Bleacher Report - Articles by Max Tcheyan

The B/R Interview With Charlie Villanueva: The Tweet Off vs Chris Bosh

Max Tcheyan — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:28:46 -0400

MT: What’s up CV - This thing is heating up, it looks like it’s going to end tonight.

CV31: Yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do; I’m trying to end this thing tonight!

MT: Okay. Let’s do this, and hopefully everyone following @bleacherreport will then follow @CV31, and then boom, you’ll be at 50K followers before Bosh, and he’ll be dancing before you know it!

CV31: [laughs] That was good.

MT: First question: who or what got you into Twitter, and what do you like about it so much? Were you influenced by Shaq?

CV31: Actually my brother was the one that told me about it. I really didn’t know too much about it. And ever since he introduced me to it, I’ve been pretty much addicted to it.

A lot of people know me from my infamous halftime tweet. And the response I got from that was more positive than negative, so that just contributed to my addiction.

It’s a way to interact with the fans, and it gives them a chance to see what goes on day-to-day in an athlete’s life.

MT: So what's behind this bet? I saw the YouTube video, but first of all, how did you choose to go up against Chris Bosh?

CV31: It was funny because I was just on Twitter, and I’ve been following Chris. And I was on his page, and I saw that our followers were about the same. So I just threw it out there, as a joke, and he responded with the idea of putting a wager on it. So I agreed, and since then we’ve been going back and forth, campaigning for this 50K.

MT: So for your part of the bet you chose The Shane Mercado Dance, which would require Chris to be dancing as a flamboyant male dancer to Beyonce’s “All the Single Ladies" song.

Now, first of all, great choice. Second of all, Bosh is leaving it up to his followers should he win. Are you dreading anything in particular, or do you think Chris has anything up his sleeves about what they might make you do?

CV31: You know, given my competitive nature, I don’t think I’m going to lose, and I haven’t even thought about the possibility of me losing. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but if it did, I’m ready to do whatever it takes. A deal’s a deal.

MT: Now there’s a whole charity aspect involved involving your foundation, can you talk about that?

CV31: Well, I just thought that we could use this publicity to help others in some way. I was at 46 thousand and change followers, and I decided that I would give away a pair of sneakers to a needy child for every follow until I reached 50,000. It’s something that I did last year with my program called Tenis Para Ninos. So it’s a win-win situation.

MT: Now Chris is actually giving out signed sneakers to fans. Are you doing any non-charity, purely promotional, shameless buying of followers of your own?

CV31: I decided that if I end up winning the competition I would pick five people randomly who have been following me, and whatever city that person is from, when Detroit comes and plays them, they would get two tickets to come see the game.

MT: Coaches and leagues have been down on tweeting during games. It looks like Chad Ochocinco will probably get fined at some point this year for doing it and your kind of got in trouble for it earlier this year. With all that being said, will you in-game tweet again?

CV31: That’s a good question. Obviously management in Milwaukee didn’t like it, but I’m not in Milwaukee anymore. It’s something I’ll run by the coach. I talked about it with Joe Dumars and he seemed fine with it, so I just have to talk to coach to see what his policy is.

MT: Who in your opinion is the best athlete Twitter user right now?

CV31: Beside myself?

MT: Beside yourself.

CV31: [laughs] You gotta give it to Shaq.

MT: Yeah, that’s a gimme. Last question: Why should people choose to follow you over Chris Bosh right now?

CV31: Why should people pick me? Because not only am I donating sneakers and helping other, but who wouldn’t want to see Chris Bosh do The Shane Mercado? Everybody wants to see that!

There you have it. At this time the race is tight with both Charlie and Chris approaching 49,000 followers. You can follow Charlie at twitter.com/CV31

The B/R Interview: Matt Iseman

Max Tcheyan — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:30:52 -0400

Matt Iseman is the host of Sports Soup, an original series on VERSUS. The show gives viewers a candid perspective and realistic insight into the sports world.

Pulling material from anywhere and everywhere in the realm of sports—pre- and post-game shows, press conferences, local media, and off-the-wall places—Iseman will call out athletes and coaches, announcers and analysts, anchors and reporters on their comments and actions and make sense of the nonsensical and anything that deserves a closer look.

You can catch Sports Soup Tuesday nights, 10 p.m. ET on the VERSUS channel. To learn more about the show, watch clips, and cast your vote for The Best of Sports Soup, check out www.versus.com/sportssoup.

Here are some excerpts from the interview.

MT: I’ve read about your background and the unique path you took in becoming the host of a sports comedy show. Can you tell that story for us?

MI: I went to Princeton University, where I was a varsity pitcher, which I’m not bragging; I realize that’s like playing chess at the University of Miami.

