1. “In Britain, there are no legal or governance structures that put football or the fans at the centre of a club owner’s concerns. Rather, in keeping with the wider culture, football is “open for business”. Market forces are deified as the only value worth celebrating and a business – even a football club – is no more than its owner’s private plaything. The result is a moral and economic disaster – in football as in the wider economy.”
Will Hutton looks at modern football and calls it ‘everything that’s bad about Britain’ in The Observer.
2. “At 12, he has found an audience as a football savant while sharing an hourlong broadcast, “The Booker Corrigan Show,” on Thursday nights on a local CBS Sports Radio station.
The show has 25,000 listeners and another 20,000 who download its podcasts, Corrigan said. Although he does not have ratings figures to demonstrate any Cullen Little effect, “I’d certainly bet that we’ve increased” the audience.
Cullen, a 4-foot-9, 73-pound boy, called in to the show in early November and within weeks was sitting beside the host.”
The New York Times‘ Hillel Kutler tells the tale of broadcasting Wunderkind Cullen Little.
3. “Flynn, Dan, Ken, Kelly*… now Mullane. Of the bona fide/arguable* modern #Waterford legends (single names sufficient) only Tony and Brick are left.
In retiring from inter-county hurling 11 days shy of his 32nd birthday, John Mullane leaves the Déise with not just a vast attacking void, but bereft of the most passionate touchstone the shirt has known.”
Jamie O’Keefe pays a suitable homage to John Mullane on Tweetface.
4. ‘“Like a dungeon,” he says now. “One light bulb swaying back and forth. There was a damp, musty smell. It was like the basement in Pulp Fiction.”The doctors handed him a towel. For his mouth. To keep him from biting his tongue. And to muffle his screaming – That wasn’t the ailment. No, that was the cure.”‘
The Miami Herald’s Dan LaBatard talks to NFL star Jason Taylor about his excruciating road to recovery.
5. “I am in the Miami library, reading through all the issues of the African-American paper when I see an item that mentions the name of the man originally scheduled to fight Ali Feb. 7, 1961: Willie Gullatt. I know immediately why I’ve been unable to find him. The white papers, and later books and magazine articles, misspelled his name.”
This is a long read, but well worth your time: Wright Thompson traces the lost Muhammad Ali opponent for ESPN.
6. “Manti Te’o was a great story, too. Another comforting fable. Lost his girlfriend, the love of his life, the one he met on a football field, to leukemia. Or was it a car crash? Doesn’t matter. She was gone, but Te’o pressed on, strong and brave, making lots and lots of tackles, overcoming adversity. Just like Armstrong. Just the way we want and need our athletes to be, because if they can do it, maybe we can do it, too, and maybe we’ll even have our own stories to tell, even if we never win the Tour de France or almost win the Heisman Trophy.”
Patrick Hruby finds truth and real life getting in the way of great stories for SportsonEarth.com.
