Search Results for: sports

The Wage Warrior

Longreads Pick

A profile of Maria Elena Durazo, Los Angeles’s most powerful labor leader:

Just how much influence does Durazo have in Los Angeles? Anyone who wants to build anything big—a hotel, a skyscraper, a sports stadium, a rail line—must first go through her and the County Fed, providing assurance that the project will create “good union jobs.” In the exceedingly rare instance that a nonunion project does get approved by the labor-friendly city council, it can face protests and even litigation. Developers are said to be frustrated that a single interest group has so much clout, but nobody is willing to speak openly. “I don’t know any developer who would go on record saying anything that would antagonize María,” a consultant told me.

“She’s one of the foremost power brokers in the city—there’s no question about that,” says Jaime Regalado, the former head of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs. “Call it a fear factor, call it a respect factor. Those who make decisions in the public sector have to listen to her.”

Published: Dec 23, 2013
Length: 26 minutes (6,682 words)

Longreads Best of 2013: Award for Outstanding Reporting

Ryan Leaf’s Jailhouse Confessions, Written By His Cell Mate

John Cagney Nash | Playboy | September 2013 | 19 minutes (4,710 words)

 

Flinder Boyd (@FlinderBoyd) is a journalist for SB Nation, Sports on Earth, and the BBC among others.

Athletes and sports writers usually come from two completely different professional worlds and as a result there is often an emotional wall between the two of them. At times, on the page, it can almost read as if two are speaking vastly different languages.

The British journalist John Cagney Nash solved this problem by somehow landing himself in the same jail in Montana as Ryan Leaf, the one-time future of the NFL and now its biggest draft bust. Over the course of a few months the two became friends and Leaf was able to open up with his fellow inmate in a way we rarely get to read about.

For years since Leaf’s retirement he’s been seen as little more than a pathetic example for all that can go wrong with the draft. Thanks to Nash’s deft touch we’re able see him as human, and at times Leaf’s honesty is downright heartbreaking.

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Illustration by Jason Mecier

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Longreads Best of 2013 Postscript: New Questions About a Legendary Tennis Match

The Match Maker

Don Van Natta Jr. | ESPN | August 2013 | 34 minutes (8,461 words)

 

Don Van Natta Jr. (@DVNJr) is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine.

My story, The Match Maker, was online at ESPN.com only a few hours on Aug. 25 when I heard from a California man who shrugged at the possibility that tennis champ and American hustler Bobby Riggs had thrown the famous September 1973 Battle of the Sexes match. The man’s name is Russell Boyd, and he claimed Bobby Riggs had talked openly and repeatedly with him, back in June 1973, about his intention to lose his upcoming match against Billie Jean King at the Houston Astrodome. “I didn’t realize at the time that it was such a serious matter of him playing Billie Jean King,” Boyd, 56, told me, “and that he was actually expected to make an effort to win.” Read more…

How A Black High School Basketball Coach Transformed A White, Mennonite Town: A Longreads Guest Pick By Chris Mahr

Chris Mahr is the managing editor of Lost Lettermen, a college sports website and athlete database.

“Talk to any young sportswriter today and odds are that their introduction to both Sports Illustrated’s long-form journalism and renowned writer Gary Smith are one in the same: ‘Higher Education.’ Smith’s March 2001 masterpiece tells the tale of Perry Reese Jr., a black Catholic basketball coach at Hiland High in the predominantly Mennonite town of Berlin, Ohio. A man whose force-of-nature personality on and off the court transformed a town ‘whose beliefs had barely budged in 200 years’ and forced his players and neighbors to rethink their long-held tenets on race, religion and life.”

Higher Education

Gary Smith | Sports Illustrated | March 2001 | 35 minutes (8,619 words)

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How Far We're Going to Save Youth Football

“You’re talking about putting accelerometers in equipment. Equipment specialists to outfit our children. Having independent observers of coaches on the sidelines at practices and games to monitor what’s going on. At what point are we kidding ourselves about youth football, that this is not a sensible proposition when you need this superstructure for every game in the country?”

A quote from journalist Stefan Fatsis, from Patrick Hruby’s latest Sports on Earth story about parents, youth football and an important decision. Read more on concussions.

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Photo: t_fern, Flickr

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A Parent’s Dilemma: Should You Let Your Kid Play Football?

Longreads Pick

Hruby talks to families and those involved with youth sports to find out what’s changed—and what hasn’t changed—since the revelations around concussions and CTE:

Earlier that season, Parker had leveled another boy. He earned a personal foul. Monet remembered the moment, how proud she felt as her son skipped back to the sideline.

Mommy! Mommy! I made a kid eat dirt!

“I sat back and said, ‘Wow,’” she says. “What if I’m the parent of that other kid?”

Source: Sports on Earth
Published: Nov 15, 2013
Length: 32 minutes (8,019 words)

A Former Basketball Star's New Life in Europe: Our College Pick

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick:

College athletes who don’t go on to play professionally sometimes continue their career in Europe. And that’s usually the last we hear of them. But the University of Pittsburgh’s Jasper Wilson made good use of a trip to Strasbourg to profile former Pitt basketball star Ricardo Greer. Greer, now 36, does things like throw his kid a birthday party and dispute his salary with his boss. These are adult concerns, beyond dull to most college students. But Wilson saw these moments as part of his narrative, a “whatever happened to” story about a student-athlete who grew up to become a responsible adult who makes a living doing the thing college prepared him to do. Sports journalism is in desperate need of reporters who can identify fresh angles beyond the churn of conflicts manufactured by ESPN and talk radio. Wilson had to go all the way to France, but he found one.

Greer Made Career, Home Playing in France

Jasper Wilson | The Pitt News | November 6, 2013 | 12 minutes (2,928 words)

Professors and students: Share your favorite stories by tagging them with #college #longreads on Twitter, or email links to aileen@longreads.com.


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Ingenious

Jason Fagone | Ingenious, Crown Publishing Group | November 2013 | 20 minutes (4,972 words)

 

Below is the first chapter from Jason Fagone’s book, Ingenious, about the X Prize Foundation’s $10 million competition to build a car that can travel 100 miles on a single gallon of gas. Thanks to Fagone and Crown Publishing for sharing it with the Longreads community. You can purchase the full book here. Read more…

Jay Z Has the Room

Longreads Pick

A profile of hip hop star Jay Z, who discusses his newly formed sports management venture and dispels rumors about his personal life:

“During our talk at Jungle studios, Jay said the sports agency ‘just evolved. All the athletes came through New York, came to the 40/40; we’d give them advice and we’d put them with great people. I was like, Where are your agents? And—this is a real quote—one of those guys said to me, “I haven’t seen my agent since I signed my contract, seven years ago.” Or a guy’s mother says she’s never even met the agent. In some cases they go through the family, but then again, it’s like: go through the family, charm the mother, tell her stuff … get him a car, and then … gone. Actually hoping to get fired so they can collect on the contract. This attitude that if you do one thing well you can’t do something else well is paralyzing for some people—but not for me. If people think that I only make music, they’re underestimating me. I’ve been a successful businessman my whole career. I can do more than one thing at one time. I can walk and chew gum.'”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Oct 14, 2013
Length: 30 minutes (7,519 words)

The Woman Who Counted Fish

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Jon Mooallem | Wild Ones, Penguin Press | May 2013 | 11 minutes (2,605 words)

 

Below is the opening chapter of Jon Mooallem’s book Wild Ones, as recommended by Maria Popova. Read more…