By Dave Zirin

Anybody got $500 million collecting dust under the couch? If you live in Chicago, take a second look between those cushions. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) has let it be known that the people of the Windy City could pay out as much as $500 million if they are awarded the 2016 Summer Games.

By Dave Zirin

There are more books about Muhammad Ali than Abe Lincoln: 300 titles in the children's section alone. You can also purchase The Muhammad Ali Reader, the Tao of Muhammad Ali, or the $10,000 G.O.A.T. - a massive coffee table book about all things Ali that is slightly larger than a typical coffee table. His is a history that has been repeatedly regurgitated for popular consumption. Despite - or maybe because of - this crisis of Ali overproduction, I felt compelled to write The Muhammad Ali Handbook.

LeBron James
Cleveland Cavaliers

Dear Mr. James:

Congratulations on your continued success as one of the NBA’s elite players. Perhaps basketball fans across the world will be able to watch you and the Cavs in the Finals very soon.

As someone who participates in many generous charitable activities, we hope you will be responsive to this appeal.

Leading up to the Super Bowl, an Online Journal commentary by Jason Miller compares the NFL to U.S. domestic and foreign policy -- and thereby football fans to the U.S. population -- in a challenge to the masses. He writes: "Arising from the same fetid bogs of spiritual decay that spawned the American Way, the NFL reeks with the stench of corporate tyranny, patriarchy, racism, superficiality, greed, competitiveness, and materialism."

Dave Zirin pieces together circumstantial evidence and historical context in his latest column in defense of French soccer star and national hero Zinedine Zidane (or Zissou as he is known) after his violent head-butt to the chest of Italy's Marco Materazzi resulted in Zidane's red card ejection from the World Cup Final. France went on to lose the game, without Zidane, in a penalty shootout. Zirin explains:

Two recent articles highlight the role international soccer can play in promoting unity and peace. An excellent piece by Neil Stormer, who works in conflict resolution and foreign policy in Washington, DC, outlined numerous examples in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that show how large a role soccer and sports in general have played in mitigating conflict. The most recent example is from the World Cup:

In the weekly "Edge of Sports" column, Dave Zirin and John Cox address racism in international soccer and the possibility that it could rear its ugly head in a violent way at the 2006 World Cup now underway in Germany. There has been a disturbing pattern of "football racism" that "has been aggravated by the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe that has of course become de rigueur in the United States as well." Zirn and Cox add:

In his Sports Illustraded column (text) / National Public Radio commentary (audio), Frank Deford appreciate's soccer's global popularity and the World Cup's "sport in the raw ... played by ... the rock stars of sweat -- for the glory of their homeland." Deford observes:

With the 2006 FIFA World Cup fast approaching and with global sports brands cranking up their advertising to take advantage, the global poverty aid organization Oxfam International released a worker's rights report on May 24 explaining:

In his May 26 column, Dave Krieger of the Rocky Mountain News profiles Frank Shorter -- a former Olympic marathon gold medalist for the U.S. -- whose work focuses on the belief that the fight against performance-enhancing drug use in sports can be won:

In the Public Interest
By Ralph Nader

Moving into bookstores across the country is a fresh historical account of American progressive resistance and political struggle. Focusing on the United States over the last century, the book connects past struggles with contemporary injustices, and calls on readers to challenge the militarism, homophobia, racism and sexism, the greed, myths, freeloading, cover-ups, censorships, and consumer and taxpayer gouging that continue to tarnish our country. And believe it or not, this is a book about sports.

By Dave Zirin (on why he wrote "What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States")

In High School, I was a 5' 10" inch center for the fearsome Friends Seminary Quakers in New York City. It wasn't pretty, but I lived for it and didn't care if the opposing center could spit on my head. I just loved sports. My walls were shrines to Magic Johnson, Lawrence Taylor, and Keith Hernandez. Every stat, every record, and every rule existed only to be memorized. Weekends were for playing ball until sunset.

League of Fans

Good Sports
- Commissioner of Baseball Shows Commitment to Stopping Performance-Enhancing Drug Use

Bad Sports
- Adidas, Reebok Overstepping Commercial Bounds by Interfering with Sports


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