Sports – Various or Miscellaneous – Page 3 – education and deconstruction.com

The Franchise

The Book of the Week is “The Franchise, A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine” by Michael MacCambridge, published in 2009. There were two attempts to publish a magazine called Sports Illustrated in the late 1930’s and again in the late 1940’s, but both failed after a few years.

In summer 1954, Sports Illustrated (SI) was launched for wealthy men who engaged in golfing, croquet and yachting. Time, Inc. was able to arouse significant interest in its new magazine venture by soliciting existing subscribers of Time and Life.

Sidenote– The New Haven line leased out private rail cars to wealthy Westchester-County New York commuters. Rye was one train stop of the 1950’s Sports Illustrated’s first project manager, who got his shoes shined and was served ice water on his way to work.

Postwar prosperity and more leisure time allowed Americans to do more ping pong, softball, bowling, roller skating and boating. The original goal was for the publication to project a brand image of superiority in quality and comprehensiveness in coverage. However, target readers– athletes and spectators– were not thought of as intellectuals, so there was doubt as to whether they would read a magazine, even if it was about their hobbies.

The 1960’s saw television decrease the intellect of the nation as a whole, but it caused the popularity of such spectator sports as baseball, football and basketball, to soar.

The main competitive advantage of the magazine was full color photos. The publishing of those photos, even when generated with the latest technology, was very expensive and had a lead time of days. Nevertheless, in those days, publishers were willing to spend lots of money to ensure quality, and gave new projects lots of time to develop into successful ventures. SI was losing money for ten years before it turned the corner.

Long lunches and greatly exaggerated expense-account claims were also rife then. As were excessive alcohol consumption and bloated staffing. Starting in spring 1974, at SI, there was a team of four editors for every single article in every issue.

In September 1979, the magazine’s major area of dominance (college football and basketball recaps) was attacked with the introduction of ESPN.

Beginning in the late 1980’s, staffers “…willfully blurred the line between… edit and business, publicity and journalism.” The ethics conflict peaked during the 1996 Olympics, when “… the effect of having the business side of the magazine promoting an event that the editorial side was covering was profound and distracting.”

Read the book to learn of the other obvious contrasts between Sports Illustrated‘s early history and the current climate in magazine publishing in general in terms of sloppiness, illiteracy and lack of fact-checking, not to mention lack of ethics (mostly due to unwillingness to spend money on quality, and too much focus on the big dollar sign); the people who ran SI; their office politics; and their ability to change with the times.

The Jew in American Sports

The Book of the Week is “The Jew in American Sports” by Harold U. Ribalow and Meir Z. Ribalow, originally published in 1952, revised most recently in 1985.

The authors contended that the achievements of the athletes who were perceived to be Jewish, were all the more remarkable, considering that they had to overcome religious discrimination in addition to the fierce competition, rigors of training and harsh traveling conditions they had to endure in their generations. That is why the authors compiled this specific list of athletes.

The authors said Hank Greenberg might have been better than Babe Ruth in the 1930’s. “… Ruth was left handed and aimed at a 296 foot wall at Yankee Stadium most of the time. The park was built for him. Greenberg, right handed, aimed at a fence 340 feet away… he fell only two [homeruns] shy of Ruth’s record!” Later ballplayers had more opportunities to break records with lengthier seasons, stadiums easier to hit in, not to mention performance-enhancing drugs. Other baseball standouts included Al Rosen, Moe Berg and Sandy Koufax.

Jews became proficient in professional boxing in the early 20th century due to abuses they suffered at the hands of local neighborhood thugs of rival ethnicities, such as Irish and Italian. The New York City law against boxing was relaxed when Mayor Jimmy Walker saw the appeal of the sport among World War I veterans.

Benny Leonard was a Jewish boxer who benefited from that. He became rich and famous and from the mid-1920’s into the 1930’s, used his fame to purchase a hockey team, act in Vaudeville, write about sports and teach a course on pugilism at City College, New York. After his failed comeback, he tried his hand at refereeing, Zionism and helping to sponsor a Jewish Olympics in Tel Aviv.

Harry Newman, like Benny Friedman before him, played exceptionally great college football in the early 1930’s at the University of Michigan. In 1932, the team was undefeated and untied. “He had a hand in every winning play in every single game.” Benny Friedman, who played with the (professional) New York Giants, was popular with Jewish fans. The Giants saw Newman’s potential to keep up the good work, so they agreed to an irregular contractual provision that gave Newman a percentage of home attendance revenue.

