Happy Thanksgiving from the sports media

Good morning and happy Thanksgiving! While you’re trying to find the cranberries in the back of the fridge, (where did you put those things?), here are excerpts from the best of the many Thanksgiving and football themed articles from around the web. 

Pigskin Pigsplosion NFL Week 13 Preview

by Ryan Glasspiegel for The Big Lead

A special Thanksgiving edition of The Big Lead’s weekly NFL football preview.

If you stop to think about it, it’s pretty rude of the NFL to make all three games on Thanksgiving be compelling ones. Though a motive would be hard to discern, it seems readily apparent that the league is involved in a sinister plan to cause relationship strife around this holiday.

26 (More) Rules of Thanksgiving Touch Football

by Jason Gay for the Wall Street Journal

Rules to live by if your Thanksgiving tradition includes playing touch football.

Remember: It’s not just a game. It’s an opportunity to relieve a year’s worth of pent-up aggression upon the loved ones who don’t return your text messages and never do the dishes.

9. If anybody starts a Thanksgiving family touch-football fantasy league, you can ban them from the family for seven years.

18. This year’s halftime show is explaining to Dad who Katy Perry is.

19. Relationship breakups can be hard on the Thanksgiving touch-football game. It was very sad that your brother Todd and his girlfriend Karen split up, because Todd is family. But mainly because Karen had six touchdowns last year.

Ndamukong Suh and Warren Buffett: The Bruiser and the Billionaire

by Kevin Clark for the Wall Street Journal

Ndamukong Suh is one of the most compelling characters of the early game between the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears. He’s known as a rough and dirty player on the field but off-field he’s a burgeoning businessman. 

“Everyone says, ‘Wait til your football career is over.’ Or the biggest saying is always ‘Life after football,’ ” Suh said. “But as an athlete, someone who is bright enough and understands how to compartmentalize, and has time management from already having two jobs at once—playing football and going to class and getting good grades-—you can have 70 to 90% of the focus on your ultimate job but at the same time slowly build to what you are going to be one day.”

Suh’s best memory was an arm-wrestling match between Buffett and Suh at an event. At his Michigan home, Suh has a letter, written by Buffett: “I, Ndamukong Suh, hereby release Warren Buffett from any claims for physical injury that I may suffer in the arm wrestling contest…”

Thanksgiving Football Is Tradition for Chris Borland

by Taylor Price for 49ers.com

Chris Borland is an unlikely new defensive star for the San Francisco 49ers who will be playing on Thanksgiving night versus the Seattle Seahawks. Here’s a story from the team’s site about his background and football upbringing.

Chris, the second-youngest of six boys, played football with his brothers; he also tried to keep pace with them in other ways. Joe, 13 years older than his NFL-playing brother, remembered Chris running around their home with two-pound weights in each hand. The story gets better. Chris used to do that in the winter time… as a 4-year-old.

The next game is on a familiar day for the Borland family: Thanksgiving. Although Chris hasn’t played in a “Turkey Bowl” game since his high school days, he has a pretty good memory of that battle. Just like any other group of family and friends who gather to play recreational football games hours before a Thanksgiving meal, the Borland’s were no different. Only, their game was a little more physical than most neighborhood contests.

In the last “Borland Turkey Bowl,” Chris caught the game-winning touchdown pass from Joe, earning the right to hoist a trophy topped with a plastic turkey head. Chris earned the hardware, too. He collided with a sapling tree and bloodied his forehead as he caught the winning pass. But as Joe tells it, Chris wasn’t even the toughest player in the yard that day. Sarah Borland, the only female sibling of the bunch, suffered a dislocated shoulder in the game. What did she do after the injury? Oh, she just popped her shoulder back into place and kept playing.

Chiefs safety Eric Berry has right attitude for what could be fight of his life

by Sam Mellinger for The Kansas City Star

Not a Thanksgiving story per se, but I thought it was good to include this as a reminder to give thanks for the health of us and our loved ones and for the people who support us when we’re faced with big challenges.

The Chiefs star will see a lymphoma specialist in his hometown of Atlanta this week, trying to find a definitive answer for a mass in the right side of his chest. His season with the Chiefs is over.

Everyone’s fight is their own, of course, but if this becomes Berry’s fight, he will engage it with an incredible amount of support… In high school, Berry volunteered at a dentist’s office. In college, he would sneak into the equipment room the night before games to help the team managers polish the helmets… With the Chiefs, he is constantly thanking the men and women who cook and serve the team meals. He’s the one hugging the flight attendant on the plane and donating backpacks full of school supplies to local kids.

