Tag: culture

What is going on with FIFA? Why is the U.S. arresting people?

Yesterday, the U.S. government arrested more than a dozen people involved with the organization of international soccer competitions. Many of them were in Switzerland for an annual meeting of their organization others were scattered around the world or already in U.S. custody. This is a big story and has been covered extensively by mainstream and alternative media alike. Even with all that coverage, you may still have some basic questions unanswered. If these are them, great! If not, feel free to comment below or email dearsportsfan@gmail.com.

What is FIFA?

FIFA is the primary organization that facilitates international soccer. Its name is a French abbreviation for Fédération Internationale de Football Association or the International Federation of Association Football in English. By maintaining relationships with regional organizations of a similar sort and directly with national soccer associations, FIFA facilitates all games between national soccer teams in both men’s and women’s soccer. This includes putting on the most important and financially viable international tournaments, the Men’s and Women’s World Cup. In many ways, FIFA resembles a country more than a company. It has a president and a congress, not a CEO and a board of directors, it has an anthem, and despite being a non-profit corporation, its 2013 revenue of $1.3 billion would place it 15th in a list of nations by gross domestic product, right between Mexico and Spain. Its current president, Sepp Blatter, has been in office since 1998.

What the heck is CONCACAF?

CONCACAF is one of six regional associations that FIFA maintains a relationship with. It is an absurdly constructed acronym for the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football. Within that region, CONCACAF does many of the things that FIFA does globally, including the running of big, financially viable international tournaments. FIFA uses CONCACAF and the other five major regional soccer associations as divisions for World Cup Qualification. CONCACAF is officially a non-profit and registered in the Bahamas.

Okay, so what exactly are the people who got indicted accused of doing?

The three key charges are “wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering.” The key word there is racketeering, which is a term we normal associate with organized crime or the mafia. The association is a correct one in this case. Everything gets a lot easier if you think of FIFA as the Corleones, the Sopranos, or a giant, international conglomeration of Stringer Bells. The technical definition of racketeering is quite elegant. Racketeering is the act of collecting money to provide a solution to a problem that would not exist unless you were collecting money for it. A simple example is a protection scheme where a criminal named Bob offers to not break your leg for $50. It’s illegal because protecting your leg from being intentionally broken by Bob is not a problem you needed to solve until Bob started collecting money for not breaking your leg. In this case, the primary service that people within FIFA were collecting money for was for considering bids of countries to host soccer games or tournaments and of media companies or middleman companies called sports marketing companies to cover tournaments. Wire fraud can be widely interpreted as meaning “using a computer to do something else illegal.” So, if you’ve got racketeering and you’re not targeting someone in the stone age, you’ve got wire fraud. The definition of money laundering has expanded past the intentional exchange of illegally acquired money for legally acquired money to mean more generally using legitimate financial institutions like banks or credit cards for illegal acts. This makes money laundering another obvious add-on if you’ve got a racket.

Why is that illegal? Isn’t making money from people who want to host and cover their sporting events exactly what an international sports organization should be doing?

Well, yes, FIFA and CONCACAF exist to organize international soccer games and tournaments and there’s nothing wrong them charging for the right to host or carry those tournaments. The reason this qualifies as a racket is because FIFA officials were there for the purpose of voting on bids by countries and companies who wanted to be involved with soccer during events like the World Cup. No additional payment and certainly no personal payments should have been necessary. Bribing officials to consider your bid became a necessary solution only when those same officials invented a problem (if you don’t bribe me, I won’t vote for you.) A solution to a problem that the person providing the solution invented? That’s a racket!

Why does any of this stuff matters? Who cares?

Here’s the rub. As a soccer fan, none of this affects me. I don’t particularly care where tournaments are held or what media company gets to promote and cover them. I care about the soccer and the soccer players and the wonderful game. The fact that this story is showing up in sports pages and on sports blogs like this one is a distraction from the actual issues though. This isn’t a crime against sports, it’s a crime against people. When corrupt officials make the bid process for a World Cup into a bribery contest, only the most corrupt governments rise to the murky top. Corrupt countries are often despotic countries with very little regard for their own citizens or people in general. Hosting a World Cup is a giant, multi-year infrastructure project. The prime example of this has been and continues to be the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. The Washington Post estimates that a total of 1,200 workers, many of them South Asian migrant workers who are essentially trapped on the job, have died in Qatar since FIFA gave that country the World Cup. To writer Christopher Ingraham’s credit, he points out that this figure includes the death of all construction workers in the country, but even if that inflates it by a factor of 10, it would still be two times higher than the next highest death toll from a major sporting event, the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. In case you think this is simply a bad country doing bad things which they would do even without FIFA’s encouragement, note that FIFA requires countries who want to host the World Cup to actually change their constitutions and laws during the tournament. In 2010, South Africa, (a country you think would know better), was forced to suspend the constitutional right to protest and constrain some laws regarding freedom of the press in order to host the World Cup.

Got it. Can we get back to deflated balls now?

Yes. Yes we can. Although, just in case you want more on FIFA, here are some great links:

How can we penalize NFL teams that hire bad people?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired about NFL teams hiring domestic abusers and then not being punished for it. The Bears shouldn’t be able to sign Ray McDonald, a known domestic abuser, and then cut him without penalty when he abuses again. What can we do about this?

