The SportsThink Review #111
September 13, 2024: Events, Poles, Charcuterie
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, happy Friday. It’s a busy fall season for me, but busy in a good and exciting way, with a couple big events I’m honored to be a part of. I’ll share again with more details in the coming weeks, but want to get these on your radar for next month.
For the Austin crowd, I’ll be delivering this year’s Clyde Raab Littlefield Lecture on October 17 at 3:30PM, in the events space in the San Jacinto residence hall (across the street from DKR). The talk is titled “Forty Acres, Five Rings: A Historical Celebration of Longhorn Olympians,” and takes the occasion of this Olympic year to look back at over a century of UT athletes at the games. I will resist the urge to just read a list of all of our rivals who have fewer medals than us (all of them), and will hopefully do justice to these great athletes while bringing together a few larger themes throughout the talk. Free to attend!
I’ll hop on a plane with the family the next day and head to Washington, DC for a symposium I’m hosting at the Smithsonian, in collaboration with their Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. (yes, the real Smithsonian!!) Sports Technology and Innovation: New Perspectives takes place on October 21 and 22, and features presentations from 12 scholars working at the intersection of sports and innovation, covering a fascinating range of topics from the rise of baseball analytics to the evolution of field turf, and much more. On the night of the 21st, we’ll have a keynote conversation with Gary Brantley, Chief Innovation Officer of the National Football League. The whole event is free and open to the public and I would love to see you there.
As for this week’s content…you gotta take what you can get and I must admit, I didn’t come across any really great reads this week. A few things of interest below, but it’s also timely to re-share this newsletter I sent out last year on September 11.
Spending a lot of time thinking about sports tech and innovation these days, I found this piece from Wired pretty interesting. Boone Ashworth takes a look at attempts to improve the pole used in pole-vaulting, from technology to make currently invisible cracks visible, to a far-out future where the poles actually fix themselves. Big implications for both safety and performance.
I am not much of a runner (ok, just not a runner), but am fascinated by ultra running as a testament to human potential. Other than the presence of charcuterie at the snack stations, I find nothing appealing about the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, but I did enjoy learning more about the famously brutal, 106 mile race.
A big hats off to US soccer legend Alex Morgan, who retired last week. The best tribute I came across is Abigail Segel’s piece for Defector, which does a really nice job of bringing together Morgan’s career and legacy.
Finally, if you need some joy this weekend, this signing announcement from Spanish soccer club Real Betis’ social media team is pretty perfect.
As always, thanks for reading. Please continue to share the newsletter, I so appreciate it!
See you next week,
Tolga