2014 Thanksgiving NFL preview: Seattle Seahawks at San Francisco 49ers

The last of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games this year is between the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers at 8:30 p.m. on NBC. If this game were a Thanksgiving food, it would be the roast pork, baked salmon, or Turducken that someone brings to the meal. It’s not traditional but damn, is it good. Tradition aside, you’re going to grab a few extra servings of it on top of that dried out token piece of Turkey breast you eat out of obligation.

Thanksgiving is the ultimate American holiday. Its focusses are family, food, and football. To celebrate the first two, it helps to know about the third. To that end, we’re offering a free copy of our Guide to Football for the Curious in addition to publishing previews about each of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games.

Plot

Unlike the two day games, this game does not have a set host city and team, so the league is free to pick what they think the most entertaining matchup will be each year. Before this season started, the matchup of the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers must have seemed like a slam dunk. The Seahawks won the Super Bowl last year and the 49ers have been to at least the conference finals (the game right before the Super Bowl) for the last three years. Both teams are in the NFC West division, and if that weren’t enough to create a rivalry, their head coaches, Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh share a mutual disdain from their days coaching in college against each other. Before the season started, this game must have seemed like the perfect choice for Thanksgiving night because it was a heated rivalry of two very excellent teams. The schedule makers lucked out — it is a compelling game but for very different reasons than they thought before the season.

The first half of the NFL season for these two teams has proven that something can always go wrong. Both teams have struggled to win games, largely because their dominating defenses from the previous years have been anything but dominating this year. Nor have things been nice and easy in the dressing room. Seattle traded one of its most explosive players mid-season and as he left the city the team’s leadership spread rumors that he was unmanageable and violent towards his teammates. San Francisco has been beset by rumors that their team can’t stand their coach. It’s fairly common in sports for teams to dislike their coaches, but these rumors have suggested that the situation for the 49ers is worse than normal.

 

On Thanksgiving, both Seattle and San Francisco find themselves 7-4 (seven wins, four losses) and a full two games behind the Arizona Cardinals for the division lead. Assuming neither team can catch Arizona, these two teams will be fighting with each other and a couple of other extremely good teams for the two available wild card playoff spots. Between real animosity for the opponent and a clear need to win the game for playoff positioning, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if this were the best game of the day.

Characters

Jim Harbaugh, Coach of the San Francisco 49ers

Jim Harbaugh is a pain in the ass. That seems to be the consensus of everyone who has every played with or for him. He’s intense, emotional, almost childlike in his inability or unwillingness to control himself on the sidelines. He also wins. A lot. He’s known as a “quarterback whisperer” or someone who is able to mentor young quarterbacks to make the most of their potential. This year has been an interesting one about him, if not for him. His contract ends after this season and it’s unclear whether the 49ers will want to retain him, despite his winning record. There have been well documented reports of power struggles between him and the general manager of the team as well dissension among the players.

Colin Kaepernick, Quarterback on the San Francisco 49ers

Kaepernick is the young, talented quarterback being whispered to by Harbaugh. Kaepernick is an unusual sight on the football field. He is tall and slender but freakishly fast and strong. Once a well-regarded professional prospect as a baseball pitcher, Kaepernick retains an element of foreignness to his game. His arm strength is second to none and when he decides to run with the ball, he’s a threat to run by, around, or over defenders. For all his talent though, he can look as bad at any moment as he looked good during a previous play. He’s not particularly consistent and his decision making is questionable.

Chris Borland, Linebacker on the San Francisco 49ers

For the past three seasons, the San Francisco 49ers football team’s character was epitomized by its two amazing inside linebackers, Patrick Willis and Navorro Bowman. The 49ers were a strong, no nonsense, physical team and those two guys were their team’s leaders, role models, and muse. This year, they are both out with injuries. Who steps in? This guy, Chris Borland. Borland is a rookie who won Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year last year in his Senior season. He was drafted by the 49ers in the third round of the NFL draft. Since stepping into a starting role, he’s been a defensive leader on the team and has quickly become a rising star.