And when it looked like I wasn’t going to get a multi-million dollar signing bonus, I ended up applying to medical school.

So I went to Columbia Medical School in New York City and got my M.D. While I was there I had a friend doing stand-up comedy, and he started dragging me to open mikes. One night, I decided to go on stage and give it a shot, and I just loved it.

At the time, I didn’t give it too much thought, and from there I went to the University of Colorado for my residency. I was going through my residency, and I just kind of realized that my heart wasn’t in medicine.

I decided to take a year off; I was doing internal medicine and thought about switching to emergency medicine, but I decided I just wanted to clear my brain and do something totally different and re-evaluate where I was headed in life.

So I figured I’d go out to LA and try stand-up comedy because that was the total opposite of anything I was doing at that point.

I didn’t know anyone out there, and I just started doing it. Every night going out to coffee houses, clubs, and bars. Literally anywhere and everywhere; I even did stand-up in a sex shop one night in LA.

But I loved it; I was as happy as I’d been in years. I enjoyed getting on stage and making people laugh, and was fortunate enough to start making a living from it.

At that point the decision was pretty easy not to go back to medicine. It was certainly not the career path I envisioned, but I’m happy with what happened after all the twists and turns.

MT: It’s really a great story; how you were able to trust your gut and reinvent yourself?

MI: I like to think I’m kind of the comedic version of Madonna. That’s something I’ve learned about this business. You have to have the confidence that at the end of the day I’d rather bet on myself than on anything else. I believe I’m funny enough, I believe I’m good enough, and darn it, people like me. It’s like a motivational thing here [laughs].

MT: What brought you to Sports Soup on Versus?

MI: I had hosted some stuff before at E! and had always been a fan of Talk Soup, which is now called The Soup, so when I heard they were doing a show like that but with sports, I just thought that it was a perfect fit given that I had played sports my whole life and was now doing comedy.

What I really like about Sports Soup is that while some of things we cover, like Pacman Jones or Plaxico [Burress], are horrendous, everyone involved with the show still loves sports.

And at the end of the day, as much as we’re making fun of the events that go on in the world of sports, we’re still all watching the games, the pre- and post-game shows; we love guys like Charles Barkley 'cause, my god, he makes my job easy.

MT: Do you ever have trouble finding humor in some of the horrific accidents that are shown in some of your clips?

MI: I absolutely cringe watching them, but it’s not as if we went out and filmed this ourselves. We’re pulling clips that are on a show that they aired, and most of them are looking for a response like, “Whoa man, look at this wicked accident!”

They realize, especially the extreme sports, that this is part of the game. And what is great about so many of the clips is the reactions from the people watching it.

Like there was this kid who broke his wrist skateboarding, and then right after he was put into a cast, he went back out skateboarding and broke his leg the same day! And everyone’s just thinking, “Buddy, you gotta start drinking more milk.”

MT: Do you ever improvise during taping?

MI: Absolutely. Sometimes you’re feeling it and you throw a line out there and sometimes you're gold, and other times you're Domenik Hixon and you drop a touchdown catch. And those are times when you realize tape is cheap, time for a do-over, and you come up with a funnier line.

It’s the most fun I’ve had at work. It’s a great show. I think people have been getting it, including the athletes who we’ve been poking fun at; they get the tone of the show. It’s not mean-spirited, and it really is celebrating the lowlights of sports, but in a good way.

MT: How has Hollywood been treating you now that you’re a bit more established out there?

MI: People have recognized me and have come up to me to tell me how much they love the show. It’s an awesome feeling to know that people are tuning in and enjoy the show and are getting it. So far, I haven’t been invited to the Playboy Mansion, but my fingers are crossed. No paparazzi yet, I haven’t reached that level.

MT: I think that’s a good thing. However, that could change, as word is you’re in the newest Transformers movie coming out in June; any run-ins on set with Megan Fox?

MI: Apparently she was staying in my hotel, and I knocked on about 37 doors and didn’t find her. At that point I gave up.

So no, I didn’t, and my girlfriend would have been a little pissed if I had. I probably would have had an Andy Samberg “jizz in my pants” moment; she’s pretty hot.

MT: What advice could you give to the Bleacher Report Community?

MI: Life is short, so do what makes you happy. And if you find your niche and do it well, people will find you.

The B/R Interview: H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger

Max Tcheyan — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:52:29 -0500

H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger is among the nation's most honored and distinguished writers. A native of New York City, Buzz is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award, and the National Headliners Award, among others. He also was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He is the author of three highly acclaimed nonfiction books: Friday Night Lights, A Prayer for the City, and Three Nights in August.

MT: Growing up and going to school, what was it that really pushed you toward sportswriting?