Thanks,
Casey

Dear Casey,

What a dispiriting news item to break on Memorial Day! Yesterday, news broke that Ray McDonald, a defensive end who had been signed this offseason by the Chicago Bears despite having been arrested more than once for domestic abuse and sexual assault, had been arrested again. This time he was arrested for domestic violence after apparently assaulting a woman who was holding a baby. In a good news/bad news kind of action, the Bears immediately cut him from their team. The good news is that the public’s reaction to Ray Rice has forced teams to shift their stance from supporting arrested players to cutting them. The bad news is that the Bears as an organization get off scot free. They will suffer no penalty worse than having to go out and find another defensive end to sign.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t argue that organizations should be responsible for the actions of all their employees. After all, when an employee of Chipotle, to pick a corporation totally at random, is arrested for domestic abuse, no one calls for Chipotle to be penalized in some way. This feels different for three reasons:

  • NFL players are not just players. They are also all spokespeople for their teams. They all speak to the media and public. It’s part of their job requirements. If thought of as spokespeople, it becomes more reasonable to hold the team accountable. A spokesperson is supposed to represent the company and the company is responsible for picking people who will represent them well.
  • The Bears knew what was up with Ray McDonald and they chose to hire him anyway. Their investigation of his character before signing him was so slipshod that it screams of gross incompetence or (more likely) an organization that simply doesn’t care very much about domestic assault. Jane McManus lays this case out spectacularly well in this ESPNW article.
  • Thanks to last year’s giant domestic abuse story, the NFL is now an institution that people look at to measure the progress of society in addressing domestic abuse issues. It’s important for its own future as a league but also for society as a whole for the NFL to show progress on this issue.

Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report calls for punishing teams by taking draft picks away from teams that sign players with multiple arrests in their past. Taking draft picks away is a sufficiently painful way to punish a team but this potential policy is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, although there is no law against refusing to hire people with multiple arrests, it’s not a path I’d like to see organizations follow. Beyond simply an instinct for innocent until proven guilty (a rationale that need not hold in hiring decisions) it also seems regressive to implement this policy during a period of national recognition of widespread discrimination and racial bias in our police forces. A league that is 68% African-American has no business implementing that type of policy right now. The other problem is that this type of policy will almost inevitably lead to some subjective decisions on the league’s part. What if the multiple arrests are for a minor crime like shoplifting and are a decade old? Does it matter if the player was convicted? Given the NFL’s poor recent history of decision-making, giving them more discretionary power seems like a recipe for disaster.

My favorite story about penalties in sports is the habit of rugby officials to simply yell “play on” when players are fighting. It’s the easiest way of getting them to stop. By continuing the game, it creates a disincentive for the players to continue their fight. No one wants to miss too much of the game. This is exactly how the NFL should handle punishing teams for signing players who are later arrested. Instead of creating a penalty, create a disincentive. The easiest way to do this is to take away a team’s ability to cut players so easily. If teams could not get out of contracts with players so easily, they would be more careful about who they sign. Either force teams to hold players for at least a season after they sign them — using up a prized roster slot — or make it so that the money they were going to pay him can not be used to replace him with another player.

How feasible is this change? The NFL has a soft salary cap, so this would not require too much restructuring. There’s also a clear model for this. The NBA and NHL are much closer to this model today than the NFL is and it hasn’t hurt their popularity one bit. The right of NFL teams to cut players whenever they want with no financial penalty is not inalienable. Nudging this dynamic just a little towards a more lasting commitment on the part of the team will force them to care more about their players in a variety of ways. It could have many other benefits but it will absolutely force teams to think twice about hiring players with McDonald’s past and present behavior.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Dear Sports Fan turns four

Four years ago today, I published the first two posts on Dear Sports Fan. One, written by my friend, pseudonymously known as Dean Russell Bell, answered the question, “Can you explain the popularity of NASCAR? How can people watch a four hour race?” The second, which I wrote, answered the quite reasonable query, “My friend’s favorite team is out, why is he still watching so much sports?” For the rest of the month, a grand total of 15 people read those posts. The next month, Bell and I were joined by John DeFilippis and Lisa Filipek. We wrote 20 posts that covered topics from the arbitrary nature of basketball fouls to what being offsides means to whether a new father should try to become a sports fan. It was a lot of fun and we were thrilled with the response, not just from our friends and family who followed us on Facebook and Twitter but also from people who went to their computers, wondering something about sports, and found our writing through Google or another search engine. That second month, we got 1,227 views.

Today, Dear Sports Fan is a close to full-time job for me. I publish between two and four posts every day, although I do take weekends. Over four years, the blog has been viewed over 120,000 times and it keeps growing. Last week was my biggest week yet, with over 3,200 views. The traffic is still 90% from search engines although I have a wonderful group of people who interact with me on Facebook, Twitter, and the sports-only social network, Fancred. So both non-sports fans and fans alike enjoy reading our posts. I am thrilled by this discover and am continuing to try to figure out where Dear Sports Fan’s sweet spot is in this diverse audience. One thing is for sure. My passion for sports and desire to make the sports world a friendly, understandable world for everyone who ventures into it remain strong. In just the past couple weeks, here are a few ways in which sports has intersected in my life that have reminded me that the goals of Dear Sports Fan are relevant and worthwhile.