In 1928, Irving Jaffee competed as a speed skater in the Olympics. When a Norwegian judge committed religious discrimination against Jaffee, a tremendous hue and cry erupted from athletes and the International Olympic Committee to award Jaffee a deserved gold medal. The American media picked up the story so the athlete became more famous than otherwise.

Read the book to learn about many other American athletes perceived to be Jewish, who overcame hardships and prejudice to rock the sports world with their feats.

Foxcatcher

The Book of the Week is “Foxcatcher” by Mark Schultz with David Thomas, published in 2014. This autobiography discusses the author’s experiences in high school, college and professional wrestling in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s, and his association with John du Pont.

Wrestling is comprised of technique, conditioning and luck. The season runs from November through March, and fans can be loud, obnoxious and profane. Schultz and his older brother, Dave, were passionate wrestlers. In 1983, they competed in the World Championships in Kiev, Russia. In 1984, they were the first brothers in United States wrestling history to win Olympic gold medals. During a time in his career when he struggled to make a living, Schultz put on wrestling clinics. He was employable in this capacity because he had been a global wrestling celebrity, hired by high school wrestling coaches. Wrestling is a nonrevenue sport. On the other hand, Russian wrestlers are paid to train and compete on the Olympic team.

John du Pont was an eccentric, super-rich donor to Villanova University who decided to start a wrestling program there in the mid 1980’s. Schultz assisted with that effort. John du Pont broke the NCAA rules in various ways because he could, just to be controlling. He produced awards ceremonies for himself. “John got a kick out of manipulating people to see if they would go against their principles in exchange for money.”

Read the book to learn the details of Schultz’s wrestling life, and du Pont’s actions in connection therewith.

Running with the Kenyans

The Book of the Week is “Running with the Kenyans” by Adharanand Finn, published in 2012. This ebook is a personal account detailing the author’s quest to find out why Kenya’s runners have developed a reputation in the past decade for winning so many races around the world.

Finn, an English journalist, moved his family to Kenya for several months to observe firsthand how the Kenyans do what they do. He himself jogs as a hobby, and while there, trained with many world record holders for his first marathon, in Lewa.

Iten is the small town where many Kenyans reside– in one of two major upmarket athletics training camps, where athletes, who get free food and lodging, do nothing but run, eat and sleep. The groups train daily in all kinds of weather, starting at 6 or 7am, braving “…potholes, cows and bicycles.” The camp manager decides who will run in races outside Kenya, and gets a percentage of the monies won.

The author notes that a Kenyan reports his or her age as significantly lower than it really is when signing up for a race. He couldn’t learn the real reason why. Also unexplained, is why, at the time the author was running with the Kenyans, they did not have big-money sponsors, like Adidas or Nike.

Another Kenyan cultural trait– that prompts competence at running from a young age– is that school is usually one to five miles from home, between which the kids run, so as to minimize transportation time. There are neither buses nor chauffeuring parents. At the time of his writing, the author had heard from various sources that Kenyans, counterintuitively, actually had high reverence for the British, who “… had brought civilization to Kenya.” So when Westerners were wearing shoes specially designed for running, the Kenyans thought they should wear them, too. This is in spite of the fact Kenyans run faster barefoot because most of them spend their lives barefoot, growing up on rural subsistence farms, and have won more races barefoot than not.

When Kenyan runners achieve fame and fortune, they return home to a village asking for a piece of them. This becomes a distraction and kills their careers if they, as many of them do, divert time and resources from their hours-long training every day; like, if they want to build a school for their village. This is not necessarily a bad thing– if they make a conscious choice to give back to their community, and they want to retire.

Read the book to learn more about other aspects of Kenyan culture plus other factors conducive to fast running, and how the author fared in his first marathon, before which, helicopters had to scare lions away from the course.

The Secret Olympian

The Book of the Week is “The Secret Olympian” by Anon, published in 2012. This ebook is about Olympic athletes (who were interviewed by the author) and the issues they face before, during and after the Olympics.

Most nation’s teams travel to the metropolitan area of the Olympic games locale two or more weeks prior to the actual competition. Of course, the better funded teams use the latest technology in adjusting to the local conditions. For instance, if the venue is at a higher altitude than what the athletes are used to, they sleep in “hypoxic altitude tents” if they don’t find them too noisy. Other high-tech devices are used to test the athletes’ physiology more than once a day– “…oxygen utilisation, lactate generation, statistics about lung capacity… at different cycling and running speeds…” Blood is drawn from the ear to be tested; a rectal thermometer tests core temperature.

