Beyond the Pitch

I hope you'll consider downloading my Kindle Single Beyond the Pitch: The Spirit, Culture and Politics of Brazil's 2014 World Cup. It represents a consolidation and expansion of my writing on the World Cup this summer for American Independent Media and Football is Coming Home.

Circus Without Bread

Football is Coming Home published my "Circus Without Bread: Reflections on Brazil 2014," which touches on just some of the World Cup-related topics I have been covering for the last several weeks for American Independent Media.

Brazil Bound

In a few days I'll be heading to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup. This is primarily a pleasure trip, but between my academic interests in sport, society, and politics and the fact that I'll be writing about the experience for a Texas newspaper group (I'll share links as I can) there is certainly a professional component involved (or that's my story, anyway).

I'm especially interested in comparing and contrasting the experience I had in South Africa with that in Brazil. Obviously not much will ever pass 2010 for me in terms of its meaning professionally and personally, but it should still be a wonderful opportunity.

I'm going to be based in Porto Alegre with my friend Jaime and his family, and as of now have tickets to three group stage games -- France-Honduras, South Korea-Algeria, and the one we are most anticipating, Nigeria-Argentina. I'll be supporting the Super Eagles, and all of the African sides while they will be all about Argentina. Then we have tickets to one of the knockout games, which will pit the winner of Group G (The Group of Death -- Germany, Portugal, Ghana, and the US) and the second place finisher in Group H (Belgium, Algeria, Russia, and South Korea).

I'll post occasionally and will try to link some of my pieces as I go.   

South Africa's Political Playground

Today the Council on Foreign Relations' "Africa in Transition" Blog published the second of my pieces on South African politics, "South Africa's Political Playground." It was an honor to be able to contribute my thoughts and I especially want to thank John Campbell, who oversees the blog, and Emily Mellgard of CFR who helped steer my work to publication.

The 2014 South African Election

I had a guest post appear on the Council on Foreign Relations Blog "Africa in Transition" today. "The 2014 South African Election: Another ANC Landslide" is the first of two contributions on South African politics that they will publish.

"Don't Be Forced to Transfer to Amherst"

Williams College Libraries (Go Ephs!) have produced a nifty homage to those cable tv ads (you know the ones -- they are like a shaggy dog tale meeting a Rube Goldberg Device, culminating in "don't sell your hair to a wig shop.") This one culminates in a fate in which the living envy the dead.

A Williams Soccer Player in Afghanistan

It is hardly news when a Williams alum takes a corporate job. It is news but not astounding to see a Williams alum play professional soccer. It is astounding news when just about any American not in the armed services takes a job in Afghanistan.

So it is especially amazing news to see the story of Nick Pugliese, a 2012 Williams grad who took a job in Afghanistan and then took advantage of the opportunity to play professional soccer for Ferozi FC of the Kabul Premier League. The telecommunications company for which he worked demanded that he choose between them and Ferozi FC. He chose to continue playing. You can see his story recounted here.  

Facebook Spammer: I Curse You

Ok, so I am the worlds worst Facebook friend. I almost never check my Facebook page, to the point where it always takes me a while to navigate the interface, especially since it is different between my laptop, iPad, and android phone. (Yeah, I have a Mac laptop, my campus office computer is a Mac desktop, I have an iPad, and my phone is an android -- what of it?) I take forever to respond to friend requests and messages. When I do check in, it's usually to announbce that I'm travelling someplace or to announce some accomplishment, and so basically my timeline is that of a narcissist. (On Facebook? The audacity!) Basically, I may as well not have a Facebook account.

So today I go in the respond to some friend requests. And I decide to keep scrolling down to send a few requests of my own, something I just about never do (again, that narcissism -- I don't request friends, I wait to be requested). And so I find folks from high school I'm still not Facebook friends with, and then start finding professional colleagues, college and grad school friends, that guy I met through that other guy who I know through that dude I met at a scholarly seminar.

And because people tend to keep Facebook open on a tab on their computer, some folks started responding right away, including one guy I sort of knew who was a year or two behind me in high school.

Minutes later, I get a message from him. "Hi." Then a vague inquiry about how I'm doing, to which I gave a nine word biography. Then the next post arrives: "I've been trying to reach you lately cause i have a great news to share with you." (Just assume "sic" from here on out.)

Um, ok, I have not seen you in 25 years and had not thought of you until I saw your name here today and sent the friend request, but ok.

Next message: "Did you hear the NEW YEAR good news about facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg?"

Um, nope.

"The New Month Promotion, it was made to some facebook user in other to benefit from them at large $150,00.00 did you get yours from them?" (Again, all "sic" up in here.)

Yeah, dude, not interested.

"oh really"

"when the UPS Company delivered the money to my door step. I saw your name on the list with the shipping company agent, so I thought I would see if you have gotten it."

And . . . Unfriended (something I have never done before, by the way, as since I don't go on regularly I can avoid most of the dumb stuff that many of the people with whom I went to high school -- and the crazy always comes from high school connections. Always -- tend to spew out.)