HGB: Well I just always wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I think it started very early in my life when I was 11 or 12. I grew up in New York City, and at that point in time New York had about seven newspapers and every member of my family had a favorite paper. My mother loved the Herald Tribune; my father liked the New York Times, and my grandfather like the Daily News. Every apartment I went to was filled with newspapers and I just fell in love with them and wanted to become a print reporter.

I played this baseball game called Strat-O-Matic Baseball and I would write up stories from the game as if they were being written for the New York Times. I worked at my high school newspaper at Andover, which came out weekly, unusual for a high school paper. Then my first day at Penn I went right to the Daily Pennsylvanian and pretty much spent most of my college career working both as the sports editor and then editor of the editorial page.

**Note: The sports blog at the dailypennsylvanian.com is called “The Buzz”

MT: Have you been influenced by any writers or editors?

HGB: I was very influenced by a woman named Deborah Howell, my editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who taught me a tremendous amount about writing narrative, non-fiction even though I was writing for a print newspaper at the time.

MT: Any writers?

HGB: Well there are certain writers that I admired and I guess tried to emulate with books to some degree— Robert Caro, Anthony Lukas, David Halberstam, they’re all great writers.

I write differently though. I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that. Frankly I think Friday Night Lights could have used another run-through to get out some of the purple prose. With each book I’m doing a better job of screening things out myself, but you need an editor. You need a fresh pair of eyes who can look at it objectively.

MT: When you decided to write Friday Night Lights, you uprooted and moved to Odessa, Texas. What went into that decision?

HGB: Well I was at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the year was 1988. I had been lucky enough to have something called the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, which really inspired me to do something different with my career, and I really wanted to write a book, but the hardest thing in many ways was to find the right subject.

High school football just hit me when I took a cross-country trip through the southern route with a friend. We went through all these little towns, and you would go down Main Street and there was really not much left. JC Penney’s was gone, Sears was gone, but then you would drive a few blocks out of town and there would be this beautiful, immaculate, well-watered, beautifully painted high school football stadium. It just struck me in my heart that these simply aren’t stadiums; these are shrines to people’s hopes and dreams on a Friday night. The idea stayed with me—what would it be like to spend a year in a town like that?

I went back to the Inquirer and became an editor—that was probably what did it, I hated being an editor. I figured it’s now or never; either I’m going to go off and write this book or I’m never going to do it and sort of work my way up the traditional track of the paper. I decided to go for the book and found the town of Odessa, uprooted my then fiancé and twin five-year-old boys, and moved there from August of 1988 to August of 1989.

MT: Did you feel that you were taking a chance with your career at that moment?

HGB: I was taking a chance. I did have a book contract, though it wasn’t paying nearly as much as I was making at the Inquirer and offered no benefits. The risk was that the book wouldn’t work out and then what would I do? Not to mention all the personal circumstances of providing care for my family; so there was a lot of risk involved.

I just passionately wanted to do this book. It was that one moment in life where you say to yourself, “I’m going to do this no matter what the risk.” I just felt that there was a great idea there, and I was lucky enough to pick the right town, the right season, and the right year. Everything just broke right, and I was lucky enough to be there to witness it.

MT: What are you working on now?

HGB: Right now I do stuff for Vanity Fair, but I’m currently working on a different project. I’m working on a book on my twin boys who are 25 years old and were born three months pre-mature, weighing 1 lb. 14, and 1 lb. 11 ounces. The two of them are very different. Jerry turned out to be normal and has a full life. He just became a teacher, has a full-time girlfriend, and lives on his own. Zack unfortunately has had brain damage, and his life is very different. He’ll never live independently; he’ll probably never marry.

It’s a book about loving these two boys from the perspective of a father, and coming to grips with that. It’s a very personal story, which is very different from other books that I’ve done, but I welcome the challenge. I just hope I’m up to it.

MT: I have no doubt; the sensitivity you exhibited in Three Nights in August, particularly in describing the series of events surrounding the death of Darryl Kile, comes to mind. How were you able to depict so accurately what went on with the team without over-stepping your boundaries?

HGB: Well originally the book was going to be an as-told-to, and I was going to write it for Tony [La Russa]. I wasn’t really that comfortable with that and neither was he, but sometimes when you’re on your own as a writer, you do things for money, and I’m not ashamed of that. But Tony really didn’t want an autobiography, and frankly, I didn’t think his life was worthy of an autobiography.

At the winter meetings in Nashville Tony just sort of blurted out, not really talking about the book, “You know what would be a really interesting book? Take a three game series and dissect virtually every pitch.” The second he said that I said, “Tony, that’s it! That’s the way to do this thing, but if you really want to do it, you have to give me access. You have to let me into the clubhouse, let me get as deep as I can to soak up every drop of the St. Louis Cardinals. In other words, you have to give control of the book to me.” And he agreed.

