MLS' Strategy: Attract Global Soccer Fans
Don Garber is sitting at the head of a long table in a big conference room talking about the future of his league. The commissioner of Major League Soccer could be here all day, ...
Sports Business
Sacramento Deal Nothing But Net for Stern
Mike Ozanian, Forbes
With Venturi's Death, Golf Lost a Legend
Adam Schupak, Golf Week
Not Much Sense in Overvaluing Dollars
Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati Enquirer
Like Lance, Spandex Taking a Fall
Kevin Helliker, Wall Street Journal
Think Reggie Miller Is Annoying? We Do Too
David Roth, Sports on Earth
The NBA is staying in Sacramento. The Maloof family has agreed to sell the Kings to a group led by tech entrepreneur Vivek Ranadive, 24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov and forme...(full article)
Ken Venturi, winner of the 1964 U.S. Open and the voice of golf for CBS Sports for 35 years, died Friday afternoon. Venturi's son, Matt, broke the news of the death to the San ...(full article)
At least 30 years ago, maybe 40, Pete Rose declared he wanted to the “the first $100,000 singles hitter.’’ Or some such. How quaint. We’ve been fascinated with athletes...(full article)
Over the past decade, Lance Armstrong did more than inspire tens of thousands of Americans to take up cycling. He inspired them to look like him. Snap-on shoes. Shaved legs. Brigh...(full article)
It didn't necessarily register, the way that Reggie Miller's mouth moved throughout his long, frequently dazzling Hall of Fame heel turn in the NBA. There was just so much else to ...(full article)
More Recent Articles
Losing 'Offensive' Mascots Sensible
A few days ago I came across an article in Forbes that discussed the continuing controversy surrounding the Washington, D.C. NFL franchise’s use of “Redskins” as a team name...
Ninja Moniker Suits ACC's Swofford
Not too long ago somebody told John Swofford about his nickname. He had never heard it. He had no idea people – sportswriters, radio personalities, college sports fans on Tw...
Debt Drives Cubs' Threat to Leave Wrigley
Tom Ricketts is threatening to move the Chicago Cubs out of the friendly confines of Wrigley Field due to difficulty in getting a $500 million renovation plan approved. One conce...
Collegians Have No Assurance of Insurance
"Intercollegiate athletics programs shall be conducted in a manner designed to protect and enhance the physical and educational well-being of student-athletes." - 2012-13 NCAA D...
ESPN's Handling of Collins News a Joke
April 29, 2013 is a historic day in not only the lesbian and gay community, but also for the United States, as NBA player Jason Collins became the first active athlete of the four...
Top Quarterback Finally Gets Top Contract
Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers reached a long-rumored contract extension today that is expected to pay the quarterback $110 million over five years, as reported by Packer...
Meet the Media's Newest Kingpin: The NFL
In any other case, seeing a major sports league and two all-sports networks voluntarily restrict itself on Twitter would be a sign of trouble and cause for alarm. But it’s th...
Bottom Line Tells It: Real Is for Real
Real Madrid fans have a bit to celebrate these days. In March the Spanish soccer juggernaut narrowly beat Manchester United, knocking them out of the world’s premier club compe...
Football Broadcaster Summerall Did It All
Pat Summerall died Tuesday. He was 82. That’s exactly how Summerall once told a writer he would craft the first sentences of his own obituary _ short and to the point. He died i...
In Defense of the Free Market in Sports
esterday I came across two articles which both discuss two of my favorite topics of study: sports and free market economics. As you’ll see, the each article adopts a stance i...
Dilemma of Collegiate Disability Insurance
Kevin Ware's grisly leg fracture during Louisville's run to the title was excruciating to watch for anyone—but especially so for NCAA athletes, who were reminded of how quickly...
Innovations Keep Baseball Alive and Well
It is amusing to hear people complain about Major League Baseball’s big financial disparities between large- and small-market clubs, and lack of competition. Usually this is a ...
