The Daily Rumpus
Get Overly Personal Emails
From Stephen Elliott
Here is an actual thing said by an actual sports marketing executive to a group of commissioners trying to reform college sports:
...more“You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir…but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money.
As the 49ers head to the Super Bowl, San Francisco can’t stuff its excitement into a hemp messenger bag fast enough.
In one season, our City—Bill O’Reilly’s favorite punchline for everything fey and un-American—may defeat the nation in baseball and football.
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What if one of your worst moments as a human being was sculpted into a 16-foot-tall bronze statue and displayed in front of a shopping mall? Or a Parisian art museum?
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The continual references to my sex are striking. On the one hand, they stand in stark contrast to the identity-digging that I am attempting. On the other, they resonate: trying on aggression for size is foreign territory.
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To appreciate soccer one has to understand that there’s beauty in failure.
...moreRumpus columnist Steve Almond, an unwavering Oakland Raiders fan, writes for The New York Times about being a true sports fan, specifically a fan of a floundering team:
“As I prepare to immerse myself in another season of ill-fated devotion, there is a question I can’t shake: Why?
...moreColson Whitehead went on a London Olympics adventure, which you can read all about in his multi-part dispatch for Grantland.
“I started scoring events in terms of what they’d offer in a human-annihilation-type scenario. Offensewise, archery skills seemed like an obvious asset at first.
...moreMuch controversy has been sparked over the recent media attention being bestowed on the American hurdler Lolo Jones.
Jones, who placed fourth in this Olympics’ 100-meters hurdle competition, has been a figure of debate since the New York Times wrote an scathing article about her reliance on image to win endorsement deals and garner national attention.
...more“Poems are made of words that live in bodies — bodies shaped by line breaks, and fixed forever in space, on the page. Picture a gymnast in relation to the trampoline, the invisible line between the two driven equally by unseen forces of gravity and the gymnast’s own strength.
...more“It’s easy to say poets are attracted to sport for reasons that have something to do with form. I’m sure that’s true, but I also think that it has something to do with the possibility of failure and, in the case of many Olympic sports, the fact that nobody really watches what you do most of the time .
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Tom Barbash talks with author and reporter Hart Seely about winning ballgames from your couch, Donald Rumsfeld, faking sanity, and the fate of quality journalism in the online era of click chasing.
...moreEurozine’s Mihir Bose lays out the development of modern athletics in connection with human rights, citing the political and ethical pressures involved in not-so-nice countries hosting major sports events.
He writes that the International Olympic Committee, among other major governing bodies of sport, has paid little attention to its founding rhetoric in the last 100 years.
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Perhaps you’ve seen the photograph of Italian striker Mario Balotelli embracing his mother after scoring two emphatic goals in Italy’s recent 2-1 Euro semifinal victory
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My friends call me an exercise tourist because I love running, biking, swimming, triathlons, skiing, pretty much physical activity of any kind, but last year I crossed a line.
...moreDoin’ It In the Park, a forthcoming documentary from Bobbito Garcia and Kevin Couliau, reveals the world of New York City pick-up basketball. In gathering footage for the film, the co-directors made visits to 180 courts throughout the five boroughs.
...moreAt The Atlantic, Rumpus contributor Chris Feliciano Arnold looks at efforts to draw Major League Soccer to Tucson, Arizona and wonders whether building a community around the game can be a healing force in a region “facing one of the most tumultuous periods in its history.”
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the iconic poet and co-founder of City Lights bookstore, was just warming up to pro football again when his home team, the San Francisco 49ers, lost this year’s NFC conference championship in heartbreaking fashion to the New York Giants.
“This show is an act of complete personal indulgence. When the good people at apexart approached me about curating something in their space, they made a huge mistake. After some polite back and forth, Steven Rand said to me directly, ‘We’d like you to do something that reflects your passion.’ I responded, ‘Well, football or what you call soccer is my passion.
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What follows is an extrapolation, based on my wife’s July due date and the actual match schedule of the 2010 World Cup.
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Lately, for my own edification and in preparation for the upcoming NFL season, I’ve been reading through the King James Bible.
I’m not the sports guy here at The Rumpus–that’s Brian Schwartz, who’s better at it than I could ever be. But I am a more than casual fan of baseball, and the story of steroid use is one that may not lose currency for another ten to fifteen years, assuming that it ever disappears.
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“It’s war. They don’t give a freakin’ you-know-what about you. They will kill you. They’re out there to kill you. So I’m ‘a kill them.