The SportsThink Weekly Read #11
February 11, 2022
The SportsThink Weekly Read highlights my favorite sport-related article of the week. On the last Friday of each month, I send out the Monthly Review, a longer digest of readings and other content of interest. Most articles are recently published, but some are not; the only rule is that I’ve read them within the past week (or the past month, in the case of the Monthly Review). 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 life-long obsession with the games we play. 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!
The Weekly Read(s)
Yes, it’s Super Bowl week, but let’s not ignore the Winter Olympics! I remain conflicted on the Olympics. Regular readers know that I enjoy dragging the IOC for their tendencies toward hypocrisy, exploitation, and profiteering. They make it easy. But I’m also an enthusiastic supporter of human excellence and Olympic athletes are pretty damn excellent. (If you haven’t seen them yet, head to youtube and watch Nathan Chen and Chloe Kim’s performances…NBC won’t let me embed them in the newsletter.) So, I continue to watch and be amazed and inspired. But I think the Games remain a subject worth thinking and reading critically about, so here are two pieces worth your time:
The Olympics Have an Integrity Problem. Here’s How to Fix It. From David Epstein’s Range Widely newsletter. Incisive, at times shockingly honest interview with Steve Mesler, a former gold medalist in the bobsled and current board member of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Not too long of a read, but gives you a lot to think about. Thanks to Matt Bowers for sharing.
Changing Climate Conditions Fuel Concerns About the Future of Winter Sports, by Dan Murphy and Alyssa Roenigk, via ESPN. In recent years, a handful of studies have offered a grim view of the future of winter sports: if current climate trends continue, all but a handful (the number differs by study) of previous Winter Olympic host cities will not be capable of hosting a winter Games by the end of this century. No surprise then that the occasion of the current Games has produced a flurry (sorry) of reports on the intersection of sports and climate. This is the best one I’ve read, with implications for elite and recreational athletes alike. Zooming out: the folks who want people to take climate change seriously need to do a better job of hitting us where it hurts and connecting the conversation to sports, where the effects are already being felt and will further be amplified. Just a thought.
As always, thanks for reading. Please share the newsletter with a friend.
See you next week,
Tolga