Sports Politics

In 1990, while covering a story about homelessness for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Ted Jackson encountered a drug addict sleeping under a bridge. After snapping a photo, Jackson woke the man. Pointing to the daily newspaper by his feet, the homeless stranger looked the photojournalist in the eye and said, “You ought to do a story about me.” When Ted asked why, he was stunned by the answer. “Because, I’ve played in three Super Bowls.”

Perhaps the best golfer ever, Tiger Woods rocketed to the top of a once whites-only sport. Endorsements made him a global brand and the world’s richest athlete. The child of a multiracial marriage, Woods and his blond, blue-eyed wife, Elin Nordegren, seemed to represent a new postracial America. Then, in late 2009, Woods became embroiled in a sex scandal that made headlines worldwide.

In what is being hailed by many, probably, as the best literary work since the New Testament, PFT Commenter takes you on a realistic-fiction journey through the backdoor politics of today's NFL. Set in the 2014 offseason, Roger Goodell and President Barack Obama become locked in a mano-a-mano battle over the future of the Dallas Cowboys, culminating in a literal fight to the death.

The millions of fans who watch World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) programs each year are well aware of their role in building the narrative of the sport. #WWE: Professional Wrestling in the Digital Age explores the intersections between media, technology, and fandom in WWE's contemporary programming and business practices. In the Reality Era of WWE (2011 to the present), wrestling narratives have increasingly drawn on real-life personalities and events that stretch beyond the story-world created and maintained by WWE.

In Brothers on Three, we follow Phil and Will, along with their teammates, coaches, and families, as they balance the pressures of adolescence, shoulder the dreams of their community, and chart their own individual courses for the future. Brothers on Three is not simply a story about high school basketball, about state championships and a winning team. It is a book about community, and it is about boys on the cusp of adulthood, finding their way through the intersecting worlds they inhabit and forging their own paths to personhood.

“The virus exposed how we live and work. It also revealed how we play, and what we lose when we have to stop.” For every kid who makes it to the NBA, thousands more seek out the pleasure and camaraderie of pick-up basketball in their local community centre or neighbourhood park. It’s a story that plays out in sport after sport–team and individual, youth and adult, men's and women's.

Growing up and living in Kibera, Kenya, Abdul Kassim was well aware of the disproportionate number of challenges faced by women due to the extreme gender inequalities that persist in the slums. After being raised by his aunts, his mother, and his grandmother, and having a daughter himself, he felt that he needed to make a difference. In 2002, Abdul started a soccer team for girls called Girls Soccer in Kibera (GSK), with the hope of fostering a supportive community and providing emotional and mental support for the young women in the town.

On November 7, 1991, basketball legend Magic Johnson stunned the world with the news that he was HIV-positive. For the millions who tuned in as he shared his news, Magic's revelation became a seminal moment for the nation. Now twenty-five years later, Cookie Johnson shares her story and the emotional journey that started on that day - from life as a pregnant and joyous newlywed to one filled with the fear that her husband would die, she and her baby would, too, be infected with the virus.

In Body Politic, David Shields looks at contemporary America and its mythology through the lens of professional and college sports. The result is an unusually insightful and provocative book about an empire in denial. Shields relentlessly examines the way we tell our sports stories (both fictional and nonfictional), considers the kinds of athletes we choose as heroes, and delineates the lessons and values we glean from sports.

Before the league’s founding, East Coast basketball had crowned just three national champions in 40 years, and none since 1954. But in the Big East’s first 10 years, five of its teams played for a national championship. The league didn’t merely inherit good teams; it created them. But how did this unlikely group of schools come to dominate college basketball so quickly and completely?

There is the Cornwall Lamorna Ash knew as a child – the idyllic, folklore-rich place where she spent her summer holidays. Then there is the Cornwall she discovers when, feeling increasingly dislocated in London, she moves to Newlyn, a fishing town near Land’s End. This Cornwall is messier and harder; it doesn’t seem like a place that would welcome strangers. Before long, however, Lamorna finds herself on a week-long trawler trip with a crew of local fishermen, afforded a rare glimpse into their world, their warmth and their humour.