  • As a new resident of Boston, I’ve been looking to make new friends and business connections. So, I’ve been going to some Meetup groups. One of them was an entrepreneurs group that met at a candlepin bowling alley. Within five minutes of getting there, I was helping people understand how the scoring worked. After a pleasant evening of networking and bowling, I went home and wrote about how candlepin bowling works. Playing sports can create and cement friendships.
  • This week, I am spending some time with a sick relative. She napped most of the day yesterday, and was generally a little bummed out and distracted until late afternoon when her head snapped back and her eyes lit up, “What time is the hockey game tonight?” Following sports can be a passion throughout life.
  • Of course, it’s not always smooth. Living with a sports fan, as my girlfriend does (although, to be fair, she is also a sports fan, just one who spends less time watching sports on TV) can be a challenge. And even someone who thinks and writes about how to best cohabitate in a mixed-sports-passion relationship, doesn’t always get it right. Sports can bring people together but it takes thought and care, just like other parts of a romantic, familial, or work-related relationship.

Four years may seem like a long time but I hope it’s just the start of the journey. There’s so much more to explore and explain. In the next few weeks, I’ll be working on hard on the upcoming Women’s Soccer World Cup. The World Cup is an ideal event for Dear Sports Fan. It’s an international event with competition at the very highest level. The U.S. team is a wonderful group of athletes on a mission to recapture the first World Cup Championship since 1999. To date, I’m about half-way through profiling each of the women on the U.S. team (I’m attempting the rare feat of profiling female athletes only as athletes, with no reference to gender or gendered stories). So far, these profiles have been a hit. One athlete, Shannon Boxx, even retweeted my profile of her! This was awesome, because it helped me connect with a group of passionate women’s soccer fans. You can find all of the profiles here. I’m also compiling the material I’ve written over the past four years and creating a series of soccer email courses: Soccer 101, 200 level courses on soccer culture, crime and punishment, events and leagues, and positions, and a 300 level course. Keep an eye out for those in the next couple weeks.

So, happy birthday to me, and thank you for reading, doing social networky things, and above all, asking questions!

 

Why is the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao scandal erupting now?

Mere hours before the most highly anticipated boxing match of the decade, a scandal erupted. Two prominent journalists from ESPN and CNN have had their press credentials, those magical passes which grant them access not just to the arena but to the fighters themselves to ask questions before and after the fight unexpectedly revoked. Fellow journalists around the world and internet have rallied to their defense. #boycotthefight began trending on Twitter. What’s the fuss about? The short answer is that the two journalists in question are women and the fighter who is being blamed for pulling their credentials is a well known abuser of women. The long answer? Well, about that long answer…

As with many situations in life, it’s helpful to tell one of my father’s jokes.

A person from a big city is visiting some friends of theirs who live in a tiny town. She gets in at night and enjoys a few hours of sitting by the fire and drinking beer while letting her friends regale her with all the scandalous goings on of their small town. She learns about the Smith’s strange sexual proclivities, the Borden’s habit of sleep driving, that Dan Trent is cheating on his wife with his dental hygienist, and many many more stories. In the morning, the big city visitor awakes, refreshed after a good sleep. She walks down to the breakfast table where her hosts are already eating. They’re laughing at something in the local paper. The visitor asks what it is. She’s told that the local gossip columnist has printed a story outing Dan Trent as being a cheater. The visitor says, “but that’s not news, you told me everyone in town already knew about that. Why do they bother printing it and what’s so funny about reading something you already know?” Her friend wipes the tears from his eyes and says, “Yes dear, we already know everything, but we still like to know who got caught!”

Classic Dad joke. Not funny, per se, but useful nonetheless. The problem with the presently erupting scandal is that we already knew that Floyd Mayweather was a misogynist, egotist with a long history of abusing women. Why should it matter now that he “gets caught.”  That’s all this is — it’s society “catching” someone for something we already knew about. On one hand, this is good. The more abusers we collectively shame, even if we can’t lock them up, the better. On the other hand, manufacturing outrage now feels hypocritical — as if revoking press passes were some how worse than abuse.

For background on Mayweather, please read some or all of these articles, they are both wonderful writing and much needed journalism. Thanks to those who wrote them.

The Boxer and the Batterer

by Louisa Thomas for Grantland

If you only read one thing about Floyd Mayweather or this fight or boxing in general or just anything at all this weekend, this should be your choice. Thomas writes a completely engaging, objective, and most of all, true story about the contradiction of a man whose boxing success has been built by controlling his rage within the ring, who expresses his rage freely on the faces and bodies of women in his life.

On Saturday, Mayweather will take on Manny Pacquiao in a fight that has quickly become the biggest, most important event in recent boxing history. What’s so striking to me isn’t the spectacle of it but the dissonance around it. A sport that is increasingly marginal is dominating SportsCenter. A fight in a stadium that holds only 16,800 and is available only on pay-per-view could generate $300 million. A boxer who wins like a dancer allegedly beats women like a pugilist.

What are you supposed to do with this?

This Is How Las Vegas Protects Floyd Mayweather

 

by Diana Moskovitz for Deadspin

A long, exhaustive, and brilliant investigative attempt to counteract Mayweather’s refrain that if he had really abused women, there would be pictures of it.

There are pictures, though. In at least two cases of domestic violence, official records show pictures were taken. In one case, a police report explicitly says that the photos show a victim’s injuries. But authorities in Las Vegas, a city poised to make millions off Floyd this weekend, have either destroyed the photos or haven’t released them.

This is perhaps the cruelest part of the victims Mayweather chooses. They’re mostly women who have emotional relationships with him, sometimes even children with him. They still care for him, despite the bruises, concussions, and death threats, because domestic violence is a cycle of power and control that is difficult to escape. Like many domestic abusers, Mayweather wins them back with apologies, lavish gifts, and promises he’ll never do it again—taking advantage of his power and control over them—and then hits them again.

