconsin,” Bucks guard George Hill read from a team statement Wednesday, “we are expected to play at a high level, give maximum effort and hold each other accountable. We hold ourselves to that standard, and in this moment, we are demanding the same of lawmakers and law enforcement. We’re calling for justice for Jacob Blake, and demand that the officers be held accountable. For this to occur, it is imperative for the Wisconsin State legislature to reconvene, after months of inaction, and take meaningful measures to address police accountability, brutality, and criminal justice reform.”

NBA players met on Wednesday evening to discuss next steps; the Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers reportedly voted against finishing the season. The owners were scheduled to meet Thursday morning, according to ESPN; the players planned to continue their discussions then. Edwards says he’s been in touch with players and coaches. “I suggested that they call together the owners, they call together the sponsors, the other business partners, along with the other officers of the league,” Edwards says. “I mean Adam Silver can pick up the phone and call any governor in this country, and the governor will pick up the phone and answer. That becomes critical. The teams mean so much economically to the area that they are located in. At the end of the day they need to come up with strategic next steps to deal with the problem. This is not a problem of whether they are going to continue a boycott of basketball. Because they’re not boycotting basketball. They’re sending a message. Stop killing us.”

After raising his first in Mexico City, Carlos received death threats. Athletes participating the in boycott, Carlos says, should expect ugly blowback. “It really brings out the bigotry involved, you understand?” Carlos says. “You get a chance to see what side of the fence people are on.”

Still, facing an uncomfortable response will prove worthwhile. “When we brought our fingers together to make that fist, it showed the power of unity,” says Carlos. “It’s not about Black power. It’s about people coming together, humanity coming together. Understand? The Milwaukee team is coming together and saying, ‘Hey man, enough is enough.'”

The video of police shooting Blake in Kenosha sparked an all-too familiar visceral reaction for Carlos. “You can only cry so much,” Carlos tells TIME. “You can be in agony only so much, man. When you sit back and think about s–t like this, you know what the majority of Black people, what they’ve been saying for so long? Oh f–k!” Carlos says in a raise voice. “That’s the extent of what they can do because they can’t do anything else. They’re not going to break the law. They’re not going to knock some white man in the head based on what happened to a Black man. They just have so much frustration that they want to explode. So they scream out, ‘f–k!’ And they aren’t screaming f–k in a calm, gentle sort of way. They’re screaming, ‘oh, f–k’ in pain, agony.”

So Carlos cheers athletes who are making a sacrifice and channeling that pain into action. “I’m proud of them,” he says. “It took a lot of individual courage to say, ‘Hey man, I vote that we boycott. I vote that we step back.’ And remember this. They’re stepping back from something they love. They’re stepping back from a situation where they may have turmoil relative to their contracts and commitments. But all that s–t goes out the window, man, when you get to the point where you have to scream ‘Oh f–k.’