Seems like time for a list.
I’m pretty sure I’ve noted on this blog that I am among a rapidly shrinking fraction of Americans who have seen every Super Bowl. Either in person or on television.
Do the math. The first Super Bowl was played on January 15, 1967. Even if we cast a wide net and […]

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I was a history major in college before I opened the door to the offices of the student newspaper, in my fourth year of school, and that was that.
Had I not gone into journalism (and it is hard to imagine I wasn’t going to end up there), I would have tried to make history a […]

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I actually know only one person who attended Stanford, and as I watched the second half of the Fiesta Bowl at 8 a.m. UAE time, I was thinking of his (and other Stanford fans) suffering.
Frankie, my condolences. I feel your pain.
Fourth-ranked Stanford contrived to lose to third-ranked Oklahoma State, 41-38, in overtime, in a Fiesta […]

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For most of a decade, Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal have been the best tennis players in the world. From Wimbledon 2003 through the French Open this year, they won 26 of 33 grand-slam championships.
It seemed as if the only times they lost … were to each other.
Even here at the end of 2011, Rafael […]

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By the end of the day, I had written something like 2,300 words for The National about the Mubadala World Tennis Championship here in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE. And no one had even struck a ball in anger.
But that sort of production is what comes from 1) the day before the biggest tennis […]

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I have written tennis. I covered the entirety of Wimbledon in 1985 and 1986. The first year, some German kid named Boris Becker won. The second year, he won again.
Tennis is fairly far down the list of sports I know best … and sports I like. But when the staffing situation at the paper is […]

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The world of professional football (international variety) seems enormous.
Countries you couldn’t find on a map have professional leagues. Countries you’ve never heard of have leagues. Countries like England and Germany have about 28 tiers of leagues.
I’ve been writing from the UAE for more than two years and, admit it, most of you have no clear […]

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If ever you feel despair about the future of American national soccer, wondering if any of us will live to see the Yanks win the World Cup … or get to the final … or semifinal … well, things could be far worse. You could be in China, wondering when your nation of 1.3 billion […]

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Each fall, an organization known as Futbol de Primera polls journalists to determine the best U.S. national team player of that calendar year. (For years, they gave away a Honda automobile to the winner; that no longer appears to be the case.)
The Futbol de Primera (formerly Honda) award is better than the U.S. Soccer Federation […]

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I was aware of this, a bit. I clearly remember, X number of years ago (during that short period when the proudly clueless Dutchman Ruud Gullit was coaching the Galaxy), having this pointed out to me.
Gullit was talking to a few of us after a practice session, and he just launched into a Jeremiad about […]

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