Pete Carroll, Coach of the Seattle Seahawks

Pete Carroll is a charming trickster of a coach. It’s no surprise that of all the coaches in the NFL, he’s the one who became a robber baron in this .gif. He’s a rogue. He left his last college job at USC right before the school was sanctioned seriously by the NCAA for basically flagrantly paying star running back Reggie Bush. Now that he’s in the NFL, Carroll’s team has been among the league leaders in PED or performance enhancing drug suspensions. No matter where he goes though, he wins. Last year, he took the Seahawks all the way to the Super Bowl where they routed the Broncos early and won easily. He and Harbaugh hate each other as they have since they were rivals in college at USC and Stanford.

Marshawn Lynch, Running Back on the Seattle Seahawks

Marshawn Lynch is an extreme running back. He’s known as Beast Mode for his powerful and unyielding running style. If you want to know what I’m talking about, watch this. He also famously loves Skittles. The Seattle fans love him, so now when he scores at home, Skittles rain down from the stands. He has one year left on his contract after this year but is rumored to be leaving Seattle sooner than that. He has not been happy there this year. One of his friends/allies, Percy Harvin was traded during the year, and Lynch has reportedly been misbehaving behind the scenes. Of course, it’s hard to know the truth because the team has an incentive to sell the misbehavior story if they want to get rid of Lynch without their fans going crazy. What we do know is that last week after the game, Lynch decided to stonewall reporters in a half comic, half tragic way.

Russell Wilson, Quarterback on the Seattle Seahawks

Russell Wilson was the toast of the NFL for his first couple years in the league. He came in as a somewhat unheralded rookie and immediately beat out his competition in training camp so thoroughly that he was given the starting job. He didn’t disappoint. In his first two years, the Seahawks made the playoffs twice and won the Super Bowl once. Wilson became one of the most well respected quarterbacks around, succeeding despite being short for a quarterback. This year, like most of the team, Wilson has struggled a little bit on and off the field. On the field, his quarterback rating has dropped a little compared to his first two years. Off the field, he’s been accused of being both too close to management and “not black enough.”

Richard Sherman, Cornerback on the Seattle Seahawks

Richard Sherman was launched into the broader public consciousness when he allowed (or if you’re more cynical, decided to) his in-game passion to roll over into a post-game interview after last year’s playoff game against (you guessed it), the San Francisco 49ers. Sherman was briefly labeled as some kind of stereotypical football playing mouthful half-wit before people remembered that he’s every bit as much an intellectual achiever as an athletic one. This year, Sherman hasn’t played quite as well as he has in past years but I imagine he will be on top of his game for this one. He certainly has been on the top of his press conference game, as he showed in this light-hearted yet biting satirical rebuttal to the NFL’s fine for Lynch after his “Yeah” conference.

A Thanksgiving crossword puzzle

Thanksgiving is finally upon us!

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been promoting a Guide to Football for the Curious that I put together from the best of my writing about football on this site. In the guide, I cover all the basic elements of football — how scoring works, what the positions are, what fantasy football is and how football betting works, and why people like football. In addition to that, I tried to give some thought to how a beginner or casual fan can begin to enjoy watching football. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and if you haven’t, it’s not too late! Head over to the Thanksgiving Football page and download a copy now.

To celebrate the holiday and as a fun way to quiz your knowledge of football before you see your football loving relatives tomorrow, here’s a Thanksgiving Football crossword puzzle that I created. All of the terms, names, and phrases are explained in the Guide to Football for the Curious, so seek your answers there if you’re stumped.

A couple notes about the puzzle. You know you’ve gotten an answer right when the words (confusingly) are highlighted in a light red. If your answer remains black text on a white background, it’s wrong. To get the answers, click on the little key icon on the top left.

Have fun and Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for being a part of the Dear Sports Fan community!

Sports Forecast for Wednesday, November 27, 2014

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on:

In today’s segment, I covered:

  • Champions League Soccer – Liverpool at Ludogorets Razgrad, 2:45 p.m.  p.m. ET on ESPN3.
  • NBA Basketball – Washington Wizards at Cleveland Cavaliers, 7:00 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NBA Basketball – Brooklyn Nets at Philadelphia 76ers, 7:00 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • NHL Hockey – Philadelphia Flyers at Detroit Red Wings, 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network.
  • NHL Hockey – Calgary Flames at San Jose Sharks, 10:30 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Music by Jesse Fischer.

What happened on Tuesday, November 25, 2014?

