i'd rather read that than Mistress Matisse's odes to her own awesomeness.

hell, i'd rather read Inga Muscio than Mistress Matisse.

I lurve Mistress Matisse though.

Stupid. Just plain stupid. A Lot of sports fans are active in many areas of society and to tell you the truth, I see more fat people at the Seattle International film festival than I see at a Sonics, Mariners or Huskies games. On this blog, the smartest commenters are sports fans. People with a vast knowledge on numerous topics. FNARF, Gomez, Lloyd, Gomez and others.

A lot of us vote, work as community organizers, alt weekly writers, college professors, goverment hacks, party hacks, or anti war activists.

Stupid stereotypes are just that stupid stereotypes, thats like me saying, “your mother has a fat ass” I mean that would be stupid of me.

Sports is a distraction something we follow, sometimos with passion, other times with not. It is also a place to see great physical greatness. Sports also has place, a role, in history. Think of Muhamad Ali standing up against the Vietnam war, Tennis athletes who have stood up for gay rights, think of the all-black college teams that beat segregation in the early 60's, Texas tech and others, the great Jackie Robinson, the great Roberto Clemente breaking the barriers for Latinos while being the wizard of the Pirates. John Carlos in the olympics, Jesse Owens spitting at Hitler by beating the so called master race, the great Jim Thorpe. Jim Brown the greatest running back ever who also became a community activist and community empowerment and anti gang activist, the great writer and thinker and sky hook master Kareem Abdul Jabar Labor struggles. The struggles of black athletes. The struggles of the marathon runners, the struggle of the Iraqi soccer team whose members are either all dead or maimed by now.

There has been bull shit too, everyone knows that and greed and everything else, but a lot of this anti sports bias is by people who were either wimps in high school or dont know crap about sports or never placed them. I played sports all through out my youth and still run and play sports today just like a lot of sports fans and I know just as many as fat activists as I know skinny ones.

http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Columns/Sports/2007/04/12/Punishing_Pacman/index.shtml

the problems with the dailies is that most sports journalists today are public relations hacks.

One of the best and most politically minded sports writers of all time was Lester Rodney who wrote for workers world. He once challenged Noam chomsky's dismissal of sports by telling him " sports can become an arena where the ideas of our society are not only presented but also challenged."

I like your post, but it's unfortunate you have to reach back 30 years and more to find instances of athletes having a positive social impact on American culture. There's a reason why Kareem, Walton and Rick Barry have never gotten a real coaching job.

For the most part, today's athlete refuses to step up and speak up. Imagine Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan speaking out against the Iraq War or George Bush.

When Steve Nash wore his anti-war shirt and Carlos Delgado refused to stand for the national anthem, they were ridiculed until they both finally caved.

Unfortunately Big Money has changed the equation. Most big time athletes vote Republican, keep their mouths shut or both.

Yes, more about the awesomeness of sports, please.

but i'd be sad for a sports page, too. it just seems to be an un-alternative as you can get. might as well have a business section.

then again, perhaps it could be down well. maybe cover different sports, such as roller derby and what not. or a humorous take on the normal sports... reviews of how the athletes looked while performing, etc... you could probably sneak in the actual results to appease the actual fans.

I don't buy this. Then alt weeklys should stop covering the same films, theater, and art openings as the dailies. I think most people's point is that the Stranger could bring a different insight to the topic.

And this is different from politics how?

but to your point directly, just because a large paper might cover "alternative" events -- albeit poorly -- that does not mean an alternative paper is disingenuous in covering alternative events. that same could not be said if the alt rag started writing normal articles.

Our Seattle girls are now second in the country, in case you didn't know.

But coverage of snowboarding, roller derby, surfing -- that would be fresh.

And you dont have to go that far to come up with inspiring sports stories, I just cited the monumental events. There are little events on the court. Even if its a great Jeff Green basket resulting from a feed from Durant. But the Iraqi soccer team was only 4 years ago not 30, what about the women's soccer team? then there is the answer allan iverson, there is the story of the Huskies going to the sweet 16, and i mean the stranger has been covering the sups and the move, and what about the making of kevin durant? there are all kinds of sports stories and tons of alt weeklies do stories on sports all the time. good stories. friday night lights was a good story about racism in texas football and became one hell of a book. the stranger missed a great story some years ago on recruiting. and remember feit's stories some years back about the two basketaball twins from Rainier beach with the crazy dad who went to USC? there is great stories out there, and dont tell me people forgot our Sups of the Gary Shawn Kemp and Eddie Jones era? Please. A Garbes writes good sports pieces, but she writes them for Chicago alt weeklies and not our own? That is, as the kids say, WHACK!

Obviously, buying wholesale into the American fan experience isn't alt-weekly friendly. And if you're waiting for the next Ali to walk through the door, you'll be sorely disappointed. But there's a lot about sports that Stranger readers could find interesting. Small things about players as people, the look and feel of the game, feuds that transcend mere athletic competition.

If you're hellbent on dismissing sports, I guess those are still useless. But isn't that a victory for all the asses who have made sports into something objectionable? If the Stranger doesn't have sports coverage, the sports fans have won.

Apparently, they totally kick ass. Hard to tell though, since no one covers them. Yeah, yeah, I could read their website, but now we have Roller Derby and Women's Football. This column practically writes itself.

http://www.quakerugby.org/

oh.

Activities are fine. You could write about them in an activities section. But don't call them sports.

If the Strangler's gonna have a new sports column, they could at least throw in a cock shot for us non-sports types since this is one of the few places we're not constantly bombarded with sports data.

Seriously dude, throw us freakin' bone!

http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/what_were_those_sonics_fans_shouting

http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/wheres_willie_mays_hayes_when_you_need_h

Seriously, did anybody suffer through last night's Sonics game? It was like watching the Washington Generals play a cloned version of the Washington Generals while the Globetrotters sat in the stands and laughed. Worse still, the bottom-of-the-East scrubs in Chicago wound up beating us by nearly 30 points. THIRTY. We now have as many losses as the Boston Celtics have wins.

Earlier in the season, the Sonics' losses were tragic because they were often close, the kind that looked like Carlesimo was throwing the games intentionally at game's end to support my OKC conspiracy theories. But we've now moved beyond pathetic into tragic territory. Go Supes.

I'm with the Burning River Roller Girls in Cleveland and I'd love to read columns in The Stranger about Rat City (as comment #37 points out, Rat City is second in the nation).

--I find myself in perfect agreement with elenchos

oh, and isn't it just called "sport" now? without the "s"?

it warms my heart to hear from stranger sports fans.

It seems that Slog already bears witness to Stranger-staff sport fans talking about sports in ways that they enjoy them most. Isn't a good idea already at work on Slog? I'm glad that Stranger fan/Sports fans get a little suet here and there. The previous stereotype of total sport hate, frankly, seemed a little fake to me. I'm glad it's gone.

There's two things for me that fire me up:
1 is that if you play any sport with any regularity and enthusiasm you quickly cherish how different an activity from all others it is. It is no simple trick to translate a mental desire into an acutely, well-shaped physical execution. And in a team situation - say, with your friends on a weekend - it's becomes a dramatic environment in which to understand the power and effortlessness of resilience and dogged positivism.

2 follows 1 in that playing a sport shows you how difficult it must be to perform at a pro level. It gives you an appreciation of how pro teams can achieve the flow of unity on a spectacular level.

I approach sports fandom from pretty much that angle.