By Last Week Tonight
Plans to bring sports back “all degrees of bad.”
But no worries: The sports event of the summer has arrived.
Posted on May 18, 2020
The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #304: The Literary Themes Of The Last Dance
By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes
Greed, ego, pride, backstabbing, rivalry, treachery, betrayal – everything but the sex. Plus: If This Is What The Post-Lockdown Sports World Will Look Like, Let’s Keep It Locked Down; The Bundesliga Is Back!; Biggs Time Is Back!; and Baseball Is Not (Quite) Back!
Posted on May 15, 2020
Michael Jordan’s Regrets(?)
By Jim Coffman
I will readily acknowledge that I was a competitive moron when I was young. And then, when I got into my teens, I was less so. I have some theories as to why things played out that way for me and how it factored into being a fan.
I picked up that moniker at camp and it definitely fit, for a while. It wasn’t just that I was goofily competitive, it was that I got way too upset when my team lost games that simply did not qualify as important in any way, shape or form.
We’ve discussed the sort of “water polo” we played at Camp Echo in Fremont, Michigan, before. There was a goal at either end of the shallowest portion of the swimming area and teams of five or six would compete to score the most in a given time period with pretty much no holds barred.
So when I overdid it at times and my team wasn’t winning and the staff member who was overseeing a given game instructed me to take a break, I would sit there on the beach (the camp trucked in a whole lotta sand to transform what was otherwise a standard freshwater lakeshore) crying my eyes out.
Posted on May 13, 2020
How Jordan Led
By Roger Wallenstein
Leadership 101.
Step 1. Start with the greatest player in the history of the game.
Step 2. Have that player work harder than anyone else. Not only in games, of which he never takes off more than a few minutes let alone an entire contest due to “load management,” but, possibly more importantly, during spirited, energetic practice time.
Step 3. Surround that individual with a few talented accomplices along with a bench full of guys who most people wouldn’t recognize if they played on other teams.
Step 4. License that star player to cajole, bully, badger, fight, challenge, insult, and intimidate his teammates.
Step 5. Monitor the situation to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.
These are the ingredients of the style that Michael Jordan portrayed in the seventh hour of director Jason Hehir’s 10-hour marathon The Last Dance. The masterful docuseries reveals so many themes, not only of a team that won six NBA championships in the 1990s, but of human nature, attitudes, marketing, values, and relationships that apply to a world far removed from professional athletics.
Posted on May 12, 2020
Michael Jordan Off The Court In The ’80s & ’90s
An Inescapable Marketing Machine
He was everywhere – even when he wasn’t.
In three videos posted to YouTube in the last week.
(We now know that, no, he really wasn’t that nice; he made bank on an image he later self-pityingly loathed.)
1. Michael Jordan In Local Chicago Commercials, ’80s – ’90s.
Posted on May 12, 2020
Will COVID-19 Take Down College Football?
By AP
“Professional and college sports have been shutdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. NCAA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brian Hainline joins the Ground Game podcast to talk about when college teams can start gathering, practicing and competing again, as well as what might happen if a student-athlete tests positive for the virus.”
Posted on May 11, 2020
The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #303: The Neverending Last Dance
By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes
The Jordan fools. Plus: Kristin Cavallari Finally Meets Jay Cutler (Or Jay Cutler’s Last Dance); Ryan Pace Claims He Still Believes In Mitch Trubisky Even After Declining His 5th-Year Option And Signing Nick Foles, Which Is A Good Way To Show How Much Confidence He Has In The Guy He (Badly) Maneuvered For So He Could Pick Him To Second Overall In The NFL Draft; The KBO On ESPN!; and The Ex-Cub Factor.
Posted on May 8, 2020
The Ex-Cub Factor
By Steve Rhodes
One in an occasional series following the trials and triumphs of former Cubs.
1. Manny Ramirez.
Manny never played for the Cubs, of course, but he did put in some time as an organizational hitting instructor.
Now he’s pursuing a comeback with the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan.
Posted on May 7, 2020
The Bears’ Last Dance Was Their Only One
By Jim Coffman
Of course my memories of the loss are the most vivid. The Bears rolled through the playoffs in the winter of 1985-86 and then really unleashed their dominance in Super Bowl XX. But my clearest recollections of that amazing campaign are of that crushing Monday Night loss in Miami at the start of the regular season’s final month.
Except it turns out my memories of that amazing team’s single setback actually weren’t very accurate (the Bears finished with a combined 18-1 record after winning their first 12 before taking on the Dolphins). I thought I remembered details of that game but then I went back and read a delightfully detailed oral history and realized that sometimes even my favorite recollections are warped by time.
And I am not alone . . . not by a long stretch. And of course there are connections between that game and season and the documentary mega-series The Last Dance that continues to mesmerize Chicago with the seventh and eighth episodes (out of a total of 10) set to air on Sunday.
Posted on May 6, 2020
Women’s Collegiate Flag Football On The Way
By Reigning Champs Experience
Women’s flag football is on its way to becoming an official National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) varsity sport by 2021, thanks to a two-year partnership between the NAIA, the National Football League (NFL) and Reigning Champs Experiences (RCX).
With support from NFL FLAG and RCX, NAIA will work to develop league infrastructure and operations for the first women’s flag football competition governed by a collegiate athletics association.
Posted on May 5, 2020