The athlete’s dance with the devil

December 30, 2015

The latest performance-enhancing drug scandal involves a star so big, so golden that to utter his name in the same breath as performance enhancement is to breathe sacrilege.

And yet here we are: The NFL and Major League Baseball are investigating an Al Jazeera report that implicates several of their players in the illegal use of human growth hormone, according to secretly taped – and couldn’t-be-more-appropriately-named-if-he-were-christened-by-Central Casting – pharmacy student Charlie Sly, who promptly recanted his claims.

There is really only one name anyone is interested in here – Peyton Manning, as in the superstar quarterback of the Denver Broncos, formerly of the Indianapolis Colts; Sports Illustrated’s 2013 Sportsman of the Year; scion of the Mannings of New Orleans, “football royalty,” as the press is want to note; and pitchman par excellence. ...

Serena Williams and the triple standard

December 14, 2015

Serena Williams has been named Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsperson of the Year,” and, predictably, all Hades has broken loose.

Let’s forget those who voted successfully for American Pharoah in the fans’ poll. I voted for AP, though I knew SI staffers would never give the award to a four-legged athlete. (No word from the Pharoah on any residual disappointment. Given his lovely demeanor, my guess is he’s already tweeted Serena his congrats on his big new iPhone. So much easier to type on with hooves.)

Would that his two-legged counterparts were as gracious. That SI picked a tennis player other than Novak Djokovic sent up red flags among those who saw reverse prejudice. ...

On nature and human nature: American Pharoah and San Bernardino

December 3, 2015

Is it right to talk about Sports Illustrated’s controversial nomination of American Pharoah for Sportsman of the Year at a time when there are so many lost souls and unanswered questions amid the mass shooting of a facility for the disabled in San Bernardino, Calif.?

I think it’s relevant. We are divided from nature, of which we are apart, in part because we are divided in our own human nature.

There are two types of people who misunderstand nature. The first doesn’t care about it and ranges from those who toss the ice cream pop wrapper out the car window onto the highway to those who abuse animals. ...

The Pharoah, Djokovic up for Sportsman of the Year

November 12, 2015

The racing world is a-flutter – and so am I: American Pharoah is up for Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year. As is Novak Djokovic once again.

OK, Nole – who hasn’t lost a tournament since the Ice Age – is never going to win. I’m assuming that when posters say they haven’t heard of some of the nominees, they mean him. And when they point out the year fellow nominee Serena Williams had, I know they don’t know what they’re talking about. No disrespect to Serena, but she won three Slams, lost in the semifinals of the fourth and then basically retired for the rest of the season. ...

Mr. (Aaron) Rodgers’ imperfect neighborhood

October 1, 2015

There’s something magnificent about watching an athlete in his prime. Witness Novak Djokovic. The same can be said of Aaron Rodgers, arguably the NFL’s finest player. Having won the league’s MVP Award last season, he’s off to a dream start as his team, the Green Bay Packers, has gone 3 and 0, including a decisive 38-28 win over the Kansas City Chiefs. (Next up – the troubled San Francisco 49ers, whose QB, my beloved Colin Kaepernick, isn’t exactly inviting comparisons to Rodgers this year. Did anyone say 4 and 0?)

Rodgers, the NFC’s offensive player of the week, is probably what casual observers think of when they think of a quarterback. (And indeed, he was in part the inspiration for Tam Tarquin, the golden QB and love interest in “The Penalty For Holding,” the forthcoming novel in my series “The Games Men Play.”) ...

SI’s swimsuit issue and the power of (the male) sex

February 15, 2015

Picked up my first-ever copy of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, which I bought for one reason and one reason alone – an image of a man.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I have to write about Greenwich actress Kelly Rohrbach, one of the featured “rookie” models, in my guise as editor of WAG magazine. But mainly I bought the Swimsuit issue for the two-page Levi’s spread featuring San Francisco 49ers ‘quarterback Colin Kaepernick, his teammate Vernon Davis and model Samantha Hoopes. (The Niners play in Levi’s Stadium.)

The ad campaign is about the most wholesome thing in the mag, which veers now and again into Playboy territory. The cover in particular has the media once again wringing their hands over whether or not SI went too far with a depiction of Hannah Davis in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, not-yellow-polka-dot bikini, the bottom of which she has pulled down to the top of her pubic region. This is a popular new trend in posing models – having them hook their thumb or thumbs in one or both sides of the pants or skirt to hint at the treasures and pleasures beneath. Colin does it on the cover of the fall/winter issue of VMan magazine. And a young woman holding a basketball does it in the Feb. 15 edition of T, The New York Times Style Magazine. ...

Of goddesses and their boy toys

February 9, 2015

Barneys has never shied away from provocation in its window displays or catalog, and its latest campaign – featuring supermodels of a certain vintage shot by Bruce Weber – is no exception.

The models, fully clothed in fashions by the likes of Céline and Balenciaga, pose with younger men who for the most part are not. In one, Christie Brinkley, clad in short, lacy Lanvin, pauses from applying her lipstick to succumb to the ecstasy of a tousle-haired hunk wrapped in a white bed sheet. In another, Stephanie Seymour Brant, in short, sheer Balenciaga, looks boldly at the camera as three nude men worship her with makeup mirrors.

Coupled with the appearance of plus-size model Ashley Graham in the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, it would seem as if society were finally ready to acknowledge the sexuality of women, many of whom are neither young nor thin.

So, as I said, it would seem. Seeming, however, doesn’t make it so. The models may be middle-aged but they are still gorgeous women. And the posts about Graham, who appears only in an ad in Sports Illustrated not an actual spread, range from saying she’s too fat to remarking that she’s too thin for plus-size work. (Graham’s a size 16.) ...