Monday Medley

What we read while turning our music down in Florida…

• Michael Sam, SEC Defensive Player of the Year, came out publicly a few weeks before the NFL Draft, setting him up to become the first openly gay player in the NFL. NFL GMs immediately said it would hurt his draft stock. Outsports detailed the process that led to him coming out. A pivotal moment for professional sports even inspired Ellen Page to come out.

• In sadder sports news, this season will be Derek Jeter’s last. Some have been dreading this day for years.

• The Wells Report is in, and it turns out Richie Incognito isn’t such a great guy after all…

• What it’s like for a porn star in college.

• On Donald Trump’s political “campaigns.”

• Some David Foster Wallace links: A letter to an editor in which he threatens bodily harm, and a breakdown of his nonfiction.

• This week in oral histories: Street Fighter 2, the greatest arcade game ever.

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The Sports Revolution: The Division Tournament

Pierre as a young boy was a contrarian. He was the kind who favored The Plague over The Stranger, Beauvoir over Sartre, Henry over Zidane, the left rook’s pawn over the right rook’s pawn.

Pierre as a man retains so much of that contrarianism, but there is within him, he can now say, some sentiment for the Man, the Authority, the Establishment—in short, the common nouns that require proper capitalization.

It is with this perspective of the potentate in mind that I have reached a conclusion I once thought not possible. The NFL, that American Establishment of Establishments, must begin playing an 18-game season.

We can swim against the tide of history or we can ride it. The latter is not, however, a pure acquiescence, as our very presence causes change and rupture and redefinition—perhaps to meet our own needs.

And so we approach tremulously the Mordor of the 18-game concept.

Monday Medley

What we read while NOT turning the game off when the Chiefs were up 28…

• New York City said goodbye to Michael Bloomberg and ushered in the Bill de Blasio era. Will de Blasio stay true to his campaign theme and tackle rising inequality? And will he reign in the NYPD?

• Everything you ever wanted to know about baby names.

• David Roth’s five-part series on the World Cup and Qatar is well worth your time. Plus, you have until 2022 to digest it.

• The New York Times called Edward Snowden a whistle-blower and joined those making the case for granting him a pardon. Conor Friedersdorf dismissed claims that doing so would set a dangerous precedent, particularly given the illegal nature of what he exposed, and the fact that his oath was to the Constitution, not secrecy. And Glenn Greenwald explains why privacy is important.

• Lorde and Tavi Gevinson talk for a long time about what it’s like to be 17 and super successful.

• Chris Kluwe explains why he’s not in the NFL anymore.

• A story of an overseas failure in the ongoing catastrophe that is the War on Drugs.

• What happened to “the middle class”?

• Against New Year’s Eve.

The End of Football?

“I’m fine…”

Back in 2009, fellow NPIer Josh asked, “What Common Human Behavior Will be Viewed as Mistaken in 100 Years?” He used that question to talk about vegetarianism, but the question popped into my head recently regarding football. It is starting to seem inevitable to me that football—a sport everyone here at NPI loves—will be seen as barbaric and immoral in a generation or two. The more science exposes about the long-term effects of concussions and subconcussive impacts, the more it seems that there is simply no safe way to play football.

Right now, however, football’s popularity seems invulnerable. The highest rated show on TV last year was Sunday Night Football; it was so highly rated that it, combined with the Super Bowl, kept NBC—NBC!—from finishing last among the four major networks this season. This year’s BCS National Championship was watched by 24.2 million viewers, and that was the lowest rated championship of the BCS era. In a recent piece on football’s popularity for Grantland, Chuck Klosterman pointed out that 25 million people watched the NFL Draft, “a statistic that grows crazier the longer you dwell upon its magnitude.” And, if anything, the football’s popularity seems poised to grow as an influx of popular young stars like Cam Newton, Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, and Tim Tebow enters the league.

In other words, football’s decline seems both inevitable and impossible.

Monday Medley

What we read while returning from our covert mission overseas…

• John Miller’s profile of Osama bin Laden for Esquire from 1999. And his New York Times obituary…

• We’re putting this together late on Sunday night, so we can’t see all the front pages across America. But it’s a fair bet the Newseum’s site collecting front pages will be an interesting place to look Monday morning. As a sidenote, the Newseum is awesome.

• The NFL players scored a pretty big victory last week when a federal judge lifted the lockout, even if the lockout returned almost immediately. Joe Posnanski even questioned if Roger Goodell was doing a good job as commissioner after Goodell published this absurd doomsday scenario. Meanwhile, the NBA is paying attention as it careens towards its own lockout.