The same feelings that make it so hard to break out of an abusive relationship make it hard to release the surest proof that Mayweather beats women. It’s easy to throw everything you have at a stranger on the street who slugs you in the face. It’s not easy to do the same with the father of your children.

Floyd Mayweather Bans Michelle Beadle, Rachel Nichols From Covering Bout

by Daniel Roberts for Deadspin

The best article (at this time) about today’s scandal.

Stop and process this for a moment. Showtime has denied press credentials to two of the most prominent reporters for three of the world’s most important television outlets, including HBO, which is co-producing the fight, and ESPN, which has invested huge chunks of its prime schedule this week promoting the fight in infomercial-like fashion.

While it is Mayweather’s team that is pulling the strings, it’s Showtime that owes the world an explanation. Why have they continued to sanitize their coverage of Mayweather’s history of domestic violence while continuing to unhesitatingly promote other aspects of his outside-the-ring lifestyle? Why did they allow Mayweather to air a one-sided self-produced infomerical in which he denied any responsibility for his convictions? Why are they blackballing important female journalists for having the temerity to question Mayweather about what everyone else seems to recognize is a legitimate topic…

Beyond juleps and hats – the Kentucky Derby

Dear Sports Fan,

What’s so great about the Kentucky Derby? Isn’t it just an excuse to wear silly hats and drink mint juleps?

Thanks,
Luke

Dear Luke,

You’re absolutely right. For many of us, the Kentucky Derby is an excuse to wear silly hats and drink mint juleps while being thoroughly confused by the arcane world of horse racing. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, in fact, I’ve been happy subsisting solely on silly hats and mint juleps on Kentucky Derby day for years. This time around though, I thought I would try to add a serving of understanding to my meal, just to make it more well rounded.

The Kentucky Derby is one of the three big races in the United States that make up the so-called Triple Crown of horse racing. It’s the first and most prestigious of the bunch. The 1.25 mile race been run every year since 1875. Its long tradition, somewhat rare in this country, is part of its appeal, but for the horses owners and racing fans, the biggest draw is money. The winning horse will get $1.24 million dollars and that’s without considering the largest source of money in horse racing: gambling. Betting on horse races is a tradition that certainly predates the Kentucky Derby and it’s still going strong. You should expect that over $125 million dollars will have been bet on the race by the time it begins. This year, the race will be televised on NBC. You can tune in at 4 p.m. ET for lots of talk about the race, the hats, and the juleps but the race itself will begin at 6:24. It’s probably a good idea to turn it on at least a few minutes early. The race only lasts two minutes, so turning it on a couple minutes late could be enough to make you miss the whole thing.

Rivaling even the silly hats as a Kentucky Derby tradition is, of course, gambling. I wrote a whole post about gambling yesterday with everything you need to understand how betting on horse racing works. This morning I added a second post, where you can test your knowledge through the gift of musical theater. It’s easy to bet on horse racing. It’s actually the only sport in the United States that is completely legal to bet on online. That said, it might be more fun to bet just with your friends. You can make up your own form of betting by using your (potentially newfound) understanding of odds. Pick horses and reward the winner based on the odds. If someone picks a long shot 40/1 horse and they win, maybe you all collectively pay for the next 40 beers or chicken wings they buy or maybe even a bouquet of that many roses. That will give people a good incentive to pick a favorite (likely to win but may only get them a couple of beers/chicken wings/roses) and equally a good incentive to pick a horse that is unlikely to win.

Another great element of horse racing is the names. Horses often have absurd names. There is a reason for this or at least an explanation. Horses have to have names that are not just unique but also easily distinguishable when race announcers say their names. Quick aside on race announcers. They are an amazing mix of auctioneer, square dance caller, and huckster. To get a feel for it, watch this call by Tom Durkin:

You can imagine that if horses had similar names, all hell would break loose as people who gambled a significant amount of money on a horse named The Rural Juror ran up to collect their winners only to bump into another group of convinced winners who had bet on the actual winning horse, The Plural Furor. As many limitations do, the strict prohibition on similar sounding names for horses had led to some wonderful comedy. Take, for example, this race:

However you decide to partake in the race today, do it safely and enjoyably!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

 

What musical theater can teach us about betting on horses

Betting and horses go together like two degenerate peas in a pod. I wrote about this yesterday in our post on how to understand gambling on horse races. Once you’ve picked up the basic elements of any new skill, the first thing to do is to test it in a real world situation. In the realm of gambling, that often means losing lots of money. A great alternative is to watch a race with an experienced gambler and make some imaginary bets with her so she can tally up your winnings/losings at the end to see what you would have won or more likely lost. If you’re like me, you might not be able to find an experienced gambler. The only ones I know are characters in a musical… so I figured, why not test our knowledge on them??!

I’ve annotated the lyrics to one of the great horse racing songs of all time, Fugue for Tinhorns from the musical Guys and Dolls. Each singer’s line goes in and out, but to simplify things, I’ve stuck with the loudest. The guy in the center, who starts the song is improbably named Nicely-Nicely Johnson. The shorter man who prefers the horse, Valentine, is Benny Southstreet and the third man is Rusty Charlie. Listen to the song and see if you can decipher all of the horse racing betting terms. If you need help, look at the annotated lyrics below.

