League of Fans

By Ken Reed

The question of whether or not our young people should be playing football continues to gain attention.

Earlier this week, Good Morning America featured a segment about a Dover, New Hampshire school board member — and retired medical doctor — Dr. Paul Butler, who’s calling for the banning of high […]

As the World Series unfolds, it seems a fitting time to share this article on the uniquely positive aspects of baseball — from a progressive perspective. The article was written by Andrew Kimball and originally appeared in Tikkun.

–- Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans

In Praise of Baseball
by Andrew […]

By Ken Reed

A new documentary called Head Games increases awareness and understanding of the concussion crisis in sports, while at the same time advocating safety measures to help prevent the devastating effects of brain trauma among the next generation of athletes. The film is based on a book of the same title, written by […]

By Ken Reed

We at the League of Fans spend a majority of our time addressing the inequities and injustices in sports. Our goal is to push our sports organizations to be more socially responsible in their policymaking, decisionmaking and actions. In short, we want to get the destructive win-at-all-costs (WAAC) and profit-at-all-costs (PAAC) mentalities […]

By Ken Reed

Dave Zirin recently had an enlightening column in the Nation about the current NHL lockout, and the similarities with recent lockouts in the NFL, NBA, and MLB. He highlighted what appears to be a coordinated industry-wide effort by the owners in each league to abandon the annoying collective bargaining process and break […]

By Ken Reed

Dr. Robert Cantu, one of the nation’s leading researchers on concussions in sports, has written a new book, along with Mark Hyman, called “Concussions and Our Kids.”

It’s a welcome addition because awareness and understanding of concussions and sub-concussive brain trauma is lacking terribly in this country among youth sports parents and […]

By Ken Reed

One of the negatives to evolve out of the explosion in club sports organizations for young people in this country is a disturbing trend of children specializing in a single sport at earlier and earlier ages. Club sports administrators and coaches are often driven by bottom line considerations: finding and keeping the […]

By Ken Reed

Today, four wild card teams and their fans are celebrating that their teams made the MLB playoffs.  That’s all fine and dandy but deciding which wild card teams advance based on a single game playoff, following a 162-game season, is a sad joke.  The one-game playoff format makes it clear that commissioner […]