  1. Everything went Manchester City’s way: At the start of the day, defending Premiere League champions, Manchester City, looked like a long shot to advance to the next round of the Champions League. Then CSKA Moscow scored in the 93rd minute to tie their game against AC Roma, which helped Manchester City in the standings. Then a Bayern Munich defender got a red card early in their game against Manchester City, so City were up a man. Even so, it took late game heroics from striker Sergio Aguero to push Manchester City over Bayern Munich, 3-2.
    Line: What a crazy game — up a man, down a goal, Man City finally broke through.
  2. Splash Brothers combine for 64 in win over Heat: The Golden State Warriors two star guards, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, collectively known as the Splash Brothers, scored a combined 64 points in the team’s 114-97 win over the Heat. Curry alone had 40 points. The Heat’s strong start to the season has slowed down as Dwayne Wade has missed the last seven games due to injuries.
    Line: This is what Heat fans were afraid of — that Wade would not be able to hold up to the full load without LeBron.
  3. Homecoming for JayVaughn Pinkston: Pinkston is a basketball player for the Villanova Wildcats who beat the Michigan Wolverines 60-55 in last night’s finals of the Legends Classic in Brooklyn. He’s also a Brooklyn native and now late-game hero after his last minute basket and block helped clinch the game for Villanova.
    Line: How good must that feel to be the hero in your hometown?!
  4. Shootout followed by a shootout in Nashville: The NHL hockey game between the Los Angeles Kings and Nashville Predators was unexpectedly high scoring last night — 3-3 in regulation. And then it dried up in the shootout. Over 12 shots, only one player scored — James Neal for the Nashville Predators, who won the game 4-3 on his shootout goal.
    Line: So far, this looks like the best team in Nashville’s 15 year history in the NHL.

Balancing diplomacy and passion in sports

There’s room for all types in sports. Or that’s what we’re told. “If you can play, you can play” is the slogan of a great organization working for inclusion in sports. White, black, gay, straight, male, female, young, old, everyone can play sports. But what about people who lose their temper easily? What about shy people? How accepting are sports of different personality types? Two articles came across my desk recently that make me think about the question of balancing diplomacy and passion in sports.

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:

Boogie Cousins and The Upside of a Bad Attitude

by Bethlehem Shoals for GQ

Demarcus Cousins, mysteriously nicknamed Boogie, is one of the most talented young basketball players in the NBA. For pretty much his whole career, even in college, he’s been known as a player who let his emotions get in the way of his success. Bethlehem Shoals takes this idea and examines it for what it’s worth — which might not be that much. Why, Shoals asks, do we feel the need for our sports starts to fit into a single stereotype?

Cousins is exciting to watch because he plays with feeling; he’s unpredictable and at times, ecstatic. When he decides to take over a game or clinch a win, it’s as much a matter of will as it is ability. Like Russell Westbrook, he spurs his team to greater heights by wearing his emotions on his sleeve; there’s a range there that somehow seems more honest, or authentic, than more guarded, less expressive players.

Cousins is undoubtedly a post player but he’s always a few steps out from the basket, allowing him an extra move or two to try and throw off defenders. You could argue that this space is also where the emotion, the excitement builds. With Cousins, there’s a real tension and release. He gets the ball, gets worked up, and more often than not, pays it off with a big play.

Asking Cousins to change his personality wouldn’t have just been pointless—it could have been disastrous. A player like Davis can change his game in certain ways, according to a certain script, because it suits him as a person. Cousins has taken a different path, finding a way to channel his energy in a way that helps, rather than hurts, himself and all those around him. We’ve seen it before and yet somehow, players who get the “troubled” label are never allowed to just be themselves and evolve accordingly.

Meet Tom King, one of USSF’s most important people behind the scenes

by Grant Wahl for Sports Illustrated

While wearing your emotions on your sleeve might be a good idea on the basketball court, it’s certainly not in the game that Tom King plays. As Grant Wahl explores in this article, the arranging and scheduling of international soccer games is as complex and sometimes as confrontational as the sport itself.

One of the leading practitioners of U.S. foreign diplomacy is a guy who schedules soccer games… It’s just like diplomacy. Countries may say one thing privately and another thing publicly, and it’s hard to know what’s really going to happen until you sign a treaty (i.e., a contract).

“It’s about two organizations trying to come together on some common ground with regard to economic conditions, technical decisions and the best possible dates to play. These relationships have been built up over many, many years. And our philosophy is that if things go wrong in the negotiations or if any federation reneges on something they had perhaps previously agreed, or we had an agreement to play in principle but it didn’t come through, we always take the high road.”

