It’s final. Well, as soon as the rubber-stamp approval of International Olympic Committee voting members next month. But the top guys have agreed with the two cities that bid for the 2024 Games. The 2024 Olympics go to Paris. The 2028 Summer Games go to Los Angeles. Los Angeles will get $1.8 billion in cash […]

[Read more →]

I survived some ridiculous road trips as a professional journalist but nearly all of them were my own damn fault. The Saturday night/Sunday morning back-to-back football road games. (Tempe to Minneapolis by way of Dallas; Tuscaloosa to Houston by way of Atlanta.) Doable. Just. The 730-mile early January drive from San Bernardino to Grand Junction, […]

[Read more →]

I covered the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. (I was a teeny bit too young to see the 1932 L.A. Games, back when the Memorial Coliseum was “only” 11 years old.) And I can vouch that things went off quite well, in 1984. From Opening Ceremonies and the 84 grand pianos and right on down to […]

[Read more →]

I first traveled to Barcelona in the summer of 1992 to help cover the Summer Olympics for Gannett News Service. I was very impressed with the place. It had charm. It had class. It organized a very fine Olympics. It seemed like a city people would want to see, if they knew about it. And […]

[Read more →]

For more than a decade, Michelle Kwan represented what we in the journalism call a “standing story”. A standing story is one that is news at any time. Work or play, good or bad, any developments warrant coverage and follow-up because we believe our audience has significant interest in the topic. Particularly so, in my […]

[Read more →]

A few days ago, I watched Tottenham Hotspur’s final match at their ancient stadium at White Hart Lane, where the London club had played its home matches since 1899. Fans were a bit melancholy but the celebrations before and after the match, won 2-1 by Spurs over Manchester United, seemed to mollify them. Actually, they […]

[Read more →]

I’ve never really had winter clothes. Because I always lived in places that either were temperate or Just Plain Hot. Long Beach, then the Inland Empire, then Abu Dhabi. But here in Europe, in France, we can go weeks (!) without a single minute in the 60-degree (Fahrenheit) range in December, January, February. Granted, it’s […]

[Read more →]

This week, the National Hockey League announced it will not be taking a month off next season so its players can compete for their national teams in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. The first reaction from nearly everyone is … “what an awful decision”. The NHL’s players joined the Winter Games in 1998, […]

[Read more →]

I follow two national soccer teams, the United States and the UAE. Both play twice in the coming week in crucial 2018 World Cup qualifiers. I don’t feel good about either national team’s chances. For reasons that apply to both — key injuries, the pressure to produce results and competent opponents. First, the U.S.

[Read more →]

I was reading a story about the planned Los Angeles bid to host the 2024 Summer Games, and that took me back to the 1984 L.A. Summer Games, and I was looking at the wiki page … and on the right side of the page it had a link to a snippet of the “L.A. […]

[Read more →]