The SportsThink Review #107
August 16, 2024: Life After The Olympics
Welcome new readers! The SportsThink Review highlights my favorite sport-related reading and related content. Most things I share are recently published, but some are not; the only rule is that I’ve read or encountered them recently. Some are relevant to my day job as a professor teaching courses on the business, history, and philosophy of sports. Others are just plain interesting, relevant to my lifelong obsession with the games we play. I also occasionally share articles and assorted musings on Twitter. The newsletter is free, but comes with two requests. 1. I’m always open to suggestions, so send me the good stuff that you read! 2. If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with other folks who might enjoy it as well. Finally, I try to focus on non-paywalled writing, but if you find yourself unable to access anything, just hit reply to the email and I’ll do my best to get you a copy. Thanks for reading!
Howdy folks and happy Friday. And just like that, the Olympics are fini. Curious if folks agree, but I feel like these were a pretty good games. Or maybe it was just the Gold Zone on Peacock, which was near-perfect sports programming. But never fear, the fall sports onslaught is just around the corner. And let’s not forget the Paralympics kicking off in a couple weeks, with the best and most accessible coverage those games have ever had. In the meantime, here are a few things that brought me joy and knowledge as I coped with the Olympic hangover and the Texas heat this week. Some long ones for the dog days of summer, each really good in it’s own way….let’s get to it.
When Universal’s Basketball Team Played in Hitler’s 1936 Olympics (Andy Lewis, The Ankler)
A last gasp of Olympic content and a lovely bit of history. The “Universal” in question is the movie studio and yes, the studio’s in-house, semi-pro team (with a few additional players) represented the US at the 1936 Olympics. I was vaguely aware of this story, but learned a ton from this piece. A really nice read, with some interesting Hollywood history woven in.
Emma Carey: The Skydiver Who Survived a 14,000 Foot Fall (Ryan Hockensmith, ESPN)
Intense!! On the experience of—and life after—the titular accident and the desire to be fully human. This is really good: It's human nature to make a story about you into the story of you, and most of the time feels harmless. Think about how many people whose identities are subsumed going from Justin and Maria, to "Justin & Maria," to Mom and Dad, to Grandma and Pap. Everybody has a friend whose marriage falls apart and he suddenly becomes "Divorced Dave," or a cousin who has borrowed money from everybody in the family and therefore is "Broke Brooke." We connect people with one of their stories, and a chapter about them becomes the book on them.
How The NBA Got Into Business With an African Dictator (Mark Fainaru-Wada, ESPN)
Amazing reporting. One for the sport and geopolitics heads. On the NBA-backed Basketball Africa League and Rwandan president Paul Kagame. Kagame is, well, not the gentlest of authoritarians. I’m still not totally sold on the notion of “sportwashing” that sport-academic-leftists tend to trot out. (That is, I accept it as a soft-power strategy that exists, but one most critics don’t really understand or articulate that well.) I don’t think the international community thinks that Kagame is Mother Teresa because he’s hanging with NBA leadership; Western tourists aren’t flocking to Kigali because of hoops. But this is one hell of an investigative article. Fainaru-Wada (Game of Shadows, League of Denial) is the best of the best. Look no further to understand the mutually beneficial relationships between American sports enterprises and less-than-savory governments. Worth reflecting on stories like this every time someone grumbles about the Saudis and LIV Golf.
As always, thanks for reading. Please send me good reads and share the newsletter far and wide!
See you soon,
Tolga