When I first read the news that Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon was asked to interview for the Milwaukee Bucks head coaching vacancy, my eyes welled up. There are few things more powerful in this era typically steeped in inequality than the sweet smell of authentic, best person for the job, progress. The Bucks hired Mike Budenholzer th...
Back in April before the NFL’s new class was selected in Dallas, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson hosted an ESPN special called QB2QB, billed as Wilson mentoring top NFL prospects like Baker Mayfield and Mason Rudolph. Wilson came across as a solid interviewer with genuine curiosity – Where did you get those leadership skills, Ma...
NFL Hall of Famer, nose hair clipper spokesman, and noted sexual harasser Brett Favre recently had a chance to audition for the open Monday Night Football analyst chair, according to the . Favre and his understated persona didn’t exactly wow ESPN executives who reportedly gave the 48-year-old the don’t call us, we’ll call you treatment. In less...
The one-on-one interviews NFL team executives conduct with prospects is one of the most crucial aspects of the Scouting Combine and the entire draft process. Like any job interview, teams are probing to test commitment, charisma, and character as it considers a vast pool of candidates. Some of the questions have been notoriously bizarre (?). Others have...
I didn’t grow up watching football. My high school was too small to field a team, so I didn’t spend any Friday nights under stadium lights. My dad hates sports, and he never wanted to be that guy who ignores his family to watch a sporting event. He was a cheerleader at the University of Arkansas and always jokes he did it so he’d have an excuse to...
I started this site way back in 2009 in large part to compensate for the NFL’s inability to intellectually market to women. Women were high spending consumers - female apparel was the league’s fastest growing ancillary business – yet they were not treated as engaged fans. In the years since we have experienced a lot of female firsts. The first ...
“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description and perhaps I could never succeed intelligibly in doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” Justice Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio...
It felt like I was getting ready for an afternoon of sledding with my friends, instead of a football game. The forecast for the Buffalo Bills late-season matchup against the Indianapolis Colts last Sunday was ominous. The temp was low thirties, but the wind chill brought it down to twenty. It called for snow. Lots of snow. Lake effect snow. And if yo...
Any day now Roger Goodell is going to receive a contract extension worth nearly $50 million a year. Plus a Dostoyevsky novel-sized list of perks. Meanwhile his league is running amok and being run amok. Monday Night Football’s Steelers-Bengals slugfest illustrated that no matter how many safety rules are implemented the NFL at its core is a basti...
At 4:30 AM on Monday morning my 6-year old son opened my bedroom room with the vigor of a superhero about the save the world and energetically declared: “Mommy, I just had a dream that Matthew Stafford threw 3 touchdown screens to Ameer Abdullah and we won the money this week. Do you think that will happen?” “No,” I grumpily uttered. He didn...