The Sports Issue: Views From Left Field

Howard Cosell called it rule number one of the jockocracy—the idea that sports and politics don’t mix. Playing the game, and playing it well, is all that matters. And yet the closer you look, the more it becomes apparent that it’s not sports and politics that “don’t mix.” It’s sports and a certain kind of politics—the politics of protest and resistance. Athletes who speak out on issues of social justice invariably pay a price. It’s a problem that powerful commercial interests control the language of sports, not just because it shuts out alternative perspectives but because sports culture shapes other cultural attitudes, norms and power arrangements. Politics runs rampant throughout the sports world, a broad arena in which struggles for racial justice, gender equality and economic fairness are played out. With stakes this high, we couldn’t sit back and watch as the sports world becomes increasingly dominated by politics from right field. Consequently, we decided to enlist Nation sports correspondent Dave Zirin’s help in planning a special sports issue, only the second in The Nation’s 146-year history, and not coincidentally at a time when two of the country’s major leagues were locking out their employees in fierce labor battles. The following articles and essays will, we hope, address the central areas in which sports culture intersects with the pursuit of social and economic justice. But the world of sports doesn’t just demand our attention; it also fires our imagination. The distinguished group of writers, thinkers and advocates who pay tribute to their favorite sports heroes in these pages express a feeling many of us share: pure love of the game.   —The Editors Read More

The Editors

Jocks vs. Pukes

Jock Culture is a distortion of sports.

Robert Lipsyte

Why Do Mayors Love Sports Stadiums?

Numerous cities are littered with “downtown catalysts” that failed to catalyze.

Neil DeMause

Revolution on Eight Wheels

Roller Derby marries an underground vibe with the fun of athletic competition.

Diane “Lady Hulk” Williams

How Players Won the NFL Lockout

Make no mistake about it: the owners lost.

David Meggyesy and Dave Zirin

The NFL’s Concussion Culture

Football players from the 1980s and 1990s are turning up dead.

Nate Jackson

Class Struggle on the Court

The National Basketball Association lockout isn't about losses. It's about breaking the union.

Ari Paul

The Wired World of Sports

The general public is a lot more knowledgable about matters of sports labor issues, and everything else, than it was a decade ago.

Will Leitch

Sex Sells Sex, Not Women’s Sports

So what does sell women's sports?

Mary Jo Kane

Sports and Spectacle

Sports radio show how people want to use their intelligence in complex discussions.

Noam Chomsky

America’s Deepest Closet

Why does the sports world remain fiercely hostile to open participation by LGBT athletes?

Sherry Wolf

Squash and Revolution in Egypt

Of the top fifteen men's players in the world, seven of them are Egyptian, and the women's side is not far behind.

Paul Wachter

The Black Athlete Today

Athletes need to realize that they can shape their own image much more successfully than athletes of previous generations.

Mike Tillery

Tributes

Various Contributors

Many Facets, No Overview: On the Venice Biennale

This year's edition of the Venice Biennale sinks under sprawl and overfamiliarity.

Barry Schwabsky

Hard Against Time: On Roy Fisher

The Midlands poet Roy Fisher has never aspired to a readership. All the more reason to welcome his Selected Poems.

Ange Mlinko

Let Us Dispute: On Isaac Casaubon

Isaac Casaubon was a model citizen of the republic of letters—a community more durable than any church and broader than academia.

Sam Stark

Yahoo! (A Lion, a Duke, the Tax-Rate Fungi)

K. Silem Mohammad

Russian Hero

A bet on a horse in the 1949 Grand National resulted in the largest collective transfer of wealth ever to communism's stalwarts in Britain.

Alexander Cockburn