Sport is an empty vessel if we allow it be filled with rogue elements, people who would rather protect their sports than your child. We have to stop mythologizing sport. We have to stop pretending that it's out for the best for our young people and realize that, with our great vigilance and oversight, we can use sport for great things. | | | | Don't get distracted by the view at the ISU Junior World Cup Speed Skating in Austria.
(Joosep Martinson/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Sport is an empty vessel if we allow it be filled with rogue elements, people who would rather protect their sports than your child. We have to stop mythologizing sport. We have to stop pretending that it's out for the best for our young people and realize that, with our great vigilance and oversight, we can use sport for great things.”
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| | rantnrave:// It should be unremarkable when ROGER FEDERER wins a major title. He has 20 now, so it has become quite routine. But nothing Federer does is unremarkable. He has defeated time like few other athletes. By winning the AUSTRALIAN OPEN Sunday he became the oldest to win a major since 1972. He's got three wins in the last five majors. It's fair to ask if he is BENJAMIN BUTTON or DORIAN GRAY in the way he's erased the aging curve. He can dismiss the importance of age in appreciating his accomplishments but that sort of diminishment doesn't give him the proper context. It's damn hard to win a major. CAROLINE WOZNIACKI knows that. She had played in 42 Grand Slam tournaments before winning her first major singles title. She had everything else on her resume. In individual sports there is a stain on careers that end without Grand Slam wins. Wozniacki had none before Saturday. An Aussie Open title doesn't make her career -- she had been No. 1 in the world for a long stint and had won 27 other singles titles -- but it does help avoid the "best to never win a major" title that no tennis player wants... The first women's ROYAL RUMBLE match was a success. A big win for an emerging wrestler, ASUKA. A big surprise from RONDA ROUSEY. Most important, a commitment to letting the women wrestle a match that only men had before -- in the last match on the card, no less. An entertaining match and validation for the WWE's decision to (finally) give the women's division the respect it deserves. Next step: give CHARLOTTE FLAIR, SASHA BANKS, or Asuka the main event at WRESTLEMANIA... What does MICHIGAN STATE do now? ESPN's PAULA LAVIGNE reported that the school's issues go way beyond employing LARRY NASSAR and whatever negligence or intentional choices kept him employed there. The men's basketball and football programs have their own history of ignoring sexual assault and violence against women. MSU athletic director MARK HOLLIS resigned but it's easier to push out an AD than super-successful coaches like MARK D'ANTONIO and, especially, TOM IZZO. This won't go away for MSU. Who will survive? Who deserves to survive?... BRIAN BOYLE stole the show at the NHL ALL-STAR GAME. He's fought leukemia since September. Hopefully his place in the game served as an inspiration to others battling cancer... Guide to darts. | | | - Mike Vorkunov, curator |
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 | Sunday Long Read |
| When Katharine Graham and the Washington Post company decided to launch the Esquire of sports magazines in 1979, they were riding high. If anyone was poised to create something touched with magic it was at the Post Company. Why then did they sell it just a few years later despite launching the careers of some of the most talented writers and editors of its generation? The Inside story of the greatest magazine you’ve never read. | | |
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 | ESPN |
| The movement started by Colin Kaepernick endures, but its supporters are more fragmented than ever. This is the inside story of how infighting splintered a group of players once unified in its pursuit of a cause bigger than themselves. | | |
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 | Sportsnet |
| The last time the men's Olympic hockey tournament was played without NHLers, no one expected much from the birthplace of the game. Turns out, that was a mistake. This is the oral history of Team Canada's Cinderella run to silver. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Despite Serena Williams’s absence, the women’s draw provided more excitement than the men’s. | | |
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 | The Sydney Morning Herald |
| Roger Federer won his historic 20th grand slam title when he defeated Marin Cilic in five sets at the Australian Open. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Before match point in the Australian Open final, Halep turned back to the baseline and did something surprising: she smiled. | | |
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 | The Oregonian |
| You know the story: Figure skater Tonya Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, hired a thug to brutally kneecap the working-class Oregon skater's rival, the prettier and more popular Nancy Kerrigan. But that was hardly the end of it. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| One of the world’s most tradition-bound sports is changing its rules in an attempt to appeal to a younger crowd, but not everybody is happy with the game’s new look | | |
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 | FanGraphs |
| At the turn of the 20th century, the Japanese Canadian community in Vancouver was thriving. Since the arrival of the first Japanese person, Manzo Nagano, in 1877, the population of Japanese immigrants in the city had grown exponentially. Laborers of Japanese descent formed a large part of the Vancouver work force, and every year the number of immigrants coming from Japan grew. | | |
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 | Sports Illustrated |
| It began during Belichick’s Giants years and followed the coach to New England and into the owner’s box. Now Bon Jovi is the all-but-official rock star of the Patriots. | | |
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 | Bleacher Report |
| That it occurred at the end of the fourth quarter isn’t a total surprise. According to a 2015 study by Jeff Stotts of InStreetClothes.com, a site specializing in sports injuries, 64 percent of in-game ruptures in the NBA since 2005 happened in the second half of games. That finding follows this report: fatigue or overuse contributes to Achilles tendinitis and ruptures, according to the Cleveland Clinic and other studies. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| What’s life like at 7 feet 7 inches? Robert Bobroczkyi, a 17-year-old basketball prospect, gives us a view of his world. | | |
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 | The Athletic |
| Though the NCAA has announced its intention to open an investigation into Michigan State's athletic department, it remains unclear what exactly the purview of the investigation would be. And, more importantly, why it's taken so long to get involved. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| At a high school gym in Southern California, about 800 broken hearts came together to remember the life of a 21-year-old who took his own life earlier this month. | | |
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 | MMQB |
| Josh McDaniels and Nick Caserio, key members of the New England brain trust, were teammates at Division III John Carroll University, and three other Pats staffers are alums (as are the GMs of the Chargers and Jaguars). Maybe it’s not so surprising after all for the alma mater of Don Shula. | | |
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 | Las Vegas Sun |
| An “integrity fee” would change the face of sports betting — and not for the better | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Instead of preparing for an Olympic tournament that had the potential to eclipse the five previous competitions that involved NHL stars, the league’s top players are in Tampa this weekend for All-Star festivities. | | |
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 | The Boston Globe |
| Bill Belichick is brilliant at football. Everyone knows that. But he has another gift, too, which has somehow gone unrecognized. The man is a parenting genius - a Snark Slayer. His lessons for powerless parents have been there all along - all you have to do is watch his press conferences and imagine the reporters as teenage drama queens trying to push mom's or dad's buttons, and Belichick as parent. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| Listen to Bobby Charlton and you know why the minute’s silence at Manchester United’s closest home game to the anniversary, this year against Huddersfield next Saturday, always resonates. | | |
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 | Outside Online |
| Matt Thomas was a world-class kayaker who got paralyzed in a mountain-bike accident. His friend Joe Jackson moved in for a demanding stint as a caregiver. Outdoor sports were off the table, of course--until Thomas heard about paragliding. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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