The SportsThink Weekly Read #17

April 15, 2022

Apr 15, 2022

Welcome new readers! 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. 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!

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The Weekly Read

Untold, by Tom Junod and Paula Lavigne, via ESPN.

This week's article was a hard read, but an easy choice. On horrific sexual assault and Penn State Football. No, not Sandusky, a different series of grizzly events, this time from the late 1970s. Incredible journalism; I’ll be shocked if this doesn’t win some awards. It’s long (like, really long), but worth it. Thanks to Matt Bowers for sharing.

My take here is that gruesome human behavior isn't unique to sports, but our regular refusal to consider how the structures, hierarchies, and cultural power of sports enable/obscure the worst of humanity is a big problem. When something great happens in the world of sports, "sports" take the credit. When something bad happens, we point to the bad apples. We can't have it both ways.

And, if you need something to lighten the mood after reading that, Dickie V is cancer free!

Dick Vitale @DickieV

It was RING THE BELL TIME ! Yes it was a tough 7 months but it was super hearing Dr Brown @SMHCS say that I have zero cancer currently .I was inspired daily by the famous words of my late buddy Jimmy V “Don’t Give up DON’T EVER GIVE UP!” @amyuf @jksports @ESPNPR

As always, thanks for reading. Please take a moment to share the newsletter with someone else who’d enjoy it.

See you next week,

Tolga