Carmelo Wins Title - as NBA's Most Overpaid
You’ve probably heard that Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony dropped 90 points in his past two games, leading his club to victories over Miami and Atlanta. Only mild surprise th...
NCAA Basketball Coaches Cashing In
Kentucky is the Bluegrass State, where the cash is always greener. Just ask the University of Louisville's Rick Pitino, the highest-paid coach at a public school in this season's...
A Good Bet: NCAA Opposes Gambling
It is a lucrative time of year for Nevada, where more than $200 million will be wagered in sports books on the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, a pot of money that has...
Recession? Average Team Worth $744 Million
You need a new type of scorecard to accurately measure the wealth of Major League Baseball these days because team owners are scoring in so many different ways. Upshot: The avera...
4 Challenges Eroding NFL's Foundation
For almost four decades now the NFL has experienced extraordinary uninterrupted growth. But there may be corrosion occurring beneath the shiny shield. The liability is here! Liab...
Nike's Tiger Ad Finds the Rough
Tiger Woods finally caught back up with his talent this week, and his destiny is within spitting distance once again. His long climb back to the world No. 1 ranking after career ...
Sleeves Mean More Cash for Basketball
Basketball uniforms have gone through lots of changes over the years. The shorts have gotten longer, the socks have gotten shorter, and old-school cotton cloth has given way to hi...
Louisville Seeded No. 1 for NCAA Value
It’s another great year to root for Louisville. The Cardinals won a second consecutive Big East tournament title in a thrilling 78-61 victory over Syracuse. The team’s success ...
Maybe We Should Just Call It Money Madness
March is the month in the calendar that makes people affiliated with the Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament all giddy inside as bank shots fall on-court while bank accounts ...
Media Money Fuels Continued Rise of Sports
It has often been said that God has a sense of humor, and the great Biblical irony today is at a time when the sports industry sometimes appears to have reached its saturation poi...
Watching Sports Might Lower Depression Risk
A thought occurred to me last Sunday as I sat at home, my body creating an indelible imprint in the sofa. I had barely moved for hours, flicking between a goalless draw between Mi...
March Madness Is the Richest Money Machine
Three weeks, 67 games, four network channels. No overlapping coverage prodding network producers to move an audience from one game to another based on the scores. That’s the ...
How to Relate Analytics to Average Fans
It is 8:15 on Friday morning, and the PA system in the 3rd floor ballroom at the Boston Convention Center is stuck in 1982. A room full of 2,700 people is rocking out to Rod Stew...
Falcons' Stadium Deal a Loser
It’s a familiar script. Ask for the moon, wait to see which way the balloon floats, encounter blowback from residents, special interests and the media, smile, say that you ...
Goodell Looms Above the Powers That Be
The power that runs sports isn't physical, despite all those power hitters and power forwards, power plays and power alleys. It isn't electrical, either, though when the lights g...
Basketball the New Court for 'Moneyball'
Two years ago, at the fifth annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the backdrop in the main panel room featured a single image, repeated like wallpaper: Kobe Bryant putting...
Billionaires Turning Notice to Sports Teams
There was a time not too long ago when sports teams were considered a billionaire’s ultimate luxury purchase. Sports was the one area where the super wealthy could still be su...
Shooting Some Interest Into NASCAR
Danica Patrick, Jimmie Johnson or whoever wins the NASCAR race in Texas next month should be handed a gun that carries 150 rounds and can decapitate an elephant with a single sho...
True Rival Emerging for ESPN?
For Rupert Murdoch, creating a national cable sports network in the United States to compete with ESPN has been his white whale — a tantalizing television opportunity but one of...
Nike Duds So Dull They're Doing Rory In?
Rory McIlroy, now in his twenty-ninth consecutive week as the world’s number one golfer, walked off the course at The Honda Classic on Friday, excusing himself from the latter h...
'Moneyball' Provides a Blueprint for Military
In the summer of 2008, Kansas City-based sportswriter Joe Posnanski was invited to discuss Moneyball at nearby Fort Leavenworth. At first, he was incredulous. "I had literally no ...