I am assuming that C*** B******* has simply had his Facebook page hacked or usurped. But whatever it is, screw you, "C*** B*******."

The Atlantic Drops the Ball (And Hef Misses the Point)

There may be no more prestigious byline for a writer than to get published in The Atlantic. We could quibble -- The New Yorker certainly belongs in the conversation -- but the point is, those hallowed pages represent the pinnacle. And so when something like "The Accidental Spectator's Guide to Improving Sports" slips through the cracks as it did in the latest issue of the magazine it is infuriating.

The premise is simple: Juliet Lapidos is not a sports fan. But "since reaching adulthood" she has "watched, or rather been in the room while other people have watched, countless hours of throwing, catching, and flopping." From that vantage point she has suggestions to improve the experience of watching four sports (baseball, football, basketball and soccer) and boy is the dumb strong in this one. There is the possibility that this represents an attempt at humor, which would actually be better even though it is utterly witless.

I'm not going to parse the whole thing -- if you're even remotely a sports fan you can subject yourself to it. But the first one she goes after in baseball:

America’s pastime is always around and therefore easy to take for granted. Teams play 162 games each season—and that’s before the endless playoffs, whose monotonous best-of-fives lead up to the agonizing best-of-seven World Series.

Luckily, there’s a simple solution. Major League Baseball could inflate the value of each individual game by reducing the total number played each year. Chop the regular season down by 25 or 30 percent. Give the postseason a haircut, too: best-of-three is good enough for the earlier playoffs, and best-of-five is plenty for the World Series.

Well, she's right that she knows nothing about sports. The solution to deciding a champion is not to shorten postseason series. As it is the biggest problem with the postseason is that the sample size, far from being too big, is actually far too small. One of the central arguments in Moneyball is that for everything teams do to build a championship team that can compete in the regular season the postseason is hugely dependent on luck and outlier performances. Only the division rounds are five game series (which follow one-game play-in Wild Cards that are useless in determining the best team), after which the League Championship Series and the World Series are seven games long each.

Her suggestions for basketball, football, and soccer are no better. And what is frustrating is that I know two dozen people personally who would both love to get a page to write about sports in The Atlantic and who are far more qualified to do so both as writers and as people who actually know things about sports.

(And while I'm piling on, later in the same issue in a last-page feature called "The Big Question" a baker's dozen of famous people respond to the query "What party would you most like to have attended?" Hugh Hefner seems to have missed the point of one of the classic books in the American literature canon:

A party thrown by Jay Gatsby. I was born in 1926 and grew up during the Great Depression. I read The Great Gatsby in college, and it became my favorite book. It reflected a lifestyle that I identified with very much, so when I started Playboy, I tried to project a contemporary variation of the Roaring Twenties and Gatsby's lifestyle.

 Hef, baby, you're an icon for generations of men. But The Great Gatsby isn't really a celebration of the bitchin' West Egg parties. 

 

2014 African Elections

In 2014 hundreds of millions of Africans will turn out in elections across the continent. At the Foreign Policy Association Africa Blog I have a preview of the continent's electoral landscape.

A Quick Q and A, David Brooks as Fraud Division

Q: Is David Brooks a Fatuous Gasbag Who is Both Bad at Journalism and Bad at Social Science?

A: Yes.

Look, no one, including me, actually gives a good goddamn about this blog. It represents a painless way for me to maintain easy access to my own publications that are online and a lazy way to hold on to my online bookmarks.

Still, a new year's resolution: I'm going to try a post a week in 2014. I know that since I have not written 12 posts in the last four years combined that seems implausible. But I'm going to try it as much to provide a thought record for me as to provide anything publishable. Nonetheless: Every so often? I'll say something worthwhile.

And yes, David Brooks is just horrible.

My favorite part of the article I link to above is Brooks' shoddy efforts at big timing the journalist who has quite clearly revealed that Brooks ought to have zero credibility.

The 2013 Red Sox: Champions of Baseball and Beards

If you're reading this (and God knows few of you have endured) you know that I've said about as much as a fan can say about one team. I wrote a book about the 2004 Red Sox. A very, very poorly selling book. The worst selling book.

But the 2013 Red Sox really are fascinating. They were great, to be sure. But they were great in a  compelling, unexpected, way.

 They kind of had to earn our affection. The beards helped, but an overwhelmingly bearded team that ends up third in the AL East is just a bunch of hairy, ugly bastards.

But they started to win. And you know, the idea of chicken and beer in the clubhouse -- the horror! -- seems a lot less horrible when you're winning.

"Boston Strong" is a narrative hook that means something from the inside and probably grates from the outside, but I don't want to buy into some  simplistic causal relationship between the Red Sox title and the Marathon bombing. No team deserves a championship because of proximity to tragedy. A team deserves a title if it wins.The marathon tragedy, after all, did not help the Bruins win the Stanley Cup nor did it turn the Celtics into a playoff force.

