Sports At Politics

Soon-to-be-former U.S. Representative Beto O'Rourke (D-TX), who is a possible candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, released this 48-second video, which made a very powerful case in opposition to President Donald Trump's demand for a border wall boondoggle among the U.S./Mexico border: pic.twitter.com/XONeh8HUf1 — Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) December 28, 2018 That might be the most well-produced web video that I've ever seen from a political figure of any kind, bar none. Beto did not physically appear in the video, and neither his voice nor anyone else's voice, was heard in the video. However, the video didn't need anyone to be seen or heard to drive home the message about the many reasons why the proposed border wall boondoggle would be an absolutely ridiculous idea, and the various images of the natural beauty of Rio Grande Valley also helped make the case against the border wall boondoggle. I will note that I am currently undec...

With a potentially very large field of candidates expected to seek the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2020, I made this observation about the divide within the Democratic Party being more complicated than a simple divide between a center-left establishment and a left-wing progressive insurgency: The 2016 primary campaign between Hillary and Bernie has probably led a lot of people to incorrectly believe that there are only two factions within the Democratic Party. In reality, it's a lot more complicated than that. — Aaron Camp (@ProgMid) December 25, 2018 Obviously, the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries/caucuses quickly became virtually a two-candidate race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders well before the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses were held that year, and became an actual two-candidate race between the center-left Hillary and the progressive Bernie after Martin O'Malley ended his longshot presidential bid after the Iowa caucuses. ...

In just a couple of hours from now, at 6 P.M. CST, the first of two national semifinal matches in the NCAA Division I women's indoor volleyball tournament, BYU vs. Stanford, will begin. Both of the national semifinal volleyball matches are airing on ESPN tonight, with the second match, Nebraska vs. Illinois, scheduled to begin no earlier than 8 P.M. CST. Both games will be played at a neutral site in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Target Center, which is normally home to the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves and the NHL's Minnesota Wild, but has been converted into a volleyball venue for the national semifinal games tonight and the national championship game on Saturday. Given the title of this blog post, you may be asking yourself, how exactly is the NCAA inconveniencing people who want to watch indoor volleyball on television tonight? I'll explain how the NCAA is inconveniencing volleyball fans. For those who might have a rooting interest in either BYU or Stanford, they a...

After being fired by the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in 2017 after being implicated in a sex scandal involving sending at least 12 phone calls on a university phone to escort services, Hugh Freeze took the head football coaching job at...wait for it...Liberty University, an evangelical university that was founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, Sr., whose current president is his son, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and has a strict "honor code" that, for lack of a better description, regulates the morality of its students. At the press conference in which Freeze was announced as Liberty's head football coach, things got even weirder: #Liberty AD Ian McCaw on Hugh Freeze: "He’s a man of great faith, great family man." — Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) December 7, 2018 I'm sure you've met a few others who can handle your junk @CoachHughFreeze pic.twitter.com/NxEU8bxUYz — gmannVOLS (@gmannVOLS) December 7, 2018 I'm not going to cri...

I will preface this blog post by saying that, as of this writing, some parts of the country may still be counting votes cast in the November 6, 2018 midterm elections, and there are runoff elections in Georgia (December 4) and Louisiana (December 8) for statewide office yet to be held. Also, this will be a living blog post of sorts until the end of the current calendar year, as I'll update and add information and analysis to this blog post throughout the month of December. However, one thing that is certain is that this year's midterm elections were monumentally excellent and historic for the Democratic Party , even if the blue wave didn't reach every corner of the country, or the blue wave wasn't as large as you might have predicted. The only major bright spot for the GOP nationally was the U.S. Senate races, where they flipped Senate seats in North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, and, in a surprise, Florida. However, Democrats flipped Senate seats in Nevada and Arizona...

Due to the inability for Turner Sports's Bleacher Report Live (B/R Live) sports streaming service to allow everyone who had paid to stream the Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson exhibition golf match yesterday because of a technical glitch affecting the purchase function of the B/R Live streaming service, B/R Live ended up providing the Tiger/Phil match for free to anyone with an internet connection: BREAKING: Source says Turner execs decided to give Phil-Tiger match away for free on B/R Live streaming platform (instead of $20 charge) when purchase function broke down to point where those who bought had trouble getting in. — Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) November 23, 2018 While the Tiger/Phil match itself was a classic, with Phil winning the match after four extra holes were needed to decided a winner, the match was a total disaster for Turner Sports and their B/R Live sports streaming service. The business model of the Tiger/Phil match as it relates to the B/R Live streaming serv...