I got the horse right here.
The name is Paul Revere and here’s a guy that says if the weather’s clear,
can do, can do. This guy says the horse can do.
If he says the horse can do, can do, can do.
You other two guys should listen to me, because I know which horse is going to win. His name is Paul Revere and I have received information suggesting that as long as it doesn’t rain (some horses run better on a wet racetrack than others) he should win.

I’m picking Valentine, ’cause on the morning line,
the guy has got him figured at five to nine.
I’m ignoring your advice and betting on a horse named Valentine. His odds are 5/9 which means that if the race were run 14 times, he should win nine times or 64% of the time. That’s a big favorite, no wonder the little guy in the grey hat wants to bet on him.

But look at Epitaph, he wins it by a half,
according to this here in the Telegraph.
Rusty Charlie prefers a horse named Epitaph whose odds he does not quote but who the horse racing tout (columnist who predicts the outcome of races) in a New York City newspaper claims will win.

For Paul Revere I’ll bite, I hear his foot’s all right.
Of course it all depends if it rained last night.
Nicely-Nicely remains determined to go with his initial horse, although he’s still a bit nervous about the weather. And now a new concern, the health of the horse’s foot has cropped up. I’m not sure our friend here is the most convincing.

I know it’s Valentine, the morning work looks fine,
you know the jockey’s brother’s a friend of mine.
Benny is always looking for an edge and he thinks he’s got some valuable inside information. The “morning work” would be a pre-race workout the horses run. Despite this exercise being likely closed to the public, real gamblers like these guys have connections, like the brother of  Valentine’s jockey or rider for the day.

Just a minute boys. I got the feed box noise,
it says the great grandfather was Equipoise.
I wasn’t positive what “feed box noise” was but this guy on Answers.com argues fairly convincingly that it’s slang for scuttlebutt or gossip that people would have traded around the horse’s feed box. That makes sense to me. The internet was also helpful in teaching me that Equipoise was a famous horse who raced in the early 1930s. A horse’s genealogy, often referred to as its bloodlines, is of intense interest to gamblers, who generally feel as if specific characteristics like a desire to run, a willingness to obey the jockey, or a dislike for being hemmed in by other horses are passed down from one horse to another over generations. 

I told you Paul Revere, now this is no bum steer,
it’s from a handicapper that’s real sincere.
Poor Nicely-Nicely. He’s still trying to convince the other two that his advice (steer) is good or at least not bad (bum). His argument is that the handicapper (tout, horse racing prognosticator) is sincere. Which seems like just a terrible argument to me. Who cares about sincerity? What we need is accuracy!

I’m picking Valentine, ’cause on the morning line,
the guy has got him figured at five to nine.
Benny is sticking to his guns.

So make it Epitaph, he wins it by a half,
according to this here in the Telegraph.
As is Rusty!

Epitaph. Valentine. Paul Revere.
I got the horse right here!

Thanks for reading and good luck,
Ezra Fischer

Why do football fans get so excited about the NFL draft?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do football fans get so excited about the NFL draft? The television ratings for it are always incredibly high but as far as I can tell, it’s just people talking in an auditorium. What gives?

Thanks,
Gabriel

Dear Gabriel,

Excitement over the National Football League draft is one of those elements of sports fandom that needlessly alienates people who aren’t sports fans. You’re absolutely right that watching the NFL draft seems totally crazy to non-sports fans. It is, as you say, “just people talking in an auditorium.” Yet for the more than 32 million sports fans who watch it, it’s one of the most exciting nights of the year, even if this year’s enthusiasm should be dampened by the first pick almost definitely being a rapist. The best way to understand the draft is as the ultimate piece of crossover fiction.

Here’s a topical analogy that might help explain the NFL draft phenomenon. The second Avengers movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron is coming out on Friday and it’s likely to be a blockbuster hit. I personally know lots of people who have already purchased tickets and made plans to get to the theater early so they can be sure of getting good seats. The Avengers is a team of superheroes that includes characters like the Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and the Hulk. Each of these characters has their own comic books and movies and in fact, they existed before the Avengers. Fans follow along with these characters individually. Part of what makes the Avengers movies so exciting is the coming together of these well known characters. How will they interact? Will they fit together well or will there be infighting? Who will take a leadership role? Who will fall back from their normal position in the spotlight to become a supporting character?

This is almost exactly the same thing that fascinates football fans about the draft. College football is an incredibly popular drama in its own right and its characters are well known to sports fans. The NFL draft is the moment when these characters get scrambled up and cross over to become a part of another, even more popular drama, the NFL. This sparks the same type of speculation and questioning as the coming together of the Avengers. How will a star college football player fit into his new NFL team? Will he become the new leader or learn to take a back seat? How will he interact on the field and off with the already established characters on that NFL team? In the highly competitive universe of NFL teams, will the addition of a new super hero tip the balance in favor of their new team?

If you’re not an Avengers fan, there are lots of other examples of the allure that this type of scrambling or crossing over in popular culture. The incredibly popular book and movie 50 Shades of Grey began as fan fiction built on top of (no pun intended) the world of Twilight. The excellent 1995 bank robbery movie, Heat, was much anticipated because it finally brought the actors Al Pacino and Robert Dinero, who had played father and son in The Godfather Part II (in different eras) together in a single scene. And of course, there are lots of examples of television show crossovers that people love or love to hate, the appearance of George Clooney and Noah Wylie on Friends chief among them. Even when or especially when the crossover never actually happens, the idea of a crossover is obsessively interesting. My own nerdy detective novel favorites are the theory that Rex Stout’s detective Nero Wolfe may have been the son of Sherlock Holmes or perhaps his brother Mycroft. I am sure there is an example in nearly every fictional world. What would happen if the Stringer Bell met Tony Soprano? What if Olivia Pope took Frank Underwood as a client? What if the Dunphys were transplanted into the post-apocalyptic world of The Walking Dead?

