Zirin - Game over: how politics has turned the sports world upside down

Most consciences are not as loud, as funny, as entertaining, or as right as often as Dave Zirin, the unquiet conscience of all our games. If youre an owner, fear him. If youre a fan, damn it, listen to him. This is authentic American journalism in a tradition that goes back to William Lloyd Garrison, except funnier, and with fewer civil wars.

Charles P. Pierce, author of Idiot America:
How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

There are fresh voices, and there are fresh voices. No one approaches sports like Dave Zirinwith genuine love and respect, but also with a kind of X-ray vision that cuts through all of the layers of hype and hypocrisy. Game Over is a book that no thinking sports fan can afford to miss.

Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning

Zirin has done a remarkable job presenting the complexities and nuances that entwine the worlds of sports and politics. If the majority of athletes and the general public dont challenge the malignant pressures of politics and corporations in sports, we are all diminished.

Mary Tillman, mother of Pat Tillman and
author of Boots on the Ground by Dusk

Game Over tackles head-on various issues of the politics within sports. Zirins writings are insightful and thought-provokingand they challenge a conventional mind-set that attempts to cover certain realities and ignore them out of existence.

Etan Thomas, eleven-year NBA player and author of Fatherhood: Rising to the Ultimate Challenge

For novel and insightful sports commentary by one of the countrys experts, I recommend Game Over with the enthusiasm of a sports fan.

Nancy Hogshead-Makar, professor of law, senior director of
advocacy at Womens Sports Foundation, and Olympic champion

To John Wesley Carlos, never scared to stand strong

How Politics Has Turned the
Sports World Upside Down

Dave Zirin

Game Over contains a wealth of new material. It also draws heavily
on my columns over the last three years, published in The Nation,
The Progressive, SLAM Magazine, and sportsillustrated.com.
It was only after looking back at them that I thought
that something bigger was happening
in the world of sports.

2013 by Dave Zirin

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form,
without written permission from the publisher.

Requests for permission to reproduce selections
from this book should be mailed to: Permissions Department,
The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013.

Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2013
Distributed by Perseus Distribution

ISBN 978-1-59558-842-5 (e-book)

CIP data available

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Composition by dix!
This book was set in Fairfield LH Light

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ALSO BY DAVE ZIRIN

The John Carlos Story:
The Sports Moment That Changed the World

Bad Sports:
How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love

A Peoples History of Sports in the United States:
250 Years of Politics, Protest, People, and Play

Welcome to the Terrordome:
The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports

Muhammad Ali Handbook

Whats My Name, Fool?
Sports and Resistance in the United States

I heard Jim Brown once say the gladiator cant change Rome.
I love Jim Brown. But I disagree. Ill die trying, my brother.
Arian Foster, NFL Pro Bowl running back

T his book doesnt get written without the remarkable work of everyone at The New Press, particularly Azzurra Cox, Marc Favreau, and Ellen Adler. It also doesnt get written without all the support at The Nation magazine, The Progressive, SLAM, the Media Education Foundation, Haymarket Books, and Edge of Sports Radio.

But in the end, nothing gets done without the patience and support of my family, especially Sasha, Jake, and my intergalactic partner, Michele. Lastly, thanks to all the rebel athletes, fans, sports writers, and individuals who seized the last three years and showed the world that politics is not a spectator sport.

I suspect that Dave Zirin is a superhero. No, I havent seen him dip in a phone booth in street clothes and emerge in spandex and a cape. But Ive witnessed him dropping his rhetorical hammer like Thor on some unsuspecting soul who didnt know that, when it comes to emotions, Dave is in a mixed marriage: his genial spirit is wedded for life to ferocious political resistance.

I still cant quite figure out which superhero he most resembles. Its largely his fault because he routinely goes off script. Hes exuberantly subversive. Dave overturns the virtues of our comic book leaders clad in latex and leather. And he often reverses the moral and the magic of the story.

Its only right to begin in Gotham since Zirins daring work yanks the covers off the real villains of sports who live in a plush but poisonous world of their making. Commissioner Gordon signals his need for help fighting crime by beaming to Batman a shaft of light in the sky.

Zirins version of Batman is a bit more jarring because he turns the behavior of Gothams most diligent protector upside down. Our journalistic crusader unmasks hypocrisy in the world of sports. He signals unsportsmanlike conduct by high-ranking officials who sometimes dont play fair. And he shines a bright analytical light on players getting the shaft from baseball commissioner Bud Selig and basketball commissioner David Stern.

Perhaps Dave is Spider-Man, bitten by the eight-legged insect whose name he bears and whose traits he absorbs: spinning webs, crawling on buildings, and swinging from rooftops. Zirin frees us from webs of deception spun about larger-than-life figures at Penn State and Cowboys Stadium. He scales massive structures of deceit about what goes on behind the scenes in every sport from soccer to hockey. And he swings from high theory to pop culture in bringing bad guys and bullies to justice, at least on the page.

Maybe Dave is an anti-superhero who leaves the tights and gloves at home and does his greatest damage as Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne, or Clark Kentas the guy who looks least likely to deliver a gut punch to the establishment because he looks just like them. He dons no masks; his only weapons are the words he wields like a weight lifted orbetter yetimposed like a cudgel or a baton.

Dave Zirin is a guy who sees the heroic in unexpected places. Hes a man who asks tough questions. Hes a journalist who uses humor to expose the horrors we so easily overlook. Hes a thinker who turns to vital voices that arent often heard from in the world of sports. And hes an irreverent fan who lampoons the pieties of the testosterone elite.

Take his appearance on a recent episode of ESPNs highly regarded show Outside the Lines. While discussing the wild enthusiasm that has greeted the arrival in Washington, D.C., of Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III (affectionately dubbed RG3), Zirin acknowledges the glee the Washington Redskins quarterback has generated while slyly getting in a zinger against bigotry. He offers lessons on history and politics to boot.