No theme this week, just a selection of wonderful articles about sports that I flagged throughout the week. One of my favorite parts of writing Dear Sports Fan is reading other great writers cover sports in a way that’s accessible and compelling for the whole spectrum from super-fans to lay people. Here are selections from the best articles of the last week on the subject of attitude:
Last Man Running
by Reeves Weideman for the New Yorker
Football is everywhere, right? And the Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event of the year. It’s virtually a holiday! Here’s the story of a small but growing group of people who engage in their own Super Bowl competition: who can make it longest without finding out who won. They’re called “runners” and losing, or finding out who won, is jokingly referred to as “dying” or a “death.” This is a great article.
Most of the runners, however, found themselves waking up each day in a cold sweat. “I feel like I’m being sequestered for the stupidest jury trial in modern history,” one competitor said. “It’s gotten to the point where three things may end me: recklessness, homesickness, or sheer boredom.”
“I’m starting to think that #DeathByGirlfriend is becoming a reality as she gets more fed up with me being anti-social,” one runner wrote on Twitter. A doctor feared going to the hospital, where he would have to make small talk with patients. A stripper in Los Angeles slept through the Super Bowl—most of the clientele was watching the game—but found the rest of her work week difficult: “Starting every conversation with ‘Don’t tell me who won the SB!’ is hilarious but not the best way to make money in a strip club.”
Do You Want Him on Your Team? The Vicious Brilliance of Ndamukong Suh
By Brian Phillips for Grantland
Now that the Super Bowl is won and gone, the biggest story in the sports world is… still NFL football. It’s now time for free agents to be wooed and signed by new teams. The biggest and best free agent this year is a ferocious defensive tackle named Ndamukong Suh. Suh is known equally for being an impactful player and a dirty one. In this article, Brian Phillips pierces through the first level of analysis and tries to get at what makes Suh the type of player he is.
We want football players to be blood-scenting berserkers half the time and upstanding sportsmen the other half; even if you don’t agree that the line is in kind of an arbitrary place, can you imagine how hard that would be to navigate, from Pop Warner on? You’re a big, fast kid who can hit people hard. You’re taken into a room and told, first of all, that this makes you special, and second of all, that your special self is subordinate to a team. You’re told that all your future specialness will depend on how completely you subordinate yourself. You’re told to give everything. Give your all. Leave it on the field. Never stop trying to win. Never stop trying to get better. You’re told that there’s no room for weakness. You’re told that there are no excuses. You’re told to make yourself a weapon. You’re told that the only thing that matters is beating your rivals. You’re told to call me sir. You’re told that what you’re doing when you’re playing defense is hunting. You’re told to seek out any edge, any advantage, any crack you can use for a toehold. If you win, the crowd roars your name. But the crowd will like you only if you’re humble. The crowd is screaming for you to kill your opponent. But do it at the wrong time, in the wrong way, and they’ll turn on you. Be a warrior. Be a killer. But be respectful. Give 110 percent, but hold yourself in check.
As a set of inputs, this is madness. What person’s brain could line that up into anything like coherence?
Death, brotherhood and sacrifice: N.J. hoops star haunted by loss of 24 friends to street violence
By Matthew Stanmyre for NJ.com
Soon, college basketball will take over the sporting landscape as early March transitions into March madness, the NCAA men’s college basketball championships. As such, it’s time for the personal interest stories to start flowing. This story is a particularly excellent example of the genre. It follows Isaiah Williams, a junior guard for Iona, a small school New Rochelle that hopes to qualify for the tournament this year. Williams grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and has struggled during his college career with finding a balance between trying to help his family out of their socio-economic and violent plight, and personally protecting his little brother, Kevin.
Teammates wondered how Isaiah held it together.
“It’s not just like, ‘My best friend got killed,’ which is hard enough to take,” says Iona senior forward David Laury, Isaiah’s closest friend on the team. “It’s like, ‘One of my best friends got killed.’ Two months later, ‘Another one of my best friends got killed.’ Another month later, ‘Another one of my best friends got killed.’ These are kids that he grew up with from around, like, sandbox time. It was just ridiculous.”
The off-campus house Isaiah shares this year with seven students is quintessential college — dirty floors, a Fry Baby in the kitchen and a sign hanging in the foyer that reads “5 O’Clock Somewhere Ave.” He says he’s doing well balancing books and basketball as he works toward a degree in criminal justice and currently sports a 3.0 grade-point average thanks, in part, to Wednesday evening date nights with Menendez at the library.
The biggest difference between New Rochelle and Newark is obvious, Isaiah says.
“Here, you can walk outside around 11 o’clock and you don’t have to worry,” he says. “Back home, once the sun goes down, you need to be in the house. Not even — when the sun’s up, you still not safe.”
Even with Isaiah at school, his presence is felt in the family’s Newark home. His associate’s degree hangs next to the front door. The living room alcove is filled with 26 trophies and dozens of medals. Framed pictures of Isaiah dot the walls.