After getting heavily criticized on Twitter, Arkansas State Rep. Stephen Meeks (R-Greenbrier) deleted a tweet in which he claimed that being poor is a personal choice, and that a homeless person can become a millionaire in 20 years by becoming a truck driver. Here is a screenshot of the now-deleted tweet that was captured prior to the tweet in question being deleted. It is inherently clear that Meeks does not understand poverty or the trucking industry. First off, being poor is not a personal choice. Some people, including me, are simply unable to find a good-paying job for any number of reason(s). I was born into a poor family, and, while I write at a grade level that is above average, I never had the right kind of intelligence to earn a college degree (remember that, while a college degree does not guarantee a good-paying job, it increases the odds of getting a good-paying job). While the late Dale Earnhardt, Sr. went from dropping out of high school to winning seven NASCAR seas...

The NCAA initially told Emily Scheck, an openly-lesbian cross-country runner at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, that she could either forfeit her eligibility and give up her ability to compete as a collegiate cross-country runner or return donations that she receive via GoFundMe that are, because her parents disowned her because of her sexual orientation, necessary for her to have a good standard of living. Here is how ThinkProgress initially reported about the NCAA's original decision regarding Scheck (proofreading mine): Emily Scheck, a cross-country runner at Canisius College in upstate New York, had to deal with this worst-case scenario when her parents discovered, through social media, that she was dating a woman: She was told to either return home so she could receive dehumanizing, harmful, and ineffective conversion therapy, or stay at school and be cut out of their lives forever, according to a report by Outsports. (Scheck) did not want to endure conversion th...

This will be my closing message, as a political blogger, before Election Day this year. As President of the United States, Donald Trump has completely disgraced America, and the Republican Party has enabled Trump's disgracing of this great country. It's almost impossible to count the ways that Trump has disgraced this country, but I'll list a large number of them. Early on in the Trump presidency, Trump crony Kellyanne Conway went on NBC's Meet the Press and helped set the tone for the entire Trump presidency by claiming that then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was using "alternative facts" to describe the crowd size at Trump's inauguration. Since then, it has become inherently clear that the entire Trump regime has been built on a pyramid of lies, deceit, fearmongering, and hatred. When it comes to immigration, Trump's policies and rhetoric pander to far-right extremists who want to end immigration to this country, even though America ...

Several hours ago, Cesar Altieri Sayoc, Jr., was arrested and indicted on federal criminal charges related to an attempted domestic terrorist attack targeting some of the most prominent individuals within the Democratic Party (including, but not limited to, two former Presidents, a former Vice President, and members of both houses of Congress) and national security experts: An outspoken supporter of President Trump from South Florida was charged on Friday with sending explosive packages to at least a dozen of the president’s critics, apparently bringing to a close an attempted bombing spree that has gripped the country just ahead of the midterm elections. The suspect, Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr., 56, was arrested outside an auto parts store near Fort Lauderdale after a fast-moving investigation in which the authorities said they were able to pull a fingerprint from one of the bomb packages and collect Mr. Sayoc’s DNA from two others. I will make a couple of very important point...

As someone who considers myself to be a nationalist, I was extremely disturbed by President Donald Trump proudly declaring himself to be a nationalist at a rally in the home county of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Trump's brand of nationalism is fascist and hypocritical. Trump's policies, particularly on issues like immigration and foreign policy, as well as his bigotry and political appeal to bigotry, are deeply rooted in Trump's brand of far-right phony nationalism. Trump's extreme anti-immigrant policies are deeply rooted in a white nationalist vision of America, and, when it comes to foreign policy, Trump claims to put "America first", but he pals around with fellow far-right authoritarians like Russia's Vladimir Putin and sells U.S. arms to the absolute monarchy that rules Saudi Arabia. My nationalist views are considerably different, and, in many ways, directly at odds with that with Trump. America is a nation of immigrants. To deny that America i...

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the famous Black Power salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics. After Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos won the gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the men's 200 meter dash track-and-field event, Smith and Carlos each raised a black-gloved fist while the U.S. national anthem played. The silver medalist, Australian Peter Norman, was a critic of Australia's former anti-immigrant White Australia policy, and, along with Smith and Carlos, wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge during the medal ceremony. In many ways, the Black Power salute of 1968 mirrors the recent and current actions of black athletes, and even some non-black athletes, in regards to President Donald Trump and racism against black Americans, such as kneeling during the playing of the U.S. national anthem before sporting events and refusing to accept invitations for traditional White House visits by champion sports teams. The athletes of today who are protesting are...

