Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
You wouldn't call this piece the most balanced you'll ever read, but it does shine valuable light on a corner of American sport. Performance enhancing drugs are routine in US horse racing. And safety standards are rarely high
Story of a scandal. "The NFL charges that over the past three seasons, between 22 and 27 Saints participated in a bounty program that paid defenders for specific achievements on the field, including injuring opponents"
The former Mets and Phillies hero built a most unlikely, and successful, career after retiring from baseball. But it came crashing down, culminating in his sentencing to three years in prison. This is what happened
Bad history haunts both Waco, Texas and the city's Baptist university, Baylor. This piece says a Heisman Trophy, two nationally ranked basketball teams, and a 40-0 winning streak have the university, at least, on a brighter path
"On December 10, 1810, in a muddy field around 25 miles from London, a fight took place that was so dramatic, controversial, and ferocious that it continues to haunt the imagination of boxing more than 200 years later"
If you're going to read only one obituary of Paterno, this is probably the one. Revered US college football coach; educator and symbol of integrity in a dirty business; fired amid child sex abuse scandal that reverberated across US
"A child born the year he came to Penn State would be 61 now. Paterno let them put up a statue of him when he was still at work there. He earned it, in wins and many other ways, but in a fable that would be a warning"
The first and last interview Paterno gave after Penn State scandal broke. "I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was. So I backed away"
"Why have I so far singularly failed to get worked up about the threat to the world's greatest sport, and its supposed reputation for fair play? The reasons are partly historical, partly philosophical"
And this is what you should read if you want to know about the most explosive scandal in the history of US college sports. And why one of those whose careers it ended was "arguably the most unfireable person in all of sports"
Interesting analysis of legal questions flowing from Penn State scandal. "Pennsylvanians have built Paterno into a living god over the generations; now they will be asked to believe that Paterno was right to act like a file clerk"
"Irony and tragedy is that in trying to keep his beloved school from suffering harm, Paterno had a hand in causing that very harm. When the scandal was brought before him, he reacted, but it was only the bare minimum, superficial"