In 1968 in Mexico City, Olympians saw various “firsts” in addition to high altitude that they hadn’t previously encountered. Gender and low-level drug testing were initiated. Mexico was the first developing, and Spanish-speaking nation, to host the Olympics. At those games, East and West Germany competed separately.

The author relates how extremely rare gold medallists are. In Great Britain, athletes who have won gold medals number about 300 out of a population of approximately 60 million; .000005 or 1 in 200,000 people.

Read the book to learn about various athletes’ experiences in training, competing, clothing-exchanging, doping, partying, retirement and much more.

Running For My Life

The Book of the Week is “Running For My Life” by Lopez Lomong and Mark Tabb, published in 2012. This suspenseful ebook tells the extraordinary life story of a “lost boy” born in the nation that is now South Sudan.

Lomong’s childhood was cut short when he was snatched from his family at six years old, along with many other boys, by rebel soldiers fighting a years-long civil war between Muslims and Christians in that country. The recruits were called “lost boys” because they were forced into leading violent, empty lives, instead of becoming productive members of society.

Lomong, too, would have been destined to become a soldier or die of disease or starvation were it not for three older children who aided him in escaping from the captives’ camp. In the next chapter of his life, he still suffered extreme hardships, but he had a chance to play soccer, which he enjoyed, and excel at running, at which he was a natural athlete.

Read the book to learn how Lomong achieved tremendous success in various endeavors against impossible odds (considering his initial life circumstances), and what led him to set a goal to help his native people obtain what citizens of industrialized nations take for granted– clean water, health care, education and nutrition.

Sum It Up

The Book of the Week is “Sum It Up” by Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins, published in 2012. This ebook is the autobiography of a long-time coach of the women’s basketball team at the University of Tennessee; Olympian, Olympic coach, daughter, wife, mother, etc., etc.

Summitt’s childhood consisted of doing hard labor on her family’s Tennessee farm, drag racing and playing aggressive basketball with her three older brothers. Her father was a gruff, hard worker who refrained completely from showing affection toward his family. Nevertheless, he had a passion for basketball. Therefore, in the mid 1960’s, he had the family move to a fixer-upper residence so that his daughter could play high school basketball on a very good team.

Unfortunately, the team was part of a pathetic interscholastic program that existed for girls at the time. There were many inequalities between male and female sports programs in Summitt’s generation. For one, she had to pay full college tuition, because “…athletic scholarships for women simply didn’t exist in 1970.”

At 22 years old in 1974, even when she was named head coach of the women’s basketball team at her alma mater, she was given a budget that was a fraction of the men’s team’s budget. Also, unlike a male coach, she had to play many roles in addition to coaching, such as serving as driver, laundress, ankle-taper, gym-floor cleaner, and bench assembler. Her office was at the top of five flights of stairs in a hot attic with no elevator and no air conditioning. At the same time, she was taking four master’s degree classes and was required to teach undergraduate classes.

Finally, in 1975, Title IX– which was supposed to “even the playing field” for male and female athletes– was signed into law by President Gerald Ford (according to the book). Summitt started to benefit from progress, but even in the late 1970’s, the men’s sports teams still had bigger marketing budgets and staffs than the women’s teams; plus the men traveled by airplane while the women had to drive hours and hours.

Summitt also discusses basketball as a metaphor for other aspects of life. She writes, “The point guard position in basketball is one of the great tutorials on leadership… they only follow you if they find you consistently credible… If there is a single ingredient in leadership, it’s emotional maturity.”

Read the book to learn about the coaching-career teams, victories, setbacks, comebacks and defeats; and family, health and retirement issues in the life of this overachiever.

My Guy Barbaro – Bonus Post

In honor of the Kentucky Derby, this blogger would like to report on “My Guy Barbaro” by Edgar Prado with John Eisenberg, published in 2008. This ebook tells the story of a horse named Barbaro, ridden by the author, a jockey.

Prado grew up in Lima, Peru in a poor household with seven brothers, three sisters, his mother, and a father who was a horse groomer. Two of his older brothers became jockeys. He had a natural rapport with horses, and became a licensed jockey at fifteen and a half. He graduated high school, and at eighteen, moved to Miami, Florida in 1986 for more challenging racing.