2014 Thanksgiving NFL preview: Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Cowboys

The second of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games this year is between the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys at 12:30 p.m. on Fox. This game is the turkey. It’s the main dish, the Pièce de résistance, the FOOTBALL GAME in all capital letters. Like a Thanksgiving Turkey, it can be delicious — tasty and flowing with good football juices — but it’s also just a little overrated. I mean, it’s no coincidence that we, as a culture, basically eat turkey once a year. 

Thanksgiving is the ultimate American holiday. Its focusses are family, food, and football. To celebrate the first two, it helps to know about the third. To that end, we’re offering a free copy of our Guide to Football for the Curious in addition to publishing previews about each of the three Thanksgiving NFL football games.

Plot

The Dallas Cowboys have the nickname “America’s Team,” which seems to engender more hatred than admiration. They do have an very big, national fanbase, but it seems like every other team’s fans hates their rivals first and the Cowboys second. That’s convenient for fans of the Philadelphia Eagles, who are specialists in sports hate of all kinds. The Dallas Cowboys are simultaneously the Eagles’ division rivals AND the Dallas Cowboys. That’s two times the hate for the price of one.

The Cowboys and Eagles enter this game tied for first place in their division with eight wins and three losses each. Both teams have succeeded in an unusual way — by running the football. The overall shift in football has been to pass more and run less but each of these teams has succeeded by running (literally) against the grain. The Cowboys do this by having a great offensive line and an excellent running back. The Eagles do this by having better designed running plays than anyone else. Not that the Eagles aren’t talented or that the Cowboys coaches haven’t built a good offense, but this game can easily be seen as a battle between great players (the Cowboys) and a great system (the Eagles.) One piece of evidence for this has been the ability of the Eagles to lose their starting quarterback and not miss a beat. When the Cowboys had to go without their starter for a game, they not only missed a beat, they got beat.

Characters

Tony Romo, Quarterback on the Dallas Cowboys

The quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys is one of the most visible and pressure packed jobs in sports. Tony Romo has had that job since 2006. His experience has been mixed. He’s been a very good quarterback but the team, during his career, has had no success in the playoffs whatsoever. The Cowboys have developed a reputation for failing at the most important and pressure packed moments and Romo has been a big part of that. The snap that Romo fumbled while trying to hold for a game winning playoff field goal in January 2007 (so harrowing was this play to the Cowboys fans that it’s still the subject of articles and counter-factual videos) was the beginning of Romo developing the reputation for not being a “clutch” player. His defenders note that he’s actually led lots of game winning drives but they say it with a defensive tone in their voices.

Dez Bryant, Wide Receiver on the Dallas Cowboys

Dez Bryant is the prototypical modern Wide Receiver. He’s big, strong, fast, powerful, and capable of making incredible catches. He also has a reputation for being a diva and for flying completely off the handle. He has a reputation for bad behavior on and off the field. It’s almost an annual tradition to see articles like this recent one from NFL.com with the headline, “Cowboys Concerned about Dez Bryant off the field”. These articles inspire defenses of Bryant, like this one from Cowboys site, Blogging The Boys, and also from less biased sources like Deadspin which ran an article contending that the “Dez Bryant Smear Season is Upon Us”. It’s hard to make any personal conclusions about players like Bryant because the information we get is biased by a combination of team allegiances, financial motives, and cultural, racial, and even positional stereotypes.

DeMarco Murray, Running Back on the Dallas Cowboys

As opposed to Dez Bryant, DeMarco Murray is an interesting figure because of his situation. Like Bryant, Murray is going to be an unrestricted free agent after this season. Like Bryant, Murray is one of the best in the world at his position. Unlike Bryant though, Murray plays Running Back, which is the most physically damaging position, and because of that, it has the shortest expected careers. Running back is now seen as an important position for winning football games but one where the athletes who play the position are interchangeable and expendable. Murray has played wonderfully this year, but he’s also been used more than he’s ever been used before. Some people wonder if the Cowboys are simply planning to use him up and then get rid of him at the end of the year.