Ownership Still About Dollars and Cents
For a long time. sports franchise owners have been mocked by the press for pleading poverty every time a collective bargaining agreement with their players comes up. Operating los...
Realign NFL on Money, or Maybe Q Ratings
The NHL has proposed a realignment plan that would give the league four divisions instead of six. Yet while radical realignment has some detractors -- those who are really into...
Chrysler, Taco Bell Winners in Ad Bowl
Oprah Winfrey and a wrinkly senior named Bernie Goldblatt helped Chrysler and Taco Bell win the advertising battle at Super Bowl XLVII Sunday night amid a power outage at the New ...
ESPN Overkill Ruining Aussie Experience
Quick, name a sport, any sport. Tennis? Good. Yup, ESPN does whatever it takes — spends a ton of money, too — to wreck tennis, too. What ESPN is a...
Musburger Wasn't Wrong, He Was Just Corny
“When I nod my head, you hit it.” — Moe, from The Three Stooges IT COMES flying at us, all day, all night, every day. We’re surrounded. To the bell ...
ESPN's 'Black Barbershop' Dumbing Down
Dig deep today. ESPN SUSPENDS PARKER First Take's Rob Parker apologized for his controversial RG3 comments, and now ESPN has suspended the personality for 30 days. Put on yo...
ESPN Ruins the Good With the Bad
This week, ESPN celebrated a programming success and, days later, apologized for a programming failure. Both were predictable, and both were logical extensions of what the network...
SB Nation Converting Fans Into Dollars
What do you get when you mix a firebrand political blogger, an Internet innovator and a few million rabid sports fans? A valuable startup. Jim Bankoff is sitting in a Manhattan...
NBA Desperately In Need of Balance
The NBA is a curious entity. The new basketball season opens to little fanfare in contrast with the chorus of hosannas that ring out on Week One of the NFL season. The playoff cha...
When Media Cheers Excess, It Misses Point(s)
Knew it the moment we heard about it. We knew that in the pandering, mindless, shallow world of modern TV sports “journalism” that bad would be celebrated as “fa...
At Sports Illustrated, He Had the Life of Reilly
I can’t stop watching that video of Rick Reilly demanding that Stuart Scott credit him for a tweet. God, just look at those words: “Rick Reilly demanding that Stuart Sc...
50 Highest-Earning U.S. Athletes
For the first time since SI.com began publishing the Fortunate 50 in 2004, Tiger Woods is not No. 1. He's not even No. 2. That honor goes once again to Phil Mickelson. The new No. ...
Clemens' Brand Value Won't Return
Roger Clemens was acquitted Monday on all 6 charges that he obstructed and lied to Congress by denying he used performance-enhancing drugs during the latter stages of his illustrio...
EPL Broadcast Rights Up for Auction
A day after Manchester City won the crown as England's top soccer club on Sunday in the closest title race in decades, another battle is looming: the auction of U.K. broadcastin...
Fallout From EPL's Final Day
Five things we learned in Barclays Premier League action on Survival Sunday: 1. Manchester City is, at last, the champion. As certain triumph seemed suddenly to be turning into cru...
NBA Scoring More Younger Viewers
Blake Griffin's dunk contest winner — a soaring jam over a car during last year's NBA All-Star weekend — set off more social media buzz than a Super Bowl ad. "On...
Did ACC Get Ripped Off by ESPN?
It was reported today that the Atlantic Coast Conference signed a long-term extension of its TV rights agreement with ESPN. The former 12-year, $1.86 billion deal ran through the ...
Why NHL Is Hot and NBA Is Not
In 1994, the cover of ‘Sports Illustrated’ ran a provocative headline that is likely framed somewhere in NHL headquarters: Why the NHL’s Hot and the NBA’s...
Time Warner's New Sports Networks
Time Warner Cable Deportes, the First Spanish-Language Regional Sports Network, Will Provide Region's Only Comprehensive Spanish Sports Coverage --On-Air Roster Includes Stu Lant...