• Some good sports news, though, will be the launch of Grantland.com in June.

• The NFL Draft happened, and Tim feels the same way he did about it last year. Jeff Pearlman wonders if the broadcast’s standout moment was worth the manipulation.

• Kristen Wiig was profiled in NYT Magazine to Josh’s delight.

• And the Atlantic talks with John Paul Stevens,who is going to publish a new book on the Chief Justices. Stevens, you may remember, was NPI’s Retiree of the Year.

• Was it really so long ago that Josh and Tim debated handwriting? Consider Katie Zezima’s piece in the NY Times the next rebuttal, followed by the aptly named Brian Palmer at Slate.

• A timely essay on tornadoes.

• A retrospective on Wet Hot American Summer by Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, and David Wain.

• We’re no longer fans of The Office, but we liked this piece in which Vulture wonders if the valedictory send-off for Michael Scott is a case of the writers confusing the character for the actor. James Poniewozik at Time takes a different angle. And here’s a useful site for a show we definitely enjoy, Parks and Recreation.

• A 1970 New York Magazine feature on the Best Pizza of New York doesn’t even look like it’s from 1970.

• Congratulations to Roger Ebert, who FINALLY won a New Yorker Caption Contest after 280 failed attempts.

• This is an interesting piece on President Obama’s foreign policy… but it doesn’t mention his birth certificate, so who cares? At least the birther fiasco has made Donald Trump look stupid…  

Monday Medley

What we read while they got really excited for the Pro Bowl in Cairo…

• Man, how about that Pro Bowl?! Almost makes Super Bowl Sunday look anticlimactic, huh? Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders has been helping the hype over at Hulu, where he has been counting down the 10 Greatest Super Bowls of All Time. Meanwhile, Ben McGrath wonders if football has a future, Rohan Cruyff takes a different approach to pace in the NBA, and The Atlantic puts forth another curious (in a bad way) offering with James Parker’s amateur exploration of SportsCenter.

• We just discovered Bob Bender’s Press Box Daily, which is a must-read for those interested in sports broadcasting. Bender breaks down the calls of games’ biggest plays from various announcing crews earnestly and articulately–providing video and audio along the way. Some highlights include his ode to the music of WFAN and his analysis of what makes Kevin Harlan such a good radio announcer.

• Bill Keller, editor of The New York Times, breaks down the papers dealings with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange last year. Assange, predictably, comes off a little weird.

• Bryan Caplan (who is now on Twitter) argues that there’s a difference between formal and informal Rand.

• A dead spot on a tennis court. Strange.

• It’s been 17 years since this very sad interview Rolling Stone interview with Kurt Cobain, in which he declared that he’d “never been happier in his life” less than three months before killing himself.

• Atul Gawande does more excellent reporting about the cost of health care.

• President Obama has shaken up his staff, presumably to help Win the Future.

• The Mets may carry on the Civil Rights Movement legacy.

• Kevin Smith is really just a fat, male Sarah Palin…

• …and speaking of Sarah Palin, Louis C.K. talks about his infamous tweets about the former V.P. candidate (man, comedians love making sex jokes about her), among other things, in this interview with HitFix.

Monday Medley

What we read while eating a goddamn snack on Revis Island:

• So what’s the state of political discourse in the week after the tragedy in Tucson? Some want us to tone it down, while others think that’s a silly overreaction. Tom Junod at Esquire and Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone have each offered intriguing thoughts on the debate about debate.

• Less seems to be more in football announcing.

• Wikipedia celebrated its tenth anniversary last week.

• CalTech: In a class by itself? Speaking of intelligence, Jeopardy may have for itself a perpetual winner.

• Only one of us still occasionally puts two spaces after a period. It’s such an editing hassle.

• Roger Ebert’s best documentaries of 2010.

• What was more awkward: Ricky Gervais’ monologue at last night’s Golden Globes, or Bill Murray’s speech to Sofia Coppola at the NBR awards?

• Shake Shack’s different locations are compared by Serious Eats.

• Agree to disagree on this one: SplitSider on why the Arrested Development is a lousy movie AND why that’s OUR fault.

• Jill Lepore dissects America’s relationship with the Constitution.

• We don’t agree with all of their choices over at This Recording (there’s no way DFW is the White Swan), but this is obviously a great game…

• A breakdown of pretty much every funny tweet you’ll ever read.

• It may be in Spanish, but this graphic of The Simpsons‘ demise couldn’t be clearer. And as far as gifs go, they don’t get much better than Homer’s Night Out (h/t on each to Dead Homer Society, as usual).