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Serena, LeBron, Jordan and Risk-Reward
You won’t find much mention of Henry A. Landsberger amid the burgeoning discussions of sports this weekend, but his impact underpins almost every discussion. Landsberger isn’t a former professional athlete or sports commentator. Instead, he’s the social scientist who coined the term Hawthorne Effect, or put simply how the act of observation changes the observed.…
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Michael Jordan’s Big ‘What If?’
When Michael Jordan is inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame Friday evening, it will cap the most storied career in sports history. Nearly everyone who is a sports fan and many who aren’t have a “Michael moment” etched in their head. As a fan whose allegiance to the Chicago Bulls goes back to 1970—when…
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Are You Ready for Some Football?
Most of my reading in the last week has been devoted to NFL previews. I know that most of the predictions are wrong, but I can’t help myself. The NFL is by far the most volatile league of the three major North American team sports. This time last year, you would’ve been laughed at for…
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How the Yankees Ruined Baseball
It’s early in the month, but it seems fair to say, “so much for September.” No disrespect to the mythmaking October plays that loom large in baseball lore, but September is prime time for baseball’s most dramatic moments. It’s the time of year when teams that have been competing day in and day out for…
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A.I.'s Memphis Blues
This time last year, the outlook for Allen Iverson couldn’t have been brighter. But now he’s struggling to stay in the league. How did things turn around so quickly? Last summer, Iverson, a perennial all-star, was coming off another stellar season; he scored an average of 26.1 points per game, dished 7.1 assists, and he…
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Black and Coaching in the Ivy League
Most football coaches are brimming with optimism this time of year, but few with as much Tom Williams, the first black head football coach at Yale University. It has little to do with his expectations about the annual grudge match with Harvard later this year. Williams has broken through one of the most insidious glass…
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The First Black Prez
For hard-core jazz fans, Barack Obama is the second African-American president. Tenor saxophonist Lester Young was the first. He didn’t win 365 electoral votes, but he won the vote of Billie Holiday, who nicknamed him The President aka Prez. Young introduced a dynamic new approach to the saxophone; his playing had a leaner tone and…
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The NFL’s Reality Check
Like nearly all NFL fans, I’m eagerly awaiting opening kickoff on Sept. 10. The Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans will launch the regular season in what figures to be a good, old-fashioned battle, where you can feel the hits in your living room and hear the impact echo into the next day. Until then. unlike…
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Odds Not In His Favre
One of the best bits of advice that I have heard about retiring came from legendary college football announcer Keith Jackson. He said, in what was to be his last game in the broadcast booth, “if you want to leave at the appropriate time, then plan on leaving early.” Of course, Jackson didn’t follow his…
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Vick’s an Eagle! Say What?
I had a scenario in my head for what Michael Vick’s return to football, following a two-season absence would look like. I figured the former Atlanta Falcons QB—after spending 18 months behind bars for dog fighting—would serve a portion of his current six-game suspension while remaining unsigned by an NFL team. Then about a month…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