Parades through Boston have become commonplace in a decade-and-change that has turned our fans ever more insufferable even if it has been glorious to be a part of. As a New England expatriate I get to avoid some of the worst of the obnoxiousness but also have missed out on the day-to-day enjoyment of being there, of enjoying the social elements of fandom, the rituals and totems and communal spirit.

There are children born in the 1990s who have no idea what a barren decade that was, and how for more than a generation only the Celtics carried the torch of Boston postseason success. But since then the Celtics won another title, the Bruins broke a  long Stanley Cup drought, the Patriots won three Super Bowls, and the Red Sox -- the RED SOX!!! -- have won three World Series titles.

It won't always be this good, kids. Enjoy it. But realize that this is not the way things have always been, and it is not the way things always will be.

More (and Less) Hope in Zimbabwe

This past weekend South Africa's Sunday Independent published a lengthy (by op-ed standards) piece of mine on the Zim elections, which are taking place today. It continues one of my prevailing themes in the last few weeks, and indeed represents an attempt to synthesize my last month's writing on Zim. They titled the piece "Only thing left for Zim voters is hope," which, sadly, seems about right, though I am crossing my fingers that I'll be proven wrong as the votes are counted in the next few days.

When Williams and UT Met

In February 1964 CBS news made its was to the bucolic, isolated campus of Williams College, my undergraduate alma mater. the purpose of their visit was to tape a discussion between Williams' legendary President John Sawyer and the equally outsized chancellor of the University of Texas System, Harry Ransom. Their discussion was far-ranging. What is especially fascinating, though, is just how salient to today's debates over higher education their conversation is. You can read about the discussion, see clips, and read current Williams professors' responses here. 

Hope in Zimbabwe

The UK-based Fair Observer just published my "Hope in Zimbabwe." It is basically a republication of something I wrote for the Foreign Policy Association while I was in Southern Africa.

London-South Africa-Zimbabwe

Today I head off for a trip that will take me to London, where I will be participating in a conference, Boycotts Past and Present, at Royal Birkbeck, University of London as well as conducting research at the Institute for Commonwealth Studies. After a week I will head to South Africa, where I expect Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein to be on the itinerary.

I also am going to go to Zimbabwe, assuming getting in is no problem, for a few days, but absolutely, positively not to practice journalism. Doing so would, under the current dispensation, be illegal in Zimbabwe. I absolutely do not plan to get a feel for the country in the run-up to the elections, to get a sense of whether the population has been cowed by the threat of violence, whether there is any glimmer of hope for the immediate future. I am not going to be observing and watching and gleaning what I can from conversations about the state of Zim today, and I certainly do not plan to write about it while I am in southern Africa, say, when I return to South Africa, or after, when I return to the United States. I'm going in as just a tourist to see friends and to enjoy Harare.

China Radio International

In the last month I was on China Radio International's "Today" show twice. Once to discuss Obama's so-called "scandals" and the other time to discuss the status of the War on Terror.

Mediocrity is as Mediocrity Does

So it turns out that the poster child for the latest challenge to affirmative action, Abigail Fischer, was actually a significantly sub-par applicant to the University of Texas, falling well short of both the top 10% of her high school class that would have guaranteed her admissions and with an SAT score well below the UT average. This mediocrity combined with entitlement makes her typical of so many (though not all) opponents of affirmative action. She would not have gotten into UT anyway, but wants to claim that she is a victim of racial preferences rather than her own undistinguished high school record.

Keep in mind that in college admissions there are admissions rates, but there are also yield rates. And so when someone does not get into an incoming class, they did not just fall short of those who entered the class, but of a whole lot of people who chose to go elsewhere. If a school has a yield rate of 50% it means that the freshman class that enters is only half the number of people accepted.  Abigail Fischer's racialized resentment does not necessarily make her a racist, but it does show someone perfectly willing to play the role of aggrieved white person victimized not by her own limitations but by the supposed privilege that African Americans have in a state with a long history of slavery, segregation, and institutionalized racism, including generations of segregation and a long struggle to combat it at the University of Texas.

The Coaching Treadmill

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a remarkable story about one man's heartbreaking pursuit of stability in the world of college basketball coaching. I've been on several search committees for head coaches here at UTPB and I have been able to see just how many outstanding candidates are out there even for Division II coaching positions. (Of course an American history or American/English literature position will receive even more applications from every bit as qualified people). Good luck, Coach McRoy.

Grups, Yupsters, and Alterna-Yuppies

Somehow I had missed seeing this 2006 New York magazine article on the way that a certain sub-section of Generation X (which is to say my generation) has managed to avoid the generation gap with their younger cohorts and both the up and down sides that this leveling implies. Because I resemble a lot of myself in the class that is being depicted I am inclined to be charitable toward this epi-phenomenon (I still listen to [good] new music! I dress casually! I know contemporary cultural references!] but there is a lot of room for Portlandia-level self-parody in this particular version of the Peter Pan complex.