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Americans love football.  The Super Bowl is the most watched television event of the year.  Super Bowl Sunday has become a national holiday.  And the NFL draft, which took three days to complete this past weekend, has become popular with football fans who hope their favorite team will draft a player that can help produce […]

Nine of the 11 members on an NCAA panel that will help decide if the Fiesta Bowl’s license will be revoked have attended a bowl-sponsored retreat known as the “Fiesta Frolic,” which includes free meals, resort rooms and golf outings. The panel, the NCAA Postseason Bowl Licensing Subcommittee, is comprised primarily of college athletic directors […]

Less than two months after their last victory in court, the NFL players won another legal victory Monday when U.S. District Judge Susan Nelson, siding with the players, ordered an immediate end to the lockout. Some players are expected to report to work at the various NFL camps around the league as early as today […]

The spring is one of the busiest times of the year for youth sports. For many families, this is a great time of year, filled with fun, exercise, team camaraderie, the development of new skills and popsicles after the games. However, it’s a dangerous time for kids under the supervision of overzealous parents and coaches. […]

Cleveland Browns Fan Sues the NFL

The news coverage of the NFL lockout focuses on the positions of the owners and players. The voice of the stakeholder group that makes the NFL possible, the fans, is rarely heard from. Ken Lanci, a Cleveland Browns personal seat […]

By Dave Zirin

With each passing week, I hear from football fans saying that it’s getting harder to like the game they love. They’ve spent years reveling in the intense competition and violent collisions so central to the sport, but this is the first time these NFL diehards feel conscious about what happens to players when they become unconscious.

In August, to much fanfare, NFL owners finally acknowledged that football-related concussions cause depression, dementia, memory loss and the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Now that they’ve opened the door, this concussion discussion is starting to shape how we understand what were previously seen as the NFL’s typical helping of off-field controversy and tragedy.

Sports leagues bilk the public for glitzy new stadiums – and the bills just keep on coming.

By David Bollier
On the Commons
September 8, 2010

In the early 1980s, Ralph Nader launched a new advocacy group called FANS, Fight to Advance the Nation’s Sports, which aspired to address many of the social ills associated with professional sports. While some of his ideas were arguably misguided, such as trying to ban junk food sales at the ballpark, others were incredibly prescient. One idea was to stop taxpayer subsidies to the mega-stadiums that were being built for big-league baseball and football teams.

Essentially, wealthy team owners, who over lunch at their elite clubs would rail against socialistic intrusions on corporate America, invariably demanded that city governments subsidize the construction of lavish new sports palaces for their teams. Why? Because of all the civic pride and economic gain that they would allegedly stimulate.

Bud Selig
Commissioner of Baseball
245 Park Avenue, 31st Floor
New York, NY 10167

July 13, 2010

Dear Mr. Selig:

Now that you have had over a month to absorb and digest the reactions to what a sports writer called the worst umpire call since the 1850s, it is time for you to respect the vast majority of the fans, players and coaches who either believe that umpire Jim Joyce’s call should be reversed as false or who have no objection to such a ruling.

Let’s review the situation. The video clearly shows that Armando Gallarraga of the Detroit Tigers received the throw on a grounder for the last out in the ninth inning before the batter reached the base. Umpire Jim Joyce recognized, to his everlasting credit, in many ways his clear error. His best sentence was “I took a perfect game away from that kid.”

A letter from Ralph Nader and League of Fans to NBA Commissioner David Stern received nationwide attention in June 2002 for raising questions about the impartiality of officiating during Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings. Nader and League of Fans demanded that Stern conduct a review to satisfy fans’ sense of fairness and to deter future recurrences of such egregious officiating.

According to reports on June 11, 2008, former referee Tim Donaghy — who has pleaded guilty after being charged in 2007 with conspiring with gamblers — accused NBA executives and referees of broad misconduct and outright manipulation of game results in a recent court filing.

According to Donaghy, NBA executives directed referees “to manipulate games” in order to “boost ticket sales and television ratings.” Donaghy pointed to Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference finals as one such instance.

Following is the letter from Ralph Nader & League of Fans to Commissioner Stern regarding the egregious officiating in Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference finals.