Just like fantasy football is a nerdy statistical role playing game disguised as sports, the NFL draft is a combination of crossover fiction, fan fiction, and super-hero team comic books surrounded by a sportsy shell. We might not all be into the exterior shell but we can all understand the appeal of what’s within.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

Why does no one seem to care that the #1 pick in the NFL draft is almost definitely a rapist?

It’s not hard to place what’s wrong with the National Football League draft happening on Thursday, April 30: the first player selected will almost definitely be a rapist. Not everything about the draft is so easy to figure out. It is hard to understand why the team with the first pick, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, would make this choice. There are so many other decisions they could make that would be easily defensible from a football perspective and would not involve hiring someone who is almost definitely a rapist.  It’s also hard to understand why journalists and media organizations of all shapes and sizes are either ignoring this fact or are merely motioning towards it with weak and insulting euphemisms like “off the field questions.”

The man who will almost definitely be made a millionaire when his name is the first called on Thursday night is Jameis Winston. Winston spent the last three years at the University of Florida State where he played quarterback for the school’s football team. He was part of the team in 2014 when it won a national championship and he became the youngest player ever to win college football’s most prestigious individual award, the Heisman Trophy, in the same year. He is also almost definitely a rapist. On December 7, 2012, a freshman student at Florida State told police that she had been raped. She would later identify the man who raped her as Jameis Winston and much later, when his DNA was tested and compared to some found on her clothing, there was a positive match. The comprehensive report on this crime and the subsequent investigation or lack thereof was written by Walt Bogdanich for the New York Times. Its conclusion is that “there was virtually no investigation at all, either by the police or the university.” That doesn’t mean that Winston did not rape this woman, just that the state prosecutor in charge of the case decided they didn’t think they could get a conviction. In fact, that prosecutor, Willie Meggs has publicly said, in response to being asked whether he thinks that Winston sexually assaulted the woman, “I think what happened was not good.”

We have a principle in this country that proclaims people are “innocent until proven guilty,” but that’s a legal principle, not a cultural one. “Innocent until proven guilty” makes sense as a legal rule because we generally believe that wrongfully imprisoning an innocent person is a worse miscarriage of justice than letting a guilty person go free. I believe in “innocent until proven guilty” as a foundational principle of law but I don’t think it means that we should blindfold and mute ourselves to a person’s actions simply because they were not convicted of a crime. From reading the New York Times expose, we know about the insufficient and probably willfully corrupt way the police and university officials handled the case. From reading Daniel Roberts wonderful piece in Deadspin, we know that the odds of being falsely accused of rape are “about the same as your odds of being attacked by a shark,” and that’s without factoring in that Winston was the most important football player in a corrupt and football crazed city. Winston is almost definitely a rapist.

Winston is almost definitely a rapist and I don’t think there’s actually much debate about the fact. So why won’t anyone say or write those words in the context of the NFL draft? The NFL draft is the signature offseason event for the most popular professional sporting league in the United States. It’s viewed by over 30 million people. Last year more than 9 million tweets (that’s up to 1.2 billion characters) were sent about the draft. Pre-draft media coverage is intense and focused largely on a form called the mock draft. In a mock draft, people predict what is going to happen during the draft — which teams are going to select which players. Virtually every mock draft this year predicts that Jameis Winston will be the first pick of the draft. Virtually none of them mention the fact that Winston is almost definitely a rapist. Some ignore it completely or some use euphemistic and infuriatingly demeaning language to refer obliquely to it. Below is a selection of mock drafts. (I chose somewhat randomly, but I did not exclude any for having mentioned the fact that Winston is almost definitely a rapist.) Many of these organizations have published excellent articles covering Jameis Winston as likely sexual assault perpetrator but in the context of the NFL draft, that work seems to have gone missing.

NFL.com mock draft by Charlie Davies: My top-ranked QB. Despite all the issues that surround him off the field, the Buccaneers feel good about their background checks and will make him their latest franchise QB.

CBS Sports mock draft by Rob Rang: Though questions still remain about Winston’s maturity, from purely a football perspective he is an excellent match in Tampa Bay…

ESPN mock draft by Todd McShay: No surprise here. I have Winston as the top-ranked player on my board, and I believe he will be the first overall pick by the Bucs on April 30. Tampa Bay has to get its quarterback of the future out of this selection, and while Winston does bring with him some off-field risks, I give him the edge as a player over Marcus Mariota. In the areas that matter most in projecting QBs to the next level — including reading defenses, going through progressions, anticipating throws and delivering the ball accurately — he’s one of the best prospects I’ve evaluated in the past 10 years.

Newsday mock draft by Nick Klopsis: …signs point to Winston more recently… As long as the Buccaneers have done their homework into Winston’s well-documented off-field issues, his name likely will be the first one called April 30 in Chicago.

New York Times mock draft from the Associated Press: Player character and behavior should be even more of a deciding issue in this year’s draft. The Bucs, desperate for a quarterback, say they are convinced the guy they choose is not a bad apple and is a great prospect.

Washington Post mock draft by Mark Maske: …Winston’s off-field issues must be considered when making such a franchise-defining decision. But Winston is the more NFL-ready QB and it would be a significant surprise at this point if the pick is not Winston.

