Extracurriculars

This is no attempt at objectivity. I know that others will point to the ugliness — in particular the Penn State tragedy — as the biggest sports story of 2011, at least in the United States.

In Canada, it well may be the deaths of professional hockey players and a long concussion-related layoff to Sidney Crosby, the game’s biggest star that triggered debate about the future of fighting in the sport.

Around the world, I can’t imagine anything topping Lionel Messi’s continued brilliance for Barcelona.

As for me, I can’t get enough of this, and probably never will:

I blogged about the significance of this moment earlier this week. A couple of weeks ago, there was plenty of debate here about the professional prospects for women’s soccer, and I do hope they get brighter eventually.

That marvelous day in Dresden resonates for me more than anything else that happened this year, because of what I write about on this blog most often.

This week I’m bringing back some of my favorite posts from the year, and especially those that generated some good conversation. Issue pieces in sports always seem to do the trick, and these were no different.

In June I posted a 10-part series I called “Women’s Sports Without Illusions,” a critical examination of the movement and where it stands as Title IX turned 39.

For years I have found much of the dogma coming out of the gender equity establishment to be indignant and tone deaf to the world that women athletes live in today. It’s as if activists refuse to leave the 1970s, which thankfully have ended. We might have gone from disco to hip-hop, but I’m more concerned about the cultural grievances that many of these so-called “experts” hold that are out of step with the reality on the ground.

Especially when the slow progress for women in sports over the decades can’t always be chalked up to men.

I offered some starting points for revising the Title IX sports regulations that are outdated, and not surprisingly they drew most of the reader comments.

Also not surprisingly, most of the readers were men, and not women who side with the Title IX diehards. This blog is part of the Women Talk Sports network that includes the Title IX Blog and two sex-and-gender standbys, After Atalanta and One Sport Voice. There was virtually no reaction. We’re talking about people who don’t like their ideas challenged, some to the extent that they don’t permit comments on their blogs at all.

What’s more troubling are the grudges that some hold against football and how they rail against portrayals of women athletes in magazines and elsewhere that the athletes themselves see very differently.

These cultural grievances form the spine of an expanded writing project, based on this series, that I will complete in early 2012. It’s less about Title IX and the controversies over compliance with the law and more about the future of women’s sports, and how such absolutist views disrespect the individual choices of girls and women and are out of step with the mainstream.

I’ll have more details about that project shortly. All I’ll say for now is that if you’ve got a problem with the Women’s Tennis Association’s “Strong is Beautiful” presentation, then take it up with Billie Jean.

This week I’m reposting some of my favorite posts from this year, and one of the subjects I’ve been focusing on is the dizzying, ever-changing world of sports media. The trick is not to do too much navel-gazing, one of the hazards of the profession.

Sports media is the subject of amazingly constant attention, and there are so many others who are truly on top of this. When I try to chime in, it usually brings out the worst in me.

For insightful, mature criticism of a field where juvenilia reigns far too often, Richard Deitsch of SI.com is the king. For great links and his fabulously-worded “quotage,” there’s Ken Fang. Jason Fry is all over digital media trends as it pertains to sports journalism.

There are others I am forgetting, so I apologize.

My focus on this blog has largely been about media coverage of women’s sports, and how the usual bromides and complaints get my blood boiling. I don’t always feel proud about this either even though I think I had some valuable points to make.

When I’m done venting, I just feel skunky and dissatisfied. It’s so easy to sound off, but more difficult to offer a better way of looking at something.

Most recently, I’ve been delving into the careers of legendary writers who’ve recently passed, such as George Kimball, and those who continue to remind us that this domain at times has been unfairly labeled the Toy Department.

In that same link, I wrote about John Schulian, now a Hollywood screenwriter, who collaborated with Kimball on a boxing collection and has recently published a new collection of his own writings.

When I came across this interview with New York writer Alex Belth, I mentioned that I was nearly in tears — tears of joy. And this isn’t about nostalgia for some time that never was. This is a treasure trove of what has drawn so many journalists to sports, and what keeps us there.

