Reviews, Musings and Miscellany

Book reviews, issue interviews, basketball travelogues and the occasional snarky rant or two live on this page.

Audio: Dave Zirin Interviews Yours Truly on “Edge of Sports”

Audio: Dave Zirin Talks with Yours Truly on “Edge of Sports” about the Final Four, 2010, and the next college season.

Book Review: Game On! How Women’s Basketball Took Seattle by Storm – Jayda Evans

Book Review: Geno: In Pursuit of Perfection

Confessions of a Hoop Junkie: 2001 media & sarcasm

Cybersquatting: Players and Domain Names

A Liberty Stalking Tour Tale: June 24 – June 31, 2004

Media Coverage and the Alternatives: Paper, Pods, Streams and Blogs

Pride and Sports: An interview with Pat Griffin on homophobia in sports.

Title IX: Managing the Wealth

Athens 2004: Me! At the Olympics!

USA Basketball Stalking Tour: 2006

A response to Christian Science Monitor’s Ross Atkin’s blog entry: “Why so few women coaches in WNBA?”

Readers hardly accept every word inscribed in this space as the sports gospel, so their comments are always welcome, especially ones as insightful as those from Helen Wheelock of N.Y. Helen wrote in about a “We’re Just Fans” blog that carried the headline “WNBA reaches double digits, but where are the women coaches?”

Here’s her response: (more)

Posts from the Women’s Hoops Blog commenting on/analyzing the coverage of women’s basketball by the NYTimes

New York Times: Duke v. Penn State

Why is the New York Times so enamored with covering the problems at Duke while it has all but ignored the allegations of institutional homophobia and racism plaguing Penn State and their women’s basketball coach Rene Portland?

Think I’m overstating the situation? Even I was stunned by what my search of the Times’ website revealed: (more)

New York Times: Men’s National Team v. Women’s National Team – Imbalanced coverage – Sept, 2006

The New York Times did finally publish an online AP report on the US National team’s bronze medal win: 176 words.

This allows us to come up with a rough estimate on their coverage of the Men’s National team vs. Women’s National team. You probably have a good guess as to what the numbers will be but, just in case, let me prepare you with a quick flashback to sports editor Tom Jolly and his explanation of how the Times makes “coverage” decisions. (more)

Coverage of Women’s basketball – Tom Jolly, August 2006 – and a look at the work of NYTimes staff members Lena Williams and Michelle Agins.

The New York Times explains (finally) its coverage — or lack thereof — of the New York Liberty. An “ask the editor” question about the non-coverage got this response from sports editor Tom Jolly: (more)

New York Times – An Improvement? April 2008

Yes, the coverage the NYTimes has given women’s basketball has been a recent favorite target of mine. Back in 2006, he was emailed the question (not by me — honest!): (more)