That Was The Week That Was In Links - February 7, 2025
Some stuff I’ve consumed and items of note…
Rodger Sherman on the NCAA and its president kneeling before the President of the TV and his executive order attempting to ban trans women from sports: “Two months later, it feels like Baker was sending the Republicans a message—but not the one you might have thought. When Baker said that only .002 percent of the athletes under his watch were trans, he wasn’t standing up for those 10 athletes. Baker was actually saying: there are so few trans athletes, I don’t really care what happens to them.”
Keep repeating it like Lindsay Gibbs: the anti-trans crusade has never, never actually been about “protecting women” or women’s sports.
From Hannah Keyser’s piece on her very frustrating experiences having to be a sports journalist who needs to pump while covering games and how sports franchises and stadiums are still too far behind on this: “All of this made me think of something else, from a while ago, before I was even pregnant. I was sitting on a low couch under unnaturally bright lighting with several cameras trained on me and someone asked if I had been afraid to work in a male-dominated industry. It was so well meaning. I had agreed, against the squeamishness I feel about such things, to talk about being A Woman In Sports and I don’t remember anything else the producers asked, or what I answered, or even what I wore for such an occasion even though I’m sure I stressed about it ahead of time. But that question hit me like an epiphany. They think sexism is something women feel, I realized, not something that happens to women regardless of how we feel.”
Nancy Armour on athletes and teams needing to start getting ahead of what will be written as a dark chapter in history and move from the bad guy’s Twitter platform.
I admittedly had completely forgotten about Julie Stewart-Binks, who used to be on my TV a lot. And that’s because a powerful predatory guy seems to have made people forget about her.
How the quick high of ‘fast-food gambling’ ensnared young men
Just in time for the Super Bowl this weekend, the NFL let us know that racism has finally ended.
Speaking of bowls of super, do cities benefit from hosting the Super Bowl?
It’s fairly a given that whenever some prominent figure talks about how much free speech means to them that they’re actually a huge hypocrite.
With the amount of people who consume Stephen A. Smith–especially young men who probably aren’t at a job if they’re watching First Take during a late weekday morning before gliding into Pat McAfee–it’s probably not a good thing if he’s becoming sports Joe Rogan and not the best answer to “Who is going to be the Left’s Rogan?”
Brock Lesnar has been named in the sex trafficking lawsuit filed against Vince McMahon and WWE
This guy who is blind has a TikTok with a bunch of videos of him doing cool stuff, and here’s one of him being able to enjoy a basketball game in-person with a tactile device, courtesy of the Portland Trail Blazers who have brought this tech to fans with visual impairments.
'Cause in this life
Things are much harder than in the afterworld
In this life
You're on your own
And if the elevator tries to bring you down
Go crazy - punch a higher floor
Weekend.