The MMQB mock draft by Peter King …Always got the sense the Bucs wanted to pick Winston, then went through the investigative process to see if there was some great reason not to. They couldn’t find one…

[editors note] With no sense of irony, King starts his column with a long discussion of another prospective NFL draft pick, Shane Ray, and how his recent traffic violation and marijuana possession charge is likely to end with his being picked significantly later than he would otherwise have been. No mention of rape though.

The Big Lead mock draft by Jason McIntyre: Hasn’t changed. Wouldn’t be my guy.

“Issues,” “maturity,” “character and behavior,” “not a bad apple,” “background checks,” and “off-field risks.” That seems to be how NFL teams think about the potential problem of drafting someone who is almost definitely a rapist. To be clear, this is not just how football teams think about picking a player, this is how multi-million dollar businesses are thinking about the hiring process for one of their key employees. That’s reprehensible, especially if you combine that with the well documented fact that NFL teams are notoriously bad at predicting the success of quarterback hires. If you have a high profile hire to make and know that your organization and its 31 competitors have a long history of struggling to hire well in this position, why would you choose to hire the guy who is almost definitely a rapist?

There are so many other things the Tampa Bay Buccaneers could do with the first pick of the draft. They could take another quarterback like Marcus Mariota, from the University of Oregon, who also won a Heisman trophy during his college career. Or select a player who plays another position, like defensive tackle Leonard Williams who is said to be the most reliable player in the draft. Or trade the pick to another team and let them employ the rapist. In an highly competitive entertainment industry where success is based not just on winning but also on inspiring a base of people to literally wear your employees name on their backs, why would you hire someone who is almost definitely a rapist?

There’s very little we can do about this before Thursday. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have already made up their minds about who to hire and Vegas is so certain that it’s Jameis Winston that they’ll only give you $100 if you bet $1,000 with them. That’s about as certain as something can be before it happens. Sexual assault is an enormous problem in this country and having our biggest sports league so blatantly ignore it deters people from taking the problem seriously. The best thing we can do is refuse to hide behind euphemism. If you want, you can follow Keith Olbermann’s call to boycott the NFL Draft. My preference is for you to go to a draft party or a bar where people are watching the draft or turn it on in your own house, and when Jameis Winston’s name is called, turn to the people next to you and say, “That guy is almost definitely a rapist. I wouldn’t hire him and I don’t think a football team should either.”

Sports Stories: Meet Jehangir Madon

Everyone has a sports story. As part of my mission to create peace in the world between sports fans and non-sports fans, I am doing a set of interviews of people on both sides of the line. Whether you’re a die-hard fan with their favorite player’s face tattooed onto their body or someone who is not a fan but whose life intersects with sports in some way, you have a valuable story to tell. Sign up today to tell your story on our easy to use booking page.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to Jehangir Madon. Jehangir is a man of international sports fandom whose enthusiastic and thoughtful nature make his sports story worth learning. You can read a synopsis of our interview below or listen to it in full here.

 

Name: Jehangir Madon
Current Location: Brooklyn
Home town: Bombay (now called Mumbai,) India

Teams:

  • The Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL
  • India in international cricket
  • The Williams team in Formula One racing
  • Otherwise, teams wearing blue.

How did you become an Eagles fan?

“I became a fan of the eagles for two reason within five plays. I had never really watched football before I came to America. It was on TV a few times and I was like, “Ehh whatever.” But then one day, I was home and it was the playoffs and there was nothing to do in the afternoon. So I turn on the TV, and there was this playoff game between the Eagles and the Giants, I think it was the 2000 playoffs. And on the first play the Eagles kick off and the Giants take the ball and run it all the way back for a touchdown. Now I would normally have rooted for the Blue team, you know, I like blue, but I was a little older so I say, “I’m going to cheer for the team that’s losing” and that was the Eagles. And then they had a black quarterback who was running around and I had never seen that. I did not know that Randall Cunningham existed. I didn’t know about anybody before McNabb who did that. So I thought, “Oh my God, this guy is so cool, I’m going to cheer for him.” And then I did cheer for them the whole game… and they lost.”

What’s your earliest sports memory?

“My earliest sports memory is the 1994 football World Cup. It was the final between Brazil and Italy. We took our TV from the living room and put it in the kitchen because I lived in a house with ten people and the kitchen was the only place where nobody would sleep… So me, my Dad’s brother and his son took the TV and we watched this really interesting and engrossing match… A zero zero draw, and I was cheering for Italy because they were wearing blue… and they lost… I was living in India, that match was going on at 2 in the morning I think that’s why I remember it because it was such an odd time for me to be allowed to be awake.

How do sports play into your family life? What about your group of friends? or dating life?

“Dating life, it’s mostly me watching sports while my girlfriend just lies in my arms and goes to sleep. She enjoys it and I enjoy it.”

“With my friends, during the NFL, I like to hang out, get a drink and watch some games. It’s a nice social thing. I think that’s why I like sports. I just remember sitting in my house with my uncle and my brother sitting and just watching a game very intently it’s something you do together and it’s fun to cheer for something. Or cheer against something, it’s great, especially when you win when you’re not supposed to.”

What do you think being an Eagles fan says about you? What makes Eagles fans different from everyone else?

“Somehow you just believe that this year you’ll win even when all of the statistics say that there’s zero chance. But there’s always this hope.”

On fidelity to a sports team:

“When you choose a team you cannot switch, nobody respects your fandom then, especially yourself.”

