Nazilympics

In his Megaevents and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture , Maurice Roche has a scathing review of the International Olympic Committee’s interactions with the Nazis at the Berlin Olympics in 1936: “The IOC collaborated with the Nazi government in allowing what . . . . Continue Reading »

The Olympic Pains

David C. Young points out in his A Brief History of the Olympic Games that “The term Olympic Games is . . . a bad mistranslation of Greek Olympiakoi agones .” The problem is that agones gets converted into ludus , ludi , ludicrum , ie, diversions and games. “The Romans did not . . . . Continue Reading »

Go Spurs!

Over at Slate , Matthew Yglesias explains why Americans don’t take to the San Antonio Spurs, in spite of the Spurs’ apparent commitment to American values of teamwork, leadership, excellence, loyalty, hard work. Yglesias thinks it exposes the American character: “we are, . . . . Continue Reading »

Mystical baseball

Imagine my surprise, paging through the photos in my fresh new copy of John Thorn’s Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game , to find two familiar faces staring at me: Helena Blavatsky, theosophist, and Henry Steel Olcott, lapsed Presbyterian and “white . . . . Continue Reading »

Sports and Courage

I have a limited aim in this little essay.  A tiny aim.  I am neither attacking Christian participation in sports as such, nor responding to all the arguments that Christians use to defend sports.  I address only one argument, and I offer a simple historical response that is . . . . Continue Reading »

NC Rivalry

Over at the Books & Culture online magazine, Jason Byassee of the Christian Century - and a Duke PhD - lists some of the best lines from Will Blythe’s To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Paternalism

Some reviewers of Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side have complained about the “paternalism” of the Tuohy family who brought Michael Oher into their orbit. Well, tu quoque . Is it just possible that some lost kids, even lost black kids, might actually need a pater ? . . . . Continue Reading »