Stealing Dave Zirin's work
A former basketball player at my alma mater, Iowa State, is getting ink for feuding with his NBA employer, the Houston Rockets, over his anxiety disorder. Here is both the Podcast and written transcript of an interview that Royce White conducted with Slate's "Hang Up and Listen."It’s not surprising that this diagnosable medical condition would be a bad fit for most teams. The industry of professional sports is not one that’s famous for protecting the physical or mental health of its employees. (See: NFL concussions.) In fact, most teams, for the sake of public relations leverage, continue to foster the widespread misconception that their employees are not workers at all, given their atypical celebrity.
Yet they are-- and should be-- protected by the same employment rights and regulatory protections as workers in any other field. Professional athletes are often needlessly put in harm's way, like the players in Sunday's Washington/Seattle football game, played on a treacherous turf in the nation's capital (Dave Zirin called the game a "nationally-televised OSHA violation"). Here's hoping that White, sooner rather than later, finds an employer that better respects his unique situation.
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More Zirin: If we measure institutional rot at American colleges and universities by the disproportionate emphasis on sports, the rot at the University of Notre Dame almost certainly runs as deep as it does at Penn State.
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ESPN apologized today for Brent Musburger's leering comments on the air last night about the girlfriend of Alabama's quarterback. This is a ridiculous non-story regarding a broadcaster saying, not disrespectfully, that a beauty queen (the current Miss Alabama) is beautiful. ESPN's apology is craven. But some of us are still waiting for Musburger himself to apologize for this report he filed from Mexico City for the old Chicago American more than four decades ago.
posted by CM @ 8:39 PM
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