1. “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.”
With those words, NBA basketball player Jason Collins penned one of the most important sports articles in recent memory. Read it in full at Sports Illustrated.
2. “Ferguson was desperate to secure his first English league title and United’s first since 1967, but to escape the tension the day before United played Blackburn, he had gone to play golf rather than watch their only remaining challengers, Aston Villa, play Oldham live on TV. As Ferguson describes it, he was on the 17th green when a car screeched to a halt nearby and he heard footsteps on a gravel path.
How did it feel to walk up to Alex Ferguson on a golf course and tell him that Manchester United had won the league? BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan catches up with ‘stranger’ Michael Lavender 20 years later.
3. “For the last five years, I’ve had a routine. Having interviewed Kieran McGeeney for the late Sunday Tribune just weeks after he took the Kildare job, the questions and stories that surrounded him grew and evolved to the extent I’ve been perpetually desperate to sit down with him again. So, each season in mid-league and early-championship, I drop him a text wondering if he’d be interested in a cup of coffee. Each time, within minutes, my phone receives a reply that never wavers. The response is always polite but also is always a rejection.”
The culture of player access is changing in the GAA. How then, asks Ewan MacKenna, are the public supposed to connect with the game’s stars?
4. “Oh do man up, Peter, as I believe the expression goes. You mustn’t allow yourself to be – what’s that other figure of speech? – pussywhipped by these clubs. They are making you what’s known as their bitch, and it does look as if you need to, well, grow a pair. Alas, indications are that the R&A’s collective testicles are to remain undropped for the foreseeable future – which, as I say, makes one wonder whether men are really suited to these kinds of important and complex leadership roles. Would they not be happier at a less operational level, where their innate gentleness could be showcased, instead of being forced into the unnatural position of exercising power?”
The Guardian’s Marina Hyde is deeply unhappy that the Open Championship will be played at men-only Muirfield later this summer — and she’s not afraid to shout about it.
5. “Te’o, being the country’s top linebacker recruit, is primed to sign with U.S.C., the country’s top program. Everyone agrees they’re the ideal match—right up until the minute Te’o faxes in his commitment letter. To Notre Dame. This reversal rocks the college-football universe, which can’t fathom why a devoutly Mormon kid from Hawaii would select a devoutly Catholic university in frigid, landlocked South Bend, Indiana. ‘A matter of faith,’ Te’o explained. ‘I closed my eyes and said a prayer. And after I said that prayer, everything just lined up.’
Remember college football star Manti Te’o, “the boy who cried dead girlfriend”? Vanity Fair sent Ned Zeman to meet the people who know Te’o best and find out what really happened.
YouTube Credit: Skendong
6. “The Bees have morphed from a club settling for mid-table mediocrity in League One into one pushing doggedly for promotion and scaring teams not only in our division, but much higher up the ladder — like Chelsea, who we were minutes away from beating in this year’s FA Cup. Saturday, though, was much more important than Chelsea. On Saturday we could have won automatic promotion to the Championship. The stage was set in Disney sports movie-like terms. Brentford versus Doncaster. Win and we go up. Lose or draw and we have to enter the play-offs and Doncaster would replace us as the team automatically promoted. All to play for; simple as that.”
The League One showdown between Brentford and Doncaster was as dramatic as they come. Writing for The Shin Guardian, Bees fan Zack Goldman details the cruelty of the beautiful game.
