1. THIS IS THE first time terrorists have attacked the gates of a stadium during a game. Amazing as that sounds, it’s true. All these years, it’s been a worst-case scenario. Stadiums are soft, rich targets. A minor league baseball game seats as many American casualties as the entire Normandy invasion, and a small basketball arena holds all the Marines killed on Iwo Jima. The biggest football stadiums hold two Gettysburgs. Thousands of people sit side by side, riding public trains and eating in nearby restaurants, on Avenue Jules Rimet in Paris or River Avenue in the Bronx, with no way for authorities to make them secure. The only thing between a pleasant day and Mad Max is a social contract and faith in each other’s humanity. Live sports work because people believe they are safe, and in Paris, that belief came under attack.
The peerless Wright Thompson visited Paris in the days after the terrorist attacks challenged the belief that live sport still provides a refuge in the chaotic modern world.
2. Frampton is a legitimate sporting superstar but, thankfully, he’s of the down-to-earth sort. Affable by nature, he comes across as a genuine guy; what you see is what you get. Having double-checked which is the safest bed for me to crash on for the night, and sourced me a clean towel for the morning, he flicks on the TV until bedtime. It’s a brand new set, purchased to replace one recently stolen by a burglar who must surely have been ignorant to the occupations of those in the property when he snuck in a few nights ago. Boxing then Alan Partridge is Carl’s choice this evening. He clearly knows a thing or two about putting cracking combinations together outside the ring as well as inside.
As Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg prepare to finally get it on, Paul Gibson went behind the scenes with the Frampton camp for the first leg of the media tour.
3. Men were peeing on the Super Bowl. Well, not literally on it, but on a hill behind the bleachers at Stanford Stadium, a venue that had no business hosting America’s premier sporting event in 1985. But here we were nonetheless.
Michael Rosenberg takes a look at one of the quirkier stories in Super Bowl history — how the 1985 event tore a family apart and changed stadium deals forever.
4. He didn’t know what was coming, and how could he? He was never meant for the theatrics, the Twitter slights and Photoshop parlor tricks that bled into a slow McGregorfication of the game. He didn’t know how fast eight years could be forgotten, or that he would be painted a liar and a coward while being dragged to the public gallows. He didn’t know that before his greatest moment, the world would cling to the words of an Irishman, human sneer wrapped in tricolor parading around with a false belt. No, Aldo knew only that he won. And as long as he kept on winning, life was going to change.
The build-up to Aldo v McGregor is well and truly underway, and Shaun Al-Shatti tracked down 12 of the men who have tried — and failed — to beat the Brazilian.
5. It’s hard to remember now, when you see the black and metallic gold jerseys with orange accents, but the Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League were the very direct result of a movie’s success. The Ducks have won a Stanley Cup. Five Hall of Famers have been Ducks at one point in their careers. Now in its 22nd season of play, the Ducks franchise has carved out an indelible place in the modern NHL. Of course, if The Mighty Ducks had bombed in theaters when it opened nationwide on Oct. 2, 1992, none of this would have happened.
How did the Mighty Ducks the film become the Mighty Ducks the NHL franchise? Erik Malinowksi investigates.
