The Eagles have landed

February 6, 2018

Was that a great Super Bowl game or what? It had everything – an underdog (the victorious Philadelphia Eagles), a villain (the New England Patriots and Mr. “I’m Tom Brady and you’re not”), seesaw drama, frustrated placekickers, sleight-of-hand plays in the end zone and a modest hero (Eagles quarterback Nick Foles, the un-Brady). It was a most satisfying night, one that proved, as my beloved Aunt Mary always said, that if something is meant for you, it will be there for you – even if you’re an improbable second-string QB like Foles ...

Champions (of a cause)

February 20, 2017

“Should professional athletes be allowed to use their status to talk about things more important than the games they play?”

That is the question that Jay Caspian Kang asks in his most recent “On Sports” column for The New York Times Magazine.

It’s a rich, juicy question, because it goes to the heart of our ambivalence toward outspoken athletes, artists, entertainers and other public figures who are not public servants. ...

Trump, locker rooms and the ‘authenticity’ of the moment

October 12, 2016

When Donald Trump excused his lewd, explosive conversation with Billy Bush from 2005 as “locker room talk,” my ears pricked up and not just because the gender wars he’s engendered have been such excellent fodder for a blog titled “The Games Men Play.”

In my forthcoming novel “The Penalty for Holding” (Less Than Three Press, 2017), about a gay, biracial quarterback’s quest for identity, acceptance, success and love in the NFL, I have a couple of locker room moments in which women are discussed and even confronted in a less than respectful manner. ...

America’s son – Peyton Manning

March 6, 2016

When I was a child, I used to envy star athletes. They would retire young – having already accrued a lifetime of fame, wealth and accomplishment – and life would now be an open road on which they could do whatever they wished, being rich enough to do it and young enough to enjoy it.

But what if the open road were a vast wasteland? Who knows if athletes see delicious anticipation and opportunity or dread in retirement?

We can only imagine what’s going through Peyton Manning’s mind as he prepares to call it a day after 18 years of throwing a football with commanding accuracy. ...

Of deflated balls, exposed appendages and concealed identities

March 6, 2016

It’s been a great week for news – sporting and otherwise – of the games men play.

First, it’s ba-aaack – Deflategate that is. You will recall that last September, federal court Judge Richard M. Berman ruled that the NFL had overstepped its bounds in its arbitration of Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for allegedly masterminding the deflation of footballs in the New England Patriots’ 2015 A.F.C. Championship win over the Indianapolis Colts.

Now a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, has said, Not so fast. Taking a view similar to my own from the start of this delicious story, the panel seems less interested in the NFL’s triple role as judge, enforcer of punishments and arbitrator of appeals – a strange trifecta that would automatically make the league vulnerable to the charge of overstepping by the Players’ Union – than it is in the cover-up that always trips you up. To wit: What of Brady’s destroyed cell phone that might’ve contained incriminating information about his altered balls? ...

Super Bowl 50 – Defense! Defense!

February 8, 2016

Good pitching, baseball fans always say, stops good hitting. A good defense stops a good offense.

And so the Denver Broncos’ vaunted defense stopped Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers’ electric running game, 24-10 in Super Bowl 50.

It was perhaps the last hurrah for Broncos’ quarterback Peyton Manning, who at 39 became the oldest quarterback to pilot a Super Bowl team and may join his boss John Elway as the only quarterback to retire after winning a Super Bowl. ...

Can the Broncos stop Cam Newton, er, the Panthers?

January 25, 2016

A good defense stops a good offense like good pitching stops good hitting – or so running quarterback Quinn Novak wonders in my forthcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding.”

Anyone who thinks that, he reasons, has never considered Alexander the Great taking it to the Persians in 331 B.C.

And indeed, while the Denver Broncos’ defense surely stopped Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the American Football Conference Championship, that defense is going to be hard-pressed to stop the Carolina Panthers’ electrifying running game as encapsulated by their QB Cam Newton in Super Bowl 50 Feb. 7. ...