Can’t Nothing Bring Me Down is the memoir of 104-year-old world-record-holding runner Ida Keeling. Miss Ida, as she’s known throughout her Bronx community, isn’t your typical runner. Her fierce independence helped her through the Depression and the civil rights movement. But her greatest trials were yet to come.

Death on the River of Doubt takes listeners inside the thrilling journey that unfolded as Theodore Roosevelt and his companions navigated the Amazonian River of Doubt through an unforgiving and unpredictable jungle. With new threats at every turn, from bloodthirsty piranhas and raging rapids to starvation, disease, and a traitor in their own ranks, it seemed that not everyone would make it out alive.

Batavia, New York—between Rochester and Buffalo—hosted its first professional baseball game in 1897. Despite decades of deindustrialization and evaporating middle-class jobs, the Batavia Muckdogs endured. When Major League Baseball cravenly shut them down in 2020—along with forty-one other minor league teams—the town fought back, reviving the Muckdogs as a summer league team comprised of college players.

Every path to adulthood is strewn with missteps, epiphanies, and hard-earned lessons. Only Reggie Love's, however, went through the White House by way of Duke University's Cameron Indoor Stadium. Mentored by both Coach Krzyzewski and President Obama, Love shares universal insights learned in unique circumstances, an education in how sports, politics, and life can define who you are, what you believe in, and what it takes to make a difference.

Women’s sports receive a fraction of the airtime allotted for men’s sports, as well as a fraction of the marketing dollars, media coverage, and training resources. For every dollar that the NBA’s highest-paid player brings home, the WNBA’s highest-paid player earns just half a cent. But while misogyny in sports is particularly visible, it’s not unique. Women athletes face the same sexist barriers found in all career fields: the motherhood penalty, transphobia and misogynoir, underpromotion, and more. But women in sports are fighting back.

What does it mean to be a sporty woman in the 21st century? From the launch of Net-A-Sporter, serving up sports clothing for fashionistas, to the introduction of #plankie as the new Instagram selfie for yoga bunnies, exercise for women has finally gone mainstream. But if sweating has never been so hot for female celebrities, then why are there still so many obstacles for girls and women when it comes to sport?

Born and raised in West Philadelphia, Kareem thought he and his siblings would always be stuck in “The Bottom”, a community and neighborhood devastated by poverty and violence. Riding their bicycles through Philly’s Fairmount Park, Kareem’s brothers discover a barn full of horses. Noticing the brothers’ fascination with her misfit animals, Lezlie Hiner, founder of The Work to Ride stables, offers them their escape: an after school job in exchange for riding lessons. What starts as an accidental discovery turns into a love for horseback riding.

Das Gesicht des IOC ist ein Deutscher. Seine Geschichte und die des immer wieder kriminellen IOC laufen seit Jahrzehnten parallel. Hier wird sie erstmals erzählt. Thomas Bach ist der Mann arabischer Scheichs und chinesischer Staatskommunisten, und vor allem: der Olygarch Putins. Dieser investigative Report verwebt die Stränge von Sport, Politik, Geld und Propaganda. Es ist eine Reise durch mehr als 40 Jahre IOC, die in der Wahl Bachs und dessen Russland-freundlicher Politik mündet.

Ob es um die dubiosen Geschäftspraktiken von internationalen Spitzenklubs wie dem FC Barcelona, Manchester City oder Paris Saint-Germain geht, um die Ausbeutung von Jugendspielern oder die Vertuschung von Straftaten: Die Gier im Fußball kennt kaum noch Grenzen. Die SPIEGEL-Journalisten Rafael Buschmann und Michael Wulzinger geben neue, exklusive Einblicke in die zunehmend mafiösen Strukturen im Spitzenfußball und erzählen dabei auch die Geschichte des Mannes, der durch seinen Mut die spektakulären Enthüllungen erst möglich gemacht hat - und dafür nun im Gefängnis sitzt.