League of Fans

By Ken Reed

I was handed free tickets to an NBA preseason game last night so I decided to go. The game was less than enthralling so I took a spin around the concourse as the second half dragged on. I wandered into a sports lounge on the club level and noticed a dozen or […]

By Ken Reed

At halftime of the Sunday Night Football game last night between the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys, NBC announcer Bob Costas delivered an essay in which he said the Redskins name is “an insult, a slur, no matter how benign the present-day intent.”

The statement from one of the country’s premier […]

By Ken Reed

As a society, we’ve definitely come a long ways since Title IX was enacted in 1972. But we still have a significant ways to go.

The gap between where we are now and where we need be in order to have equal opportunity in sports for both genders is evident when looking […]

By Ken Reed

The evidence against the NFL on the concussion issue presented in the PBS Frontline documentary, “League of Denial,” is damning indeed.

Undoubtedly, the full truth would be even more damning. However, due to the NFL’s settlement of the concussion lawsuits brought by players, we’ll probably never know the full truth regarding the […]

At the League of Fans, we believe that every problem in sports today takes root from one of two seeds: 1) A win-at-all-costs (WAAC) mentality; 2) a profit-at-all-costs (PAAC) mentality.

A great observer of American culture, Alexis de Tocqueville, nailed the PAAC mentality nearly two hundred years ago when he wrote:

“As one digs deeper […]

By Ken Reed

President Obama weighed in on the controversy surrounding the Washington Redskins’ nickname this past Saturday. While his comments were pretty wishy-washy (“If I were the owner of the team … I’d think about changing it.”), the fact that the country’s president weighed in on the issue will bring more attention to […]

By Ken Reed

America is a sports-crazed nation in one way: spectatorship. We love watching sports a lot more than participating in them. After the age of 13, there’s a big drop in sports participation. After the age of 18, there’s another big drop. For most people, when they give up participating in sports, they […]

By Ken Reed

A few National Hockey League executives, including an NHL Hall of Fame player, have come out against fighting in the league.

“We penalize and suspend players for making contact with the head while checking, in an effort to reduce head injuries, yet we still allow fighting,” said Steve Yzerman, an NHL […]