Currently viewing the category: “Uncategorized”

By Ken Reed

The London 2012 Olympics have wrapped up. In retrospect, from an athletic competition standpoint, the Games were a huge success. There was plenty of athletic drama, exciting finishes, and world-record performances. But as I wrote during the Olympics, there were several disturbing stories too.

The extreme commercialization was nauseating, and the […]

By Ken Reed

A couple recent articles caught my eye because their subjects were great athletes without egos. One featured track legend Roger Bannister and the other baseball hall-of-famer Sandy Koufax.

Bannister was the first human being to break what was supposed to be an unbreakable barrier, the 4:00 mile, when he ran 3:59.4 in […]

By Ken Reed

Former Atlanta Falcons safety Ray Easterling killed himself in April. Late last month his widow, and the rest of us, learned that there were clear signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in his brain, a progressive brain disease linked directly to repetitive blows to the head.

“It was consistent with what […]

By Ken Reed

The issue of whether or not to pay college athletes has been a hot one for a long time. Moreover, even if you think college athletes should be paid, the question is what would paying college athletes actually look like? What about Title IX considerations? What would happen to non-revenue college sports […]

By Ken Reed

Allen Sack, director of the Institute for Sport Management at the University of New Haven and president of the Drake Group, a faculty consortium fighting for academic integrity in the face of big-time college sports, said Penn State, while deserving severe punishment, is a scapegoat for a college sports system that’s […]

By Ken Reed

College football’s Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is dead.  That’s a good thing.  The cartel system never crowned a true national champion and was unpopular with players and fans.

Unfortunately, in its place we now have an ill-conceived four-team playoff scheme that will provide an expected $500 million windfall for college football’s power […]

By Ken Reed

Let the debates begin regarding the NCAA’s punitive action against Penn State for the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Too tough? Not tough enough? Should the NCAA even have gotten involved, or was this clearly a matter that should have been left solely to our judicial system?

To me, it was an egregious example […]

By Ken Reed

Nick Symmonds is an obscure 800-meter runner. His big chance at track and field glory will come in the London Olympics. He also realizes that the earning potential associated with his Olympic performance has a small window. Therefore, he decided to auction […]

By Ken Reed

One of the greatest boxers of all-time, Teofilo Stevenson, passed away recently with little fanfare at the age of 60. Stevenson was a three-time Olympic gold medalist for Cuba in 1972, 1976, and 1980. He might have won a fourth if Cuba hadn’t boycotted the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

Boxing observers […]

By Ken Reed

A new study says that 1.2 million American adolescents are taking supplements to enhance sports performance. In the vast majority of these cases the supplement involved is a basic multi-vitamin/mineral. The primary red flag raised in the study is the extensive use of creatine by young athletes. Among those using supplements […]