End of a quarterback, birth of an icon, as captured by AP.
Colin Kaepernick’s collusion case against the NFL is now one for the record books, though no numbers have been reported. Such is the way with private settlements. My uncle said he probably got $40 million. I think he got at least twice that. The NFL isn’t merely buying his silence in a suit that he may well have won. They’re saying adios to an activist player.
Read MoreEnes Kanter (right), — then of the Utah Jazz, now of the New York Knicks — attempting to block a shot by Patrick Beverley at the Houston Rockets’ Toyota Center March 17, 2014.
Everyone is entitled to his opinion, until, of course, someone thinks he isn’t. Recently, three incidents have challenged our concept of freedom of speech.
Read MoreAndy Murray and Novak Djokovic at The Boodles Tennis Challenge exhibition in Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire, England in 2012.
Andy Murray winning his second Wimbledon in 2016. Photograph by Daniel J. Cooper.
When an athlete retires, it is a little death. People start speaking about him in the past tense, as if he were truly gone instead of just moving on to another chapter of his life.
But in a way, athletic retirement is a kind of death. Few occasions remind us so much of our mortality as the thought of a seemingly invincible body now broken down or past its prime. Few engender so many memories and what-ifs, particularly if you identify with the athlete.
Few sports offer that identification the way tennis does. A team like the New York Yankees has a host of players to adore (and, on occasion, vilify). But a tennis match has only four players at a moment at best. And, if you’re a singles player, then it’s just you — and all those people out there who see you in themselves and themselves in you.
Perhaps that’s why the reaction to the retirement of Andy Murray — whom I’ve written much about on this blog and in my other life as an editor at WAG — has been so poignant.
Read MoreJohn G. Roberts Jr., chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. Photograph by Steve Petteway.
I think it’s fair to say that no holiday is safe from President Donald J. Trump’s displeasure with whomever he’s displeased with at the moment.
Read MoreWhen it all began: Novak Djokovic first becomes the number one ranked male tennis player after defeating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the semifinals of Wimbledon, 2011.
Novak Djokovic is back on top as world number one after an abdominal injury forced rival Rafael Nadal, the previous number one, to withdraw from the Rolex Paris Masters. Djokovic officially becomes number one on Monday, although he lost the Paris final to the latest tennis hotshot, Russia’s Karen Khachanov, 7-5, 6-4.
Normally, I’d be ecstatic with Nole’s return to top form. This time, though, I’m troubled.
Read MoreRafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are still considering whether or not to play an exhibition in Saudi Arabia Dec. 22 in light of the recent murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal — currently playing in the Rolex Paris Masters, with Djokovic challenging Nadal for the number one ranking — are taking a wait-and-see approach to playing the King Salman Tennis Championship in Saudi Arabia Dec. 22.
The exhibition match, a year in the planning, was announced after the revelation of the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi hands in Istanbul, putting pressure on Nadal and Djokovic to withdraw.
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