This is the first time that I can recall a Democratic congressional candidate receiving an endorsement from a NASCAR driver, but Hailie Deegan, who drives in NASCAR's K&N Pro Series West, one of several regional NASCAR series that form the fourth tier of NASCAR-sanctioned automobile racing, publicly asked people in the 4th Congressional District of California to vote for Democratic candidate Jessica Morse: So inspiring to meet @HailieDeegan before her race at the @AllAmericanSpdy tomorrow! Hailie is 17 years old & the first female winner of a @NASCAR K&N West Series race. Good luck, Hailie & thanks for sharing your important message to #CA04 ! pic.twitter.com/pNP2CH49cp — Jessica Morse (@Morse4America) October 12, 2018 This can be thought of as one rising star endorsing another. Hailie Deegan is a rising star in NASCAR. Deegan, 17 years of age, recently won a race in NASCAR's K&N Pro Series West, one of the regional NASCAR series forming the fourth ...

Jose Canseco Capas Jr., a former Major League Baseball player who admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs during his MLB career, wants President Donald Trump to appoint him to the soon-to-be-vacant U.S. ambassadorship to the United Nations: Hey little buddy @realDonaldTrump I am interested in United Nations leadership .dm me for ideas and confidential 90 day plan #readynow — Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) October 9, 2018 Canseco's attempt to get Trump to appoint him to the ambassadorship to the UN struck me as rather odd (although it sounds like a serious effort by Canseco to get Trump to appoint him) for a number of reasons: Canseco has never actually retired from playing baseball. As recently as earlier this year, Canseco played in a few games for the Normal CornBelters of the independent Frontier League . Canseco doesn't have any prior diplomatic or political experience of any kind that I'm aware of. Canseco publicly admitted to using performance-enhancing ...

I apologize for the delay in writing this blog post, but next year's edition of the Tour Championship, the final event of the PGA Tour's FedEx Cup Playoffs, will follow a completely different format than the format in use for this year's Tour Championship. Under the current format, the top 30 players in the FedEx Cup standings immediately prior to the Tour Championship were invited to play in the Tour Championship, which is currently a conventional stroke play event, albeit with a small, but very elite, field of golfers. Prior to the start of the tournament, a points reset was conducted in such a manner that anyone who is eligible to play in the Tour Championship has a mathematical possibility of winning the FedEx Cup, which is the trophy that the PGA Tour awards to the PGA Tour season champion, and those in the top five in the FedEx Cup standings prior to the Tour Championship are mathematically guaranteed to win the FedEx Cup if they win the Tour Championship. Under the...

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Due to the fact that this blog post contains a description of an act of sexual assault, reader discretion is strongly advised.

At the behest of then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, a federal government photographer edited official photographs of President Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration ceremony to make it look like the crowd in attendance at the National Mall was much larger than before: A government photographer edited official pictures of Donald Trump’s inauguration to make the crowd appear bigger following a personal intervention from the president, according to newly released documents. The photographer cropped out empty space “where the crowd ended” for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama’s in 2009. [...] The records detail a scramble within the National Park Service (NPS) on 21 January 2017 after an early-morning phone call between Trump and the acting NPS director, Michael Reynolds. They also state that Sean Spicer, then White House press secretary...

Think of this single blog post as a three-part blog post about recent developments at the intersection of sports and politics. First, golf legend Tiger Woods generated some controversy after he refused to either praise or condemn some of President Donald Trump's policies, but asked Americans to respect the office of the President of the United States : The full exchange, with a New York Times reporter, was barely a minute long. Asked about his relationship with Trump, Woods reflected on their history playing together (including most recently last Thanksgiving weekend): "We've played golf together. We've had dinner together. I've known him pre-presidency and obviously during his presidency.” Then Woods was asked about whether his relationship with Trump was an implicit endorsement of Trump’s policies toward immigrants and people of color? Treading cautiously, Woods said he felt compelled to respect the office. "He's the President of the United States....

