The SportsThink Weekly Review #6
July 17, 2020
Hello and welcome to the sixth installment of the Weekly Review. Hope you’re doing well, wherever this finds you.
Inside The Lines: The Best Writing On Sports I Read This Week
As The Border Bled, Juárez Watched The Game It Waited Nine Years For by Roberto Jose Andrade Franco, via Deadspin. If you only read one this week, this should be it. Beautifully written, at once heartbreaking and inspiring. From August of last year, but I re-read it this week following the announcement of the shortlist for the Dan Jenkins Medal For Excellence in Sportswriting. All of the nominees are great, but this would get my vote if I had one.
Scientists Have Finally Calculated How Many Hot Dogs a Person Can Eat at Once by Christie Aschwanden, via the NYT. I’m coming for you, Joey Chestnutt.
COVID and the College Sports Consultant by Daniel Libit and Luke Cyphers, via the Intercollegiate. These guys are killers when it comes to reporting and research, especially the way they wrangle FOIA information. “In business, they say, you spend money to make money. In college sports, at least prior to the coronavirus outbreak, you could often spend money to lose money. And then, you would spend more on consultants.”
Where Is the Outrage Over Anti-Semitism in Sports and Hollywood? by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, via the Hollywood Reporter. Ever multi-talented, The Captain sounds off.
The Chariot Princess of Sparta by Eric Nusbaum, via his Sports Stories newsletter. Those of you have followed the blog for a bit have heard me heap praise on Eric and his book, Stealing Home. His newsletter is also great.
Talking to the NBA’s COVID-19 Test Provider by Henry Abbott, via the TrueHoop newsletter. A bonus read, a fascinating and frank discussion.
The Week on SportsThink
On Monday, I shared a guest post from Alec Hurley, arguing that the sports world (and college sports in particular) might do better by following the lead of the Ivy League. Inspired by the Lance Armstrong documentary, I wrote about some of the traditional arguments against doping, and why those arguments are sorta lousy. Part II to come next week. And some Friday links, in case you need more to read on current goings-on.
Non-Sports Reads
This was the first week of my summer school philosophy class, so we dove right into the major, mostly unanswerable questions of existence, including “what is time and does it exist?” I don’t have a great answer, but this timely (ha!) piece from Scientific American is fascinating.
As always, thank you and happy reading. See you next week.
Tolga