Jerry Jones, Owner of the Dallas Cowboys

Most team owners would not be worth profiling but Jerry Jones is different. Jones is not only the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, he’s also the President and General Manager of the team. He takes a wide ranging and important role in almost all the football operations of the team. It’s common to see him down on the field, talking to players or coaches. He’s long been criticized for insufficiently delegating authority throughout his organization and much of the Cowboys’ lack of success has been blamed on him. That’s why there’s no one alive who is enjoying this year’s Cowboys season more than Jones. Jones is a charismatic powerful man, so it’s depressing but not surprising that along with compelling and complementary profiles of him there are also accusations of abuse.

Mark Sanchez, Quarterback on the Philadelphia Eagles

Mark Sanchez took over as the starting quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles at the start of November when incumbent starter, Nick Foles, broke his collarbone in a game. Sanchez was a highly regarded player when he was drafted fifth overall by the New York Jets in the first round of the 2009 draft. His time at the Jets started well with two consecutive successful years in the playoffs but was downhill from there. Things got laughably bad in his last year there, epitomized by the infamous “butt fumble” moment when he dropped the ball after running into one of his own teammates. His attempt to rehabilitate his career is off to a good start but he’s still the object of a disproportionate amount of scorn from fans and media.

Chip Kelly, Coach of the Philadelphia Eagles

People who write about football have a bad habit of overstating the brilliance of football coaches. Not every coach is a genius. In fact, for a sport that rewards innovation as much as football, it’s a surprisingly conservative profession. Most coaches design offenses that are just slightly different from what everyone else is doing. Not Chip Kelly. Kelly has long been a bit different. From his college coaching days in New Hampshire and Oregon to the Philadelphia Eagles, Kelly has been more aggressive and innovative than most coaches. He’s great at finding ways to use simple concepts to create open spaces for his players to run into. The simplicity of his offense plus some innovative play signaling grant his team the ability to run plays faster than any other team. He’s now leading the charge into using sleep and activity monitors to regulate, monitor, and customize every aspect of his players lives during the season. Creepy but effective.

Conner Barwin, Linebacker on the Philadelphia Eagles

Connor Barwin is one of the leaders of the Eagles defense. He plays the outside linebacker position where he has to tackle runners, cover receivers, and attack the quarterback often. He’s also one of the more unique characters in the NFL. At 6’4″, 264 lbs, Barwin may be one of the world’s biggest hipsters. He rides his bike to work, is a regular at music venues, and a proponent of marriage equality.

LeSean McCoy, Running Backs on the Philadelphia Eagles

One of the most fun things about the Eagles is how run-heavy their offense is, even in an era when running has become almost obsolete on most teams. The team’s primary running back is a perfect fit to benefit from Chip Kelly’s ability to create plays that give running backs room to beat defenders in the open field. LeSean McCoy, known as “shady” (a name his mom gave him as a baby due to his quickly changing moods), is the lead back. He’s got an almost unbelievable ability to change direction quickly which he retains, as we saw last year, in deep snow. He also hysterically says his own last name, “McCoy” as he runs by would-be-tacklers. The ESPN article on how he came to believe in coach Chip Kelly is a must read to understand him and Kelly.

Sports Forecast for Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on:

In today’s segment, I covered:

  • Champions League Soccer – Bayern Munich at Manchester City, 2:45 p.m.  p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
  • NBA Basketball – Golden State Warriors at Miami Heat, 7:30 p.m. ET on NBA TV.
  • NCAA Basketball – Villanova vs. Michigan in Brooklyn, 10 p.m. ET on ESPN 2.
  • NHL Hockey – Los Angeles Kings at Nashville Predators, 8 p.m. ET on regional cable.
  • And more!

For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Music by Jesse Fischer.

What happened on Monday, November 24, 2014?

  1. Claret gets a draw: I watched some of the British Premiere League soccer game between Southampton at Aston Villa yesterday. Aston Villa was clearly outmatched but they scored first on a quick counter attack and were able to hold on the rest of the game for a tie. The best part was when NBC Sports Network put a graphic on the screen that explained Southampton was wearing yellow and Aston Villa was wearing “claret.”
    Line: British soccer is not only great soccer, it’s also fun cultural tourism.
  2. Snow powered Bills romp: The football game between the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills that was moved to Detroit because of the crazy lake effect snow in Buffalo was extremely one-sided. The Bills beat the Jets 38-4.
    Line: Was this game proof that NFL players would benefit from more rest between games and less practice? Or just that the Jets stink?
  3. Crabs edge Crayfish – The Baltimore Ravens beat the New Orleans Saints 34-27 in a game that went back and forth many times. This leaves New Orleans with four wins and seven losses on the year, which shockingly still puts them in a tie for first place in their division. Their division is so bad, it seems likely at this point that its division winner (and therefore a team that gets to host a playoff game) will have a losing record. The Ravens needed to win this game much more because all four teams in their division have seven wins.
    Line: The Saints division is SO BAD at football.
  4. Black and Gold vs. Black and Gold: Two of the best teams in the Eastern Conference of the NHL for the last decade have been the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins. They both wear black and gold and they both win lots of hockey games. Last night they played each other to a 2-2 tie in regulation time. In overtime, (five minutes where they play 4-4 instead of 5-5) the Penguins scored a goal to win the game, 3-2.
    Line: Sidney Crosby passing to Evgeni Malkin in overtime is just what the Penguins fans want to see.