How does rooting for the eagles fit into your weekly routine?

“During the NFL season, it’s all NFL. I try to catch the game at a friends house or lately I haven’t been watching because I’ve been in New York and there’s lots of nicer things to do on Sunday… What’s changed over the past four years is fantasy football, it really pulls at you and makes you want to cheer for weird things.”

“It’s become less intense. I remember in 2004 or 5 when the eagles were really good, it was like, this week I’m really excited. Because once you start losing a lot, it makes it hard to look forward to, you know, the pain that’s coming if you’re going to lose.”

During the offseason — “There’s nothing going on, it’s just nonsense stories, there’s no reason to keep up with it. And that’s the best thing about the NFL you can really really be into it and it’s only one third of the year.

Who is your all-time favorite player from the Eagles?

“Donovan McNabb. He just seemed like a funny nice guy and no matter what happened, he always took the blame. I always liked him because he was a leader and when he was younger he did really amazing things. I think we just forget when we see somebody like Kaepernick doing these things now, we’re like, “oh my God, it’s never been done before” although it’s been done every three years, McNabb has done it, Vick did it. And when [McNabb] was in his prime, he was the best at it.”

Who is your all-time football nemesis?

“Fantasy football makes it hard to hate anybody. cause you can have them on your team next year. I think fantasy football has tempered my love and hate for people in the nfl because I know they could be on my team next year so I can’t really hate them and I don’t want to love them too much because I know they could be gone. It’s made me a more moderate football watcher.”

What’s the most important thing you’d like non-sports fans to understand about sports?

“Most of us realize that it’s just sports and when it ends its okay but that doesn’t mean when you’re cheering you don’t cheer with all your heart. Cause the real extacy you only get when you really want someone to win and you don’t expect them to win and somehow they make it and there’s few things in life that are that good.”

Change is coming in sports but it's slow, hard work

As with the rest of the world, sports cultures are constantly in flux. Nowhere is free from the push and pull battle between honoring and conserving the past and pushing the present towards what we think the future should look like. These three stories show different elements of that battle from sport to sport, region to region, and issue to issue. 

A Tactical Shift Sweeps Soccer, Only It Comes From the Police

by Sam Borden for the New York Times

For at least the past fifty years, soccer matches across the world have been popular vehicles through which to fight political or cultural battles. All to often these fights have literally been fights — mass mob violence. In an attempt to prevent violence at soccer matches, police have traditionally sought to overwhelm any trouble-makers with large numbers of well-armed and armored police. Just recently, some police forces have begun to take a more gentle and perhaps ultimately more effective approach.

The most dangerous factions of fans, security officials said, are generally the splinter groups or unaffiliated organizations that support a particular team. Many of these groups have political affiliations or ideologies, which can make their interactions more combustible.

While some cities — particularly in Eastern Europe, Mr. Martins said — have stuck to the older philosophy of using loads of officers carrying lots of weapons, a more peaceful strategy is growing in popularity. Instead of using “batons and barking dogs” to keep the peace, Mr. O’Hare said, the goal is to shepherd visiting fans to a particular area of the city and then help accompany the fans to the stadium.

The National Women’s Hockey League: Impatience Is A Virtue

by Kate Cimini for The Hockey Writers

Women’s sports have made an amazing amount of progress since 1972 when Title Nine went into affect, forcing all federally funded institutions (basically all schools) to provide equal opportunities for women. One of the largest deficits remaining is in the ranks of professional leagues for women’s team sports. The most successful of women’s leagues has been the WNBA which from its start was operated and subsidized by the men’s league, the NBA. None of the other major men’s sports leagues have followed suit by supporting a women’s league in their sport. Recently a group of people decided not to wait any longer for the NHL to initiate a women’s league but to do it themselves. I wish them luck and am excited that one of the original four franchises will be located in my new home town of Boston. I will be a fan!

The National Women’s Hockey league held its launch party Monday night at Chelsea Piers in New York City.

One thing was clear: the NWHL was born out of impatience. Impatience for women’s sports to be recognized as important, impatience for the next step, for women not only to have a place to continue to play hockey (as the CWHL allows) but to give them the ability to dedicate more of their time to it, as money affords time and opportunity.

Five gay college basketball coaches speak from the closet

by Cyd Zeigler for Out Sports

Despite rapid change in the outside world, the plight of homosexual men and women in the sports world remains annoyingly, frustratingly stagnant. Believe it or not, despite more than 300 schools competing in both men’s and women’s college basketball, there isn’t a single openly gay head coach. Cyd Zeigler, who does a wonderful job covering the gay sports beat, got a group of closeted gay coaches together and wrote their stories (while protecting their identities) of fear and anxiety with empathy and indignation.

Why would a closeted gay coach take a job where he had to sign an anti-gay lifestyle contract? College basketball coaching jobs aren’t exactly plentiful. There’s stiff competition for each opening from the head coaching spots on down the line. For someone recently out of college with no coaching experience, that first job is essential to his career.

Plus, his head coach knew Thomas was gay.

“It was the first question my coach asked me when he interviewed me,” Thomas said. The coach didn’t care as long as Thomas kept it quiet. “He needed a black assistant coach. I played at a high level. My knowledge of the game and skills-training were good. I was the one who related to the kids. He needed me.”

Fear of getting another job was pervasive in all of my conversations with these five coaches. There is a clear assumption — by them and the people in the profession closest to them — that by coming out publicly their chances of advancing in the profession will be dead.