I recently discovered on Twitter that it is, as of this writing, physically possible to hit the heart-shaped like button on one’s own tweets. I have publicly recommended that Twitter disable the ability of people to like their own tweets, while preserving the ability for people to like others’ tweets: I think Twitter shouldn't allow people to like their own tweets. That sounds like something that egomaniacs do. Obviously, I do believe that Twitter should continue allowing people to like others' tweets. — Aaron Camp (@ProgMid) August 4, 2018 That got me wondering whether or not the world’s most infamous tweeter, President Donald Trump, has a habit of liking his own tweets. Trump has extremely rarely hit the like button on tweets, having only hit the heart-shaped button a total of, as of this writing, 25 times from his own Twitter account . However, eight of those 25 tweets, or 32% of the tweets that Trump has liked, have come from his own account. I'm not sure if anyon...

At Sports and Politics, I take both sports and politics seriously, so I have to say that this tweet from Fancred sportswriter Jon Heyman about a roster move by Major League Baseball's Milwaukee Brewers included an erroneous reference to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA): Brewers acquire Joakim Soria @SenFeinstein 1st — Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) July 26, 2018 The part about the Brewers acquiring Joakim Soria, a closing pitcher who was acquired by the Brewers in a trade with the Chicago White Sox, is accurate . However, the Milwaukee Brewers did NOT acquire the rights to Feinstein, who is not a professional baseball player. Heyman intended to reference Mark Feinsand, who is an executive reporter for MLB's website, in his tweet, not Sen. Feinstein, presumably to let Feinsand know about the Soria trade if he wasn't already aware of it: First was @Feinsand not @SenFeinstein https://t.co/sghgYZrJhz — Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) July 26, 2018 I'm not particularly a b...

Jim Harbaugh, the head football coach at the University of Michigan, stated during the Big Ten Conference (B1G) media day before the start of this year's college football season (which begins August 25, although the first games featuring B1G teams is August 30) that he would like the College Football Playoff (CFP) that determines the unofficial national champion in NCAA Division I FBS college football expanded to eight teams, with an expansion to sixteen teams being a long-term goal, as well as eliminating conference championship games: Jim Harbaugh on @CFBPlayoff expansion: "Let's go to 8 and eventually 16." Says to eliminate the conference championship game to get there and keep number of games reasonable. pic.twitter.com/KVsezXrura — Hawkeye Headquarters (@HawkeyeHQ) July 23, 2018 In short, Harbaugh's proposal to reform the College Football Playoff is half-great and half-terrible. I strongly support the idea of expanding the College Football Playoff to ...

In perhaps the single biggest act of appeasement since the 1938 Munich Agreement that resulted in Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler seizing control of the Sudetenland, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, openly sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against the U.S. intelligence community : President Donald Trump on Monday publicly sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies, refusing to condemn the Kremlin for interference in the 2016 election and saying that “I don’t see any reason” why Russia would have hacked Democratic computer servers. Trump’s remarkable statements, during a joint news conference in Helsinki, Finland, after holding a two-hour one-on-one meeting with Putin, came after special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russians on Friday over allegations of involvement in the state-ordered election-interference operation. Trump repeatedly attacked the FBI, praised Putin as a “good competitor,” refused to s...

Barack Obama, who served two consecutive terms as President of the United States from 2009 to 2017, warned in his farewell address that democracy in the United States was threatened, by, among other things, "demographic change" : That's what I want to focus on tonight: The state of our democracy. Understand, democracy does not require uniformity. Our founders argued. They quarreled. Eventually they compromised. They expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity — the idea that for all our outward differences, we're all in this together; that we rise or fall as one. (Applause.) There have been moments throughout our history that threatens that solidarity. And the beginning of this century has been one of those times. A shrinking world, growing inequality; demographic change and the specter of terrorism — these forces haven't just tested our security and our prosperity, but are testing our democracy, a...