Opening minds and eyes with sports

As we often explore on Dear Sports Fan, sports can be a reflection of social change or a harbinger of social change. Sports has its own culture, with progressive and traditional elements. Then there are the sports games themselves; the tactics of sports that evolve competitively. This week, three stories popped up that examine change within sports. 

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 change:

This fall has been a tense time for gender issues within sports. I think it’s also been a productive season for gender issues in sports. One challenge, examined in this article, is that only so much progress can be made while key echo chambers are so dominated by a single gender.

Why Are All My Twitter Followers Men?

by Wendy Thurm for Think Progress

I’m a sports fan and a baseball writer and I love the idea that American women care about sports nearly as much as American men do. But there are other numbers that tell us that while women might identify as fans of a particular sport or team, they don’t always engage with that team or that sport with the same level of energy we see from men.

For all the advances for women to play sports, there’s been very little change in the landscape for women covering sports… most sports shows still feature white male non-athlete reporters coupled with former players.

Which brings us back to social media. Despite the idea that new platforms have opened all sorts of discussions, including those about sports, to new audiences and participants, the divide between women and men looks remarkably similar to the one in traditional media… This is important because Twitter isn’t just part of the national sports discussion. It often drives the national sports discussion.

Here’s something I’ve long wondered. Why are positions so fixed in football? Why not put two quarterbacks on the field at once? Or, as Hawaii has done, a punter who can punt with either foot, throw, or run with the ball?

Meet Hawaii’s Scott Harding, the Most Interesting Man in College Football

by Michael Weinreb for Grantland

He was born in Australia, and he played Australian rules football for six years, five of them with his hometown Brisbane Lions. He grew up with the National Football League on his television set, a faraway curiosity that many Australians adore but most only partially comprehend. Watching the NFL and recognizing its broad outlines, Harding thought to himself, I have that kind of skill set.

Harding is a natural righty, but says he’s equally comfortable kicking with either foot, in part because the Australian game requires that sort of ambidexterity. Depending on the side of the field and the hashmark Hawaii finds itself on during a fourth down, Harding can either roll to his left and boot it left-footed, or move to his right and kick it right-footed. There is also the constant threat of a fake, because, in addition to executing pre-planned fakes off certain sets, Harding is adept enough as a runner that Demarest gives him a constant green light to take off. Because Harding is not averse to contact — the hits he takes almost feel muted, he says, after all of those years playing Australian football without pads — he winds up holding the ball until the last possible second so the kick coverage team can get downfield. He’s yet to have a punt blocked. His gross average is 41.8 yards and his net average is 41.1; opponents have managed a total of 30 punt return yards against him the entire season, a measly .41 yards per punt.

Every so often you hear about a sports team that poses naked to raise money. This is always fun because, who better to pose naked than fit, strong athletes? Plus there’s enjoyment in seeing some of the conventions of ultra-masculine (women’s teams have more nuanced stereotypes) groups of men getting naked with each other. One rowing team in England took things a step farther in awesomeness, when, after finding out that their calendars were mostly popular with gay men, decided to create a LGBT charity and donate a portion of their earnings from their calendar to it.

Team Calendar Makes A Splash To Fight Homophobia

by Ron Dicker for the Huffington Post

The U.K. squad has been producing a nude datebook fundraiser since 2009. When it discovered that much of its audience was gay, the team figured it should direct its charity toward the LGBT community, according to a video released to promote the new calendar. So the team has helped established a charity called Sport Allies, “a programme to reach out to young people challenged by bullying, homophobia or low self-esteem,” per the Warwick Rowers website.