Prado rides on different horses in various states in races throughout the year. The Triple Crown is a trio of races very difficult to win. It consists of the Belmont Stakes on Long Island in New York State, the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, and the Preakness Stakes in Maryland. Up until 2008, race tracks in that third state suffered financially in the past decade, unlike those in Delaware and West Virginia, as it declined to allow cash-cow slot machines at its race tracks.

In the 2006 Kentucky Derby, Prado had the privilege of riding Barbaro, a horse that was a racing prodigy, owned by the late pop star Michael Jackson. Read the book to learn of Barbaro’s fate.

Bloody Confused!

The Book of the Week is “Bloody Confused!” by Chuck Culpepper, published in 2007. An American smartass sportswriter wrote this ebook after becoming jaded by covering baseball, football, basketball, etc. for a couple of decades in his own country. He decided to acquaint himself with the cultural quirks of professional English soccer.

In 2006, Culpepper moved to England in order to wholeheartedly throw himself into the lifestyle of a “supporter,” which involved a gluttony for spending time (on transportation) and money (on transportation, tickets, drinks and food) before, during and after the matches, not to mention choosing an underdog team to root for, so as to invite emotional trauma.

While conducting research before attending his first Premiership, the author learned of the concepts “promotion” and “relegation.” Unlike a United States baseball or football league, each season, an English soccer league determines team-places based on a point system, which allows upward mobility of teams and consequently, downgrading of its worst three clubs that will play in a lower-tier system the following season.

On more than one occasion, Culpepper was prohibited from purchasing a ticket to a match because he had never purchased a ticket before, to see a particular team. He had to watch the match in a pub instead. One time, he got lucky and bought a ticket from a supporter whose father was unable to go to the game.

Once the author started attending games, he noticed the beefed-up security at the stadiums– separate seating for fans of say, two teams with a history of hatred toward the other. This, due to deaths and serious injuries from stampedes of people (!) in recent decades. America has its team rivalries too, but rarely does the belligerent, drunk behavior of fans get more serious than trash-talking.

If an English soccer player scores a goal, which might happen only three or four times during ninety minutes of play, unlike in America– fans engage in hugging each other, though they are strangers. On the other hand, American spectators who are strangers will chat with each other throughout an entire professional sports game; the English, instead of gabbing, will sing the same one or two lines of parodies of well-known tunes, repeatedly. Possibly with gratuitous expletives. English parents explain to their children that raunchy language is okay at a soccer game, but hardly anywhere else.

Another cultural difference the author noted is that all aspects of American professional sports are profit-driven. Culpepper was surprised that English soccer action is not paused every other minute for commercial purposes. He was appalled by the English teams’ shabby locker rooms and disgusting stadium food. Yet, the beer served at American stadiums is less than refined. Also, Culpepper writes that in America, “…people play for one title. They give trophies and junk for conference titles and division titles, sure, but there’s only one champion.” In England, “Premiership clubs play for up to three championships.” There are “cups” to compete for, galore.

Read the book to learn about Culpepper’s encounters with a blue bear, his other observations of English soccer fandom, whether English athletes stack up to their American counterparts in terms of behavior off the field, their salaries, their mobility between teams, and team diversity.

Deals on the Green

The Book of the Week is “Deals on the Green” by David Rynecki, published in 2007. This ebook discusses how golf fuels business deals among the super-rich.

The author contends that the personality traits golfers need for success in golf and business include: friendliness, “imagination, tenacity, multitasking, guts, passion, and compassion…” The very act of playing golf is a major ingredient for success at many big-name companies, including GE, McGraw-Hill, J.M. Smucker, Tyson Foods, McDonald’s, Goodrich, Estee Lauder, Morgan Stanley and Johnson & Johnson. Businesspeople observe how others play the game– an indication of their character– to determine whether to do business with them.

The people who build a golf course include architects, landscapers and marketers. Many country clubs are exclusive, invitation-only kinds of places. The way “nobodies” can play on the golf courses at such clubs is to participate in fundraising events or volunteer to do menial work at them (and write big donation checks). Most of the major manufacturers of American golf equipment are located in Carlsbad, CA.

Etiquette dictates that any talk of business on the golf course should take place between the fifth and the fifteenth holes. There should be casual conversation, not an aggressive pitch.

Read the book to learn the names of people, places and equipment related to golf, and “…what really goes on when the titans of industry and finance get together” on the golf course.