For the first time that I can recall, it is statistically more dangerous to be a journalist than a race car driver in the United States. In the first six months of 2018, three race car drivers were killed in on-track events in the United States ; in all three instances, the fatality occurred as a result of injuries sustained in a crash: Dirt modified racer Bill Egleston, who was killed in an International Motorsports Contest Association (IMCA) race at Perris Auto Speedway in California on January 16 Amateur drag racer Ken Rambo, who was killed in a Wednesday Night Drags meet at Sonoma Raceway in California on March 28 Sprint car racer Jason Johnson, who was killed in a World of Outlaws Sprint Car race at Beaver Dam Raceway in Wisconsin on June 23 (date of death: June 24) According to the Motorsport Memorial website, no race car drivers were killed outside of the United States in the first six months of 2018, so the three race car drivers who were killed in the United States wer...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old bartender from The Bronx, defeated U.S. Representative and U.S. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley in one of the most surprising political upsets in U.S. history. With all but nine of the district's 447 precincts reporting, Ocasio held an insurmountable 57.5% to 42.5% lead over Crowley in the Democratic primary in New York state's 14th Congressional District, which is entirely within New York City and includes parts of Queens and The Bronx. Crowley has graciously conceded defeat to Ocasio. As someone who is not a New Yorker, but followed the race for the Democratic nomination in the 14th District of New York on social media, I can explain a number of reasons behind Ocasio's surprise victory: Ocasio did have some political experience prior to running for Congress, specifically, she was an intern for the late U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy while she was a college student at Boston University in Massachusetts. Ocasio, despite ha...

Golf fans in the United States are accustomed to televised golf tournaments being produced by either CBS, which has several decades of experience producing television productions of golf tournaments, or Golf Channel, which is a 24-hour cable channel devoted to golf ( except when NBC can't find another channel to air NHL ice hockey playoff games on ) that is owned by NBC's parent company, Comcast, and produces NBC's golf telecasts. Both CBS and Golf Channel are known for high-quality productions of golf tournaments. However, the broadcast rights for the United States Golf Association (USGA) national golf championships, including the U.S. Open and U.S. Women's Open, are currently held by Fox, which doesn't have a lot of experience covering golf tournaments (they've held the USGA broadcast contract since 2015) and only airs a few golf tournaments per year on Fox and its co-owned cable sports channel FS1. Fox's golf tournament coverage tends to have a lot more...

With the 2018 FIFA World Cup men's soccer tournament beginning Thursday, I'll take this opportunity to predict the outcome of every match of this year's World Cup tournament. For the group stage, each match in each pool is listed in chronological order (although the last two matches of each group are played simultaneously), and my prediction for each mach is listed using the following format: (Team A) (Team A predicted score)-(Team B predicted score) (Team B), and the individual match predictions are followed by predicted pool standings. For the predicted pool standings, standings for each team use the following format: (Wins)-(Draws)-(Losses) (Points); for teams that I predict to advance out of group stage, their elimination stage seeding is listed as (group ranking)(group letter), and any tiebreaking criteria used is noted as well. For the elimination stage, predictions for individual matches follow an identical format to those for the group stage, with three exceptio...

The backlash that the National Football League (NFL) has received (examples here and here ) for adopting a "stand-or-stay" rule in regards to performances of the U.S. national anthem before NFL games might be just the beginning of the NFL's problems in the upcoming NFL season. Several NFL players, whose names have not been revealed, have reportedly told Shaun King of the New York Daily News that they are considering sitting out the season unless NFL team(s) sign Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, two NFL players who are not currently under a contract with any team due to the NFL team owners effectively blacklisting them from the league for protesting against racism in America. Furthermore, King has claimed that the goal of the unnamed players is to get as much as one-quarter of the league's players to sit out with them. BREAKING: Several star @NFL players have told me they are considering sitting out the season until the de facto ban of Eric Reid and Colin Kaepern...

Earlier this week, news broke that the France family, the family that founded and owns a majority stake in the stock car racing organization NASCAR, is looking to sell the sanctioning body to another company , and that Goldman Sachs intends to facilitate such a sale. Very little is known about any individuals or companies that might be interested in buying NASCAR, although, depending on what might be sold along with the sanctioning body (it's not clear if ARCA, a stock car racing organization recently acquired by NASCAR, and/or the sports car racing organization IMSA would be included in the sale, for example), the sale could be valued as much as several billion dollars. On a related note, Brian France, the grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France, Sr., has been rumored as a possible buyer of the NFL's Carolina Panthers, although I doubt that a member of the France family will buy the Panthers. NASCAR has been in decline in recent years for a couple of major reasons. First, sup...

Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, has announced that he will resign from office, effective "at the close of business" tomorrow. The reason why Schneiderman is resigning from office is because four women have accused Schneiderman of physically abusing them : Now Schneiderman is facing a reckoning of his own. As his prominence as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so, too, has the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters. They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to nonconsensual physical violence. All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal. But two of the women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to The New Yorker on the record, because they feel that doing so could protect other women. They allege that he repeatedly hit them, often after drinking, frequently in bed and never with their consent. Manning Barish and Selvaratnam categorize the abuse he inf...