League of Fans

By Ken Reed

College football bowl games paid more than a half billion dollars to big-time college athletic conferences and schools last season. That’s a $200 million increase over the prior year.

As an entertainment industry, college football and basketball have never been healthier. The money keeps flowing in.

But here’s the catch: the […]

By Ken Reed

A petition supported by Champion Women, an advocacy organization for girls and women in athletics, and the Drake Group, an organization that works for academic integrity in intercollegiate athletics, is currently posted on Change.org.

The petition calls for a bipartisan Presidential Commission “to identify and examine issues of national concern related […]

By Ken Reed

I see my overarching mission as trying to enhance the positives and mitigate the negatives in sports. That said, I tend to address the problems and issues in sports more than talking about what’s working when sports are at their best.

The negatives in sports are driven by ego and greed […]

By Ken Reed

A couple significant things happened in SportsWorld this week: MLB had an openly gay umpire on the field for the first time and the NFL hired a female official.

Of most significance, however, was the fact not much was made of either happening.

Dale Scott was the home plate umpire in […]

By Ken Reed

Well, here we are at the Final Four, where student-athletes show off their basketball skills for the love of the game.

Or so the NCAA wants us to believe.

Albert Burneko recently wrote a compelling piece for Deadspin, and in it he provocatively points out that there are no heroes […]

By Ken Reed

Sweet Sixteen.

The NCAA hoops tourney is one of my favorite entertainment extravaganzas of the year. But when the NCAA pooh-bahs start talking about the educational experience of “our student athletes,” my stomach begins to turn.

The only education taking place is a lesson in exploitation and hypocrisy. The NCAA is masterful […]

By Ken Reed

I try very hard to resist the urge to call articles “must read” because when I use that term I want people to take it seriously. “Must read” is a descriptor that can be easily abused.
That said, I think Dave Zirin’s recent piece on the Chris Borland decision in […]

By Ken Reed

A new coalition of professors, from universities across the country, has formed to fight for economic justice for big-time college athletes.

The College Athletes Rights & Empowerment Faculty Coalition is a grassroots campaign designed to convince legislators, college administrators, members of the media, and the general public that football and basketball […]