Of backlashes and blitzes: NFL Nation under siege

September 18, 2014

Well, that was quick.

No sooner was Adrian Peterson deactivated by the Minnesota Vikings for felony child abuse than he was reinstated after his team took a drubbing from the New England Patriots.

While Peterson is said to be a few floors short of an observation desk, he may not be as lacking in self-awareness as his smiling mug shot would attest. He’s taken to posting biblical passages of the “judge not lest ye be judged” variety. Religion may not be “the opiate of the masses,” as Karl Marx called it, but it is certainly the last refuge of the vilified.

Meanwhile, the Vikings have taken refuge in that other august document, the Constitution, saying there’s no reason Peterson should not play while awaiting due process. Really? ...

Colin’s eyes, Russell’s, uh, thing and the NFL’s continuing female trouble

September 13, 2014

As we move from Ray Rice (former Raven) to Condoleezza Rice (future NFL commish?), I thought we’d lighten up with Colin Kaepernick – 49ers quarterback, model, sex symbol.

Colin’s on the cover of the new V Man magazine, photographed by Bruce Weber, whose gift for capturing men and homoeroticism is unquestioned. How life and art parallel one another: In my forthcoming novel, “In This Place You Hold Me” – the second book in my series, “The Games Men Play” – New York Templars quarterback Quinn Novak poses for a series of erotic photos by fashion/art photog Elliott Gardener, whom we meet in Alí’s story arc in my first book, “Water Music.” Apparently, you really can’t make this stuff up.

Anyway, back to Colin. ...

Sam, I am

September 7, 2014

As we might’ve predicted, the presence of Michael Sam in the NFL is bringing out the worst in humanity.

First, the NFL, according to NBC’s Peter King, asked around if any team had interest in putting Sam, the league’s first openly gay player, on its practice squad after the St. Louis Rams cut him, basically to avoid a PR disaster – not because the guy’s good and deserves a chance or even because the league is standing up for what’s right.

Meantime, the Dallas Cowboys bit and now a group calling itself American Decency will protest the Cowboys’ home opener against the San Francisco 49ers Sunday, Sept. 7. Gee, wonder if American Decency is going to protest spousal abuse, gun possession, drunk driving, dogfights and any of the NFL’s other little extracurricular activities.

I’ll be rooting for my Niners but go, Sam.

Lost in translation: Novak Djokovic and geopolitical incorrectness

September 4, 2014

There’s a new book about Novak Djokovic. Not that you’d know it by Barnes & Noble.

I ordered Chris Bowers’ “The Sporting Statesman: Novak Djokovic and the Rise of Serbia” back in July when I blogged about it only to find out when I came to pick it up at the store Sept. 2 that BN would not be carrying it. Meanwhile, several Barnes & Nobles are carrying “Seventy-Seven: My Road to Wimbledon Glory,” Andy Murray’s account of winning Wimby – last year. (BN has carried Bowers’ books on Roger Federer).

This is not to dump on Andy or even BN, although the store should’ve informed me immediately by email that it would not have the book I ordered. But what does a guy have to do to get some attention? Nole is, after all, the No. 1 male player in the world. He did win Wimbledon this year. Meanwhile, Andy has not exactly been lighting up the tour. What gives? ...

The war that never ends, again

August 20, 2014

When I was younger, I called Vietnam – the conflict of my youth and my generation – “the war that never ends.”

Now Iraq is threatening to become that war as we are drawn back into its political and humanitarian crises. It was, of course, the wrong war, which President Barack Obama pointed out when he was a senator, the war for al-Qaeda being the province of Afghanistan. But we went anyway, little understanding the culture (echoes of Vietnam) or the lesson of Alexander the Great – that to conquer you must immerse yourself in a place and be prepared to risk being seduced, being conquered, by the place itself.

Alexander – the Greco-Macedonian conqueror of the Persian Empire – never left Iraq, dying in Babylon a month short of his 33rd birthday. We left, but in leaving, stayed.

Iraq figures into one of the four story arcs that make up my new novel, “Water Music,” about the tennis prodigy Alí Iskandar – a favorite character of my readers...

Skin deep: Colin Kaepernick, Michael Brown and the problem of profiling

August 18, 2014

At first glance, Colin Kaepernick and Michael Brown would seem to be as far apart as San Francisco and Ferguson, Mo. But in a week in which Brown became yet another unarmed young black man killed by a police officer, Kaepernick was telling Bleacher Report why he thinks he’s criticized as the 49ers quarterback:

"Stereotypes, prejudice," Kaepernick told Bleacher Report when asked about the criticism. “Whatever you want to call it. I think between the tattoos, the way I dress, the way I talk. People don't think it should go together with a franchise quarterback or someone that's leading the team or representing the organization. At the end of the day, you have to look at, 'Are they knowledgeable? Are they doing their job?' Not what their appearance is."

Appearances were on the mind of Sen. Rand Paul, who wrote a piece for Time magazine in which he talked about the fact that as a white kid mouthing off, he wouldn’t have expected to be shot.

Novak Djokovic, champion of peace

July 18, 2014

War, Novak Djokovic once observed, is the worst thing that can happen to anyone.

I sincerely hope he’s not destined to become a male Cassandra, bearing witness to the horror of the inevitable. But it certainly seems that way, doesn’t it?

In recent days, we’ve all been forced to bear witness to the kind of rage, terror and desperation that he no doubt experienced as a child of the Balkan conflict of the 1990s.

The former Yugoslavia at the 20th century’s sunset, New York at the 21st century’s dawn, Nigeria and Ukraine today, Israel and the Palestinian people eternally – the names change, the borders and media circus shift, but the stories are always sickeningly the same. Little boys mangled and murdered by mortar shells. Teenaged ones burned alive or kidnapped, never to return.

And now some 300 souls blown to smithereens on another ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane, plucked out of the air as it were and scattered in pieces on the ground. And for what?