All articles by this author
February 7, 2017
The game’s sheer improbability made the whole thing impossible to take seriously until it was over.
It is a mistake to count on men like Belichick and Brady to understand the basic tenets of our shared world together. They know how to throw touchdowns and win football games, but not how to build or maintain a world in which it is possible to make millions doing so. For that, they rely on the rest of us, especially those long since priced out of their stadiums.
November 10, 2016
On what grounds should anyone accept the legitimacy of Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court?
It is easier to imagine a fair contest fairly lost by a bad candidate than it is to acknowledge an illegitimate process. It keeps the comforting fiction alive.
November 7, 2016
Colin Kaepernick has had his career compromised by the unchecked madness of white American privilege.
The playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” has gone from a boring, low-stakes ritual to a fascinating pageant, as players across the country and at all levels kneel, link hands, lie down, or otherwise take the opportunity to express themselves.
“You are the problem, Politician,” the Trumpian spat back.
June 20, 2016
LeBron knows that, win or lose, you’ll never get it; you’ll never forgive him for how he was born.
Everything that works as an excuse for everyone else has never worked for LeBron James, and so it’s no wonder why nobody understands when he tries to explain what that feels like.
January 26, 2016
The truth is that it is whether your win or lose, and it is also how you play the game.
November 21, 2015
Watching Peyton against the Colts, the same thought kept pushing itself into my mind, over and over: I’ll be dead someday.
November 9, 2015
Perhaps in the future men will simply become too large to play games like football without killing each other.
September 25, 2015
On rules, cheating, and Deflategate
Larry Warford is a guard for the Detroit Lions. He is six feet three inches tall and weighs 332 pounds. His job is to crouch, fifty to sixty times, one day a week, on a one-hundred-by-fifty-yard field, and then leap up, collide with men of similar size, and move them out of his way so that one of the smaller, faster men on his own team can run by them while carrying an American football. Or: his job consists of keeping those same large men from running past him long enough for his quarterback, Matthew Stafford, to throw the ball down the field, often to a man two inches taller and a hundred pounds lighter than Warford is, whose given name is Calvin Johnson, but whom everyone knows simply as Megatron, after a giant robot toy.
July 4, 2015
Would it not be easier / in that case / for the government to dissolve the people / and elect another?
May 12, 2015
Introducing City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis
Two years into the project, the cities themselves erupted. The various city-centric iterations of Occupy—Occupy Boston, Occupy Philadelphia, Occupy Oakland—seemed to both validate our idea and move beyond it. When Occupy was done, we felt that the project, and our curiosity about the cities of our country, could expand.
January 29, 2015
Super Bowl Preview
In order for the amount of pressure in the football to mean something, people have to care about football; if we can agree that the pressure matters, then we agree that football matters, and if we can agree on that, then we still care about the game enough to keep investing. In order for the integrity of the game to be taken seriously, integrity itself must be plausible.
February 6, 2012
Since football was the king of sports and the Super Bowl the king of games, I made a point of not watching, loudly.
November 22, 2011
In the taxonomy of cops, the most dangerous are the Ones Who Snap, but the scariest are the Ones Who Like It.
August 1, 2011
While preaching the beauty of small government, neoliberals and conservatives redistributed wealth upwards.
May 23, 2011
At once too densely civilized and not civil enough, the city fared little better at the hands of an emerging pragmatism.
March 22, 2011
The league needs…the blessing of the federal government in the form of an exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
February 7, 2017
The game’s sheer improbability made the whole thing impossible to take seriously until it was over.
It is a mistake to count on men like Belichick and Brady to understand the basic tenets of our shared world together. They know how to throw touchdowns and win football games, but not how to build or maintain a world in which it is possible to make millions doing so. For that, they rely on the rest of us, especially those long since priced out of their stadiums.
November 10, 2016
On what grounds should anyone accept the legitimacy of Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court?
It is easier to imagine a fair contest fairly lost by a bad candidate than it is to acknowledge an illegitimate process. It keeps the comforting fiction alive.
November 7, 2016
Colin Kaepernick has had his career compromised by the unchecked madness of white American privilege.
The playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” has gone from a boring, low-stakes ritual to a fascinating pageant, as players across the country and at all levels kneel, link hands, lie down, or otherwise take the opportunity to express themselves.
“You are the problem, Politician,” the Trumpian spat back.
June 20, 2016
LeBron knows that, win or lose, you’ll never get it; you’ll never forgive him for how he was born.
Everything that works as an excuse for everyone else has never worked for LeBron James, and so it’s no wonder why nobody understands when he tries to explain what that feels like.
January 26, 2016
The truth is that it is whether your win or lose, and it is also how you play the game.
November 21, 2015
Watching Peyton against the Colts, the same thought kept pushing itself into my mind, over and over: I’ll be dead someday.
November 9, 2015
Perhaps in the future men will simply become too large to play games like football without killing each other.
September 25, 2015
On rules, cheating, and Deflategate
Larry Warford is a guard for the Detroit Lions. He is six feet three inches tall and weighs 332 pounds. His job is to crouch, fifty to sixty times, one day a week, on a one-hundred-by-fifty-yard field, and then leap up, collide with men of similar size, and move them out of his way so that one of the smaller, faster men on his own team can run by them while carrying an American football. Or: his job consists of keeping those same large men from running past him long enough for his quarterback, Matthew Stafford, to throw the ball down the field, often to a man two inches taller and a hundred pounds lighter than Warford is, whose given name is Calvin Johnson, but whom everyone knows simply as Megatron, after a giant robot toy.
July 4, 2015
Would it not be easier / in that case / for the government to dissolve the people / and elect another?
May 12, 2015
Introducing City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis
Two years into the project, the cities themselves erupted. The various city-centric iterations of Occupy—Occupy Boston, Occupy Philadelphia, Occupy Oakland—seemed to both validate our idea and move beyond it. When Occupy was done, we felt that the project, and our curiosity about the cities of our country, could expand.
January 29, 2015
Super Bowl Preview
In order for the amount of pressure in the football to mean something, people have to care about football; if we can agree that the pressure matters, then we agree that football matters, and if we can agree on that, then we still care about the game enough to keep investing. In order for the integrity of the game to be taken seriously, integrity itself must be plausible.