That book, “Sometimes They Even Shook Your Hand,” is on my list to read early in 2012, as I blogged about a couple weeks back. Not long after that, I received an e-mail from Schulian, which truly blew me away:

“What a wonderful surprise to come across your kind words about SOMETIMES THEY EVEN SHOOK YOUR HAND. I was trolling the Internet, just hoping no one was teeing off on my book, when I found it on your list of holiday recommendations. A million thanks for your praise, and a million more for putting SOMETIMES in such splendid company.

“I wish I could take you back in time to the era I talked about in my interview with Alex Belth. Life really was that good for sports writers — stylistic freedom, budgets that allowed for lots of travel, athletes who spoke in more than cliches. I’m not sure I realized how lucky I was then, but I do now.”

How kind, and how flattering this was. This is of the biggest rewards of blogging — to be discovered by someone totally unexpected.

Now he’s really going to make me cry. Tears of joy, for other reasons.

This week I’m reposting some of my entries from this year that not only are my favorites but that I thought really resonated as well.

The U.S. women’ s soccer team captivated the nation for a few days last summer with its run to the Women’s World Cup finals. But unlike the 1999 team, this one wasn’t touted for being role models for young girls, nor was it presented primarily for the benefit of the “ponytailed hooligans” from 12 years before.

(Nothing wrong with any of that, but the travails of women’s pro soccer since then have shown that it takes a lot more than a feel-good story to make a professional venture stick. As I wrote recently, too many of the wrong assumptions and sentiments are still being cited.)

This past summer, these American players were fully adult, edgy, even controversial women, some of whom were trying to rid themselves of a painful past. All they did was put on a hell of a good show. It was a quintessential example of great sports entertainment.

Red-blooded American men who normally wouldn’t pay much attention to women’s sports or soccer tuned in as if it were the Super Bowl.

From July 20: Free at last: letting women’s sports grow up.

Enjoy.

This week I’m linking to some of my favorite blog posts from this year, and especially ones that drew some vigorous, and even heated, discussion. As you’ll see, most of them pertain to women’s sports but there are some other subjects I’ll revisit here.

The first installment is my post from April 27 entitled “The real elephant of Title IX compliance.” I wrote it at the start of a series of gender equity stories in The New York Times that reflects so much of what I consider wrong-headed thinking on this topic.

Far too often, the mainstream media world I’ve inhabited most of my career has been terrified to address Title IX and gender equity from anything but the perspective of women’s sports activists, attorneys, academics and others who’ve made this their life’s work.

This post — and do read the comments — also triggered a longer project on women’s sports that I posted in June and that I will be revisiting this week as well.

I lost my Christian faith a long time ago, and detest the holiday shopping frenzy that turns many decent, intelligent Americans into Pavlovian dogs.

But I try not to take all this too seriously as the day that secular humanists like me dread the most. I’m not an “avid atheist,” just a doubter trying to understand the appeal of religious tradition that many find comforting.

So while I “mark” Festivus by carrying on with my usual routine of writing, Tweeting and media saturation (no Airing of the Grievances here), I’ll let George Costanza and friends have the appropriate fun with all this.

Happy Holidays, no matter how you’re observing. And even if you’re not.

An eight-game suspension and $63,000 fine handed Liverpool star Luis Suarez for the racial abuse of another player this week had barely set in when similar allegations — criminal charges, in fact — were leveled against Chelsea’s John Terry, who also happens to be the captain of the England national team.

Suarez is being defended to the hilt by his club as he pledges an appeal, causing further rankles from some black players in the English Premier League. Likewise at Chelsea, where Terry is denying the charges he hurled a racial slur at Anton Ferdinand of Queens Park Rangers.

These are two critical players on two of the best teams in England, and having them sidelined due to lengthy bans during the height of the season could certainly be devastating to their aspirations in the league and in European competition.

For years there have been black players, primarily in Europe, complaining of racial abuse from other players. It prompted some visible anti-racism campaigns such as Kick It Out. But little has effectively addressed the problem.

