Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Sports No Longer Last Bastion of Homophobia

April 30, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
collins-get

So, are sports fans ready to cheer on openly gay players? A body of recent research suggests they are. A number of studies published over the last three years have found a steep decline in homophobic attitudes among both athletes and fans. There’s no question that NBA player Jason Collins took a risk in telling the world, via this week’s Sports Illustrated, that he is gay. But that risk is far less than it would have been even a decade ago. “Research on masculinities and homophobia today shows that, even in the traditionally conservative institution of sport, matters have ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Findings
Tags: , , , ,

Fighting Words

April 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
broussard

Let me preface this by noting that I know next to nothing about sports, in America or elsewhere. I blindly cheer for my teams back home—the Chicago Bears, the Chicago Bulls, and the Chicago White Sox—with the same intensity I bring to a lot of other aspects of my life. (I've been accused of jingoism on more than one occasion.) But as a gay atheist who grew up in a not-immediately-tolerant environment (atheism wasn't seen as a lack of belief, but an absence of morals), I do know something about intolerance. This morning, I shrugged off the news that Jason Collins, who has already spent ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

NBA Player Jason Collins Becomes First Openly Gay Major American Athlete

April 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
jason-collins

"I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay." Those are the first three sentences of this week's Sports Illustrated's cover story, written by Jason Collins, a 34-year-old black NBA center most recently of the Washington Wizards. Collins played four years of basketball at Stanford and was drafted by the Houston Rockets with the 18th pick of the 2001 NBA draft. He's played for six teams over his 12-year career, scoring over 2,500 points and grabbing over 2,600 rebounds. In the essay, co-written with the help of SI's Franz Lidz, Collins talks about when he realized he was ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

How Safe Can a Marathon Be?

April 16, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
boston-marathon-smoke

The marathon-as-spectacle is, more than any other sporting event, built on the responsibility and rationality and general non-wickedness of other human beings. You’re at this long, winding, sweeping thing—event really is the best way to put it. It’s a stadium 26.2 miles long. And you’re allowed to be up close to the competitors—cheering them on, handing them water, sneaking onto the course and claiming you've won—at any point. Marathon Day was Boston’s day to not be Boston. That is, the day that all the stereotypes of the city—loud, belligerent, belligerently drunk fans ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: , , , , ,

Snack Food, Star Appeal

March 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Footballer-turned-snack-spokesman Gary Lineker (PHOTO: INGENIE)

It’s good to be Gary Lineker, once Britain’s national football star and forever her beloved son. In the decades since leaving the pitch, Lineker has launched a media career—announcing matches for the BBC and voicing a cartoon character known as Underground Ernie—married a Maxim model, made a cameo in “Bend It Like Beckham,” attracted more than a million Twitter followers, and since 1995, served as the celebrity spokesman for Walkers potato crisps. (For a time, his favorite flavor was rebranded “Salt-and-Lineker.”) That Lineker is, according to everyone, an all-around nice ... Read More

More like this: Findings
Tags: , , ,

Manti Te’o, I Know Exactly How You Feel

January 23, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o on the sidelines during a game against the USC Trojans in Los Angeles in 2010 (PHOTO: NEON TOMMY/FLICKR CC)

Myella, my love, my mystery, my every little thing she does is magic. My-el-la: a hop, a skip, a jump in the pulse. Who played jazz bass and studied Buddhism, who walked her bulldog down the streets of Seattle, who was redheaded and pale and a little shy, but possessed of an effortlessly sexy erotic imagination. Myella, who I loved deeply, and who did not exist. I follow football little, and college football not at all, so I first heard Manti Te'o’s name just a few days ago. But I knew precisely what “Catfish scam,” the phrase next to his name in the headlines, meant. I saw the ... Read More

More like this: Culture & Society
Tags: , , ,

The Physics of NASCAR

December 21, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
nascar

WHO: Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, racecar researcher at West Viriginia University WHAT: Breaks down the physics of racing, from the heat-resistant properties of drivers’ suits, to the aerodynamics of their cars, to what makes them crash. http://youtu.be/JI67VpLf4_8 WHY: “I used to be one of those people who thought, ‘Why would anyone want to watch cars going in circles?’” Then, while channel-flipping one day, Leslie-Pelecky came across a NASCAR race just as a car skidded out and slammed into a wall—for no apparent reason. Intrigued, she started trying to figure out what had ... Read More

More like this: January-February 2013
Tags: , ,

The Public Relations of Brain Injury

December 14, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
peeweefootball

Each year about four million young athletes play football. It’s estimated that between 11 and 15 percent of those children get a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). According to a 2011 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has been a 60 percent increase in all youth athletes treated for TBI in the past decade. To combat growing unease among parents and observers, USA Football, the official football development partner of the NFL, created Heads Up Football, a program designed to help reduce head injuries in high-school football. The program has a nice ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
Tags: , , , , ,

Unsportsmanlike Conduct, Off the Field

December 12, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
soccerhooligans

Football in Europe is a world unto itself, less a professional sport than an exercise in 21st-century nationalism: stadia take the place of battlegrounds and players the place of soldiers, while fans and hooligans hold down the home front, anxiously awaiting news of their boys overseas. Victory can ignite a country’s passion and patriotism, while defeat can sour the national mood for weeks. Nowhere is the mania more catching than England. Indeed, Brits are such fervent fans that domestic violence in the U.K. during World Cup play rises and falls with the fate of the country’s football ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: , ,

INFOGRAPHIC: A Whole New Ballpark

November 22, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
PS PAGE LAYOUT NEW4.2

SAN FRANCISCO: After voters rejected four public referendums to fund a new Giants stadium, owners built it entirely from private funding. It was the first purely private stadium in 40 years. PITTSBURGH: The Penguins' Consol Energy Center was built with almost no public money, instead using cash from private companies and contributions from casino owners under a deal allowing new gambling operations. INDIANAPOLIS: Public financing accounted for 50 percent of the new Lucas Oil Stadium, offset by taxes on hotels, rental cars, restaurants, and sales of Colts license plates. CINCINNATI: Debt ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Culture & Society, November-December 2012
Tags: , ,