Fans hurling banana peels at black players have gone largely unpunished. When he was playing in Belgium, American defender Oguchi Onyewu sued a fellow player he accused of racial abuse. Nothing came of it. Former French national team star Patrick Vieira was fined by UEFA in 2003 for complaining that the European governing body for soccer wasn’t doing enough.

And for all of its bluster about trying to “stamp out” racism, FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, isn’t offering much in the way of serious solutions. Indeed, FIFA boss Sepp Blatter last month rendered himself an even bigger mockery by suggesting that players involved in a racial fracas patch up their differences with a post-game handshake. Even David Beckham publicly objected.

Criminal charges may seem heavy-handed against Terry for something he said. But when the appropriate soccer authorities drop the ball, all that may generate proper attention is the threat of a big-name star having more to lose than a few games on the bench.

Ross Tucker at The Science of Sport blog says there have been many villains in the world of sports science this year, but the ongoing, dragged-out doping case of 2010 Tour de France champion Alberto Contador is the clear and easy winner, and virtually everyone involved is to blame:

“As for what happens next, I’d bet strongly that Contador will be cleared. That’s partly because I have zero faith in the CAS and I have only revulsion for lawyers who play the system from inside. And those factors together, along with the mountain of technical information they have thrown at this, will, I strongly suspect, see the verdict go in favour of Contador. That will in turn have ramifications for anti-doping. For one thing, it will mean that they may as well take clenbuterol off the banned list, but it will also challenge the concept of strict liability. Whether it would create a legal precedent, I don’t know (the specific details of the case would determine this), but it certainly would leave a bad taste. It already has, thanks to the delays.”

The only other doping case before the Court of Arbitration for Sport that took longer was former American Tour champion Floyd Landis’ appeal of a positive testosterone test. At his hearing last month, Contador was in tears, pleading that the traces of the banned substance clenbuterol were due to eating contaminated meat.

And after that, he pedaled his way to an easy victory in Israel, as he has so many times before. He will learn in mid-January whether he joins Landis as the only other Tour winner to have his title stripped.

Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports was first with the news on Monday night that the Texas Rangers won the rights to negotiate with Japanese pitching sensation Yu Darvish.

The defending American League champions bid a record $51.7 million and have 30 days to sign Darvish. If they don’t Darvish stays with the Nippon Ham Fighters and the Rangers get their money back.

The Angels have plunked down $254 for Albert Pujols and signed C.J. Wilson, the Rangers’ top starter, for $77.5 million. If Texas can work out terms with Darvish, some estimates have this move costing the club $100 million, and possibly more.

Every winter the eye-popping numbers for free agents grow larger. But for a pitching arm untested against major league hitting, and in The Ballpark at Arlington that’s considered hitting friendly, the real matter here is risk.

Given the example of Daisuke Matsuzaka, who cost the Red Sox $51 million five years ago, some are already issuing “buyer beware” calls. Darvish may have a fabulous arm, but it is a pitching arm.

Rangers, you’re on the clock.

As great as Lionel Messi’s two goals were in Barcelona’s 4-0 thrashing of Santos in the FIFA World Club Cup on Sunday, it was how he set up a third goal, shown on this highlight video, that embodies his brilliance.

He’s only 24, and a multiple winner of the world player of the year award. But with performances like this, it’s not too early to mention him in the same company as Maradona, his fellow Argentinian and former national team coach, and Pelé, who made Santos famous.

Messi, writes Rob Hughes, “is the essence of boyishness.” Barcelona is being properly hailed as the best soccer team in the world, perhaps for all time, according to Gabriele Marcotti, and appears to be unbeatable.

Messi plays with the beating heart of Spain’s World Cup championship team, But as the wonderfully hyperbolic Ray Hudson has labeled him, he’s also the “magnetic spectrum of genius.” It’s a description that cannot be topped.

Or maybe it’s “a zombie hunter looking for a Twinkie.” Or “a little short-legged bull, covered with eyes.”

Take your pick. Mine was easy.

The weekend’s best sports moment is a no-brainer.