I got incredible access to the Cardinals clubhouse, and I worked my way slowly. First I got to know Tony well. I interviewed him a lot and gained his trust, but I waited with the players. I think sometimes reporters, we get nervous, we want material, we leave too soon, we interview too soon, and baseball players and professional athletes can be very standoffish. So for the first three months I just established my presence. I didn’t ask a single question to any of the players. Then after they saw that I was serious and had the trust of Tony, I started to approach the players, and bit-by-bit they opened up. Tony opened up a lot.

The stuff about Darryl Kile came from extensive interviews with Tony and other people. It was just a matter of gaining trust, and I didn’t rush it. I remember I was nervous as hell thinking I wouldn’t have any material, but by waiting, establishing my presence, and not being too pushy, it really did pay off in the end.

MT: The Afterword of the book is very interesting because you raise the debate between followers of Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball, and followers of Three Nights in August, who have been called Moneyballistas and LaRussaistas, respectively. (The terms were coined by a sports blogger.) Can you talk about that?

HGB: Well Michael Lewis is a terrific writer and he’s a very brilliant guy, but I do think that Moneyball sided too much on the idea that all you need is good statistical analysis to field a winning team.

Teams are made up of a lot of components. They’re made up of hunger, they’re made up of desire, they’re made up of chemistry, and they’re made up of emotion. Those are components of the game; they’re intangible.

I don’t want to dismiss that stuff as out of hand, but I also believe for the sake of life itself if we take out all emotion, we take out all heart and all desire, then we might as well play it by computer.

As interesting and provocative as Moneyball was, of those seven draft picks, I don’t think any are still with the Athletics. A lot of them just bombed out. It’s a very inexact science trying to predict what a baseball player is going to do. As Tony said, once a guy gets a hundred-million dollar contract, or a fat contract, that’s going to be the dividing line between whether he still plays hard, or whether he says, “Hey I can coast and still make a ton of money.”

I don’t think you can replace the kind of example of a David Eckstein and what he brings in terms of his own hustle, or the work ethic of someone like Albert Pujols. Albert works his butt off. He watches every pitch that is thrown to him. He goes into the clubhouse in between innings to watch his at bats; he’s constantly watching video. I think the example of Darryl Kile rubbed off on certain players. His competitiveness, the fact that he hated to give up intentional walks; and that, as I say, can’t be quantified.

MT: Going back to when you were a guest on Costas Now, the HBO Sports talk show, you expressed some pretty strong emotions against the blogosphere. Can you give your thoughts on web journalism, blogs, and the future of journalism and how sports media is changing?

HGB: Yeah sure, and I want to make it clear that I was just over the top in the Costas appearance. I was very wound up and very passionate about the subject. And look, I’m mourning the loss of the print media. The statistics just get worse and worse in terms of circulation drops and things like that, and it’s clear that the world is going to be the world of the web and the world of blogs.

I’m not an expert on blogs, and I’ve seen a lot more blogs since my appearance so I probably should have been better prepared for that, but from what I’ve seen there are definitely some good blogs, but the preponderance of blogs just aren’t very good for the very reason that they’re not doing what you [Bleacher Report] attempt to be doing.

They’re not screening the writing, the comments are often putrid and mean spirited and cruel, and I think that the writing lacks the kind of editing that all writing needs no matter where it appears, whether it’s in the newspaper, a magazine, or if it’s on a website.

Editors are there for a reason; good editors know when to cut, they know when things need to be enhanced, they know how to hone a piece and really make it sharp and shiny and gleam. That’s true in any form, and that’s what blogs and websites are going to need, because you guys are the future. So if you’re doing that, if you’re taking pieces and actually editing them and trying to give them high standards of editorial content I think that’s great and I think that’s the way to go.

MT: Do you think that this fan content, this citizen journalism should have a place?

HGB: Yes, I definitely do. And I think as long as the content is not cruel, and is not nasty, and not vindictive then I think it’s fine. If the fan has a genuine comment, and often fans have very good observations, there should be a place for those observations. It makes the game more fun for them and it gives them a voice.

One thing I learned on the Costas appearance is that there’s a feeling that the print media is very arrogant and very inflated and I think there’s some merit to that argument. Fans should have a place to talk about what they are seeing, and I think that as long as the material is edited and the attempt is to give it form and content, then I think that’s great.

MT: What one piece of advice would you offer to the writers at Bleacher Report?

HGB: Trust good editing because there are a lot of good editors out there. They can really enhance a piece. They’re not evil; they are there to make pieces better.

You have to be willing to re-write, and I think shorter often is better. The best thing you can do as a writer, and it’s hard in this day in age because we move so quickly, is to let it sit. If you let it sit for an hour, even just 15 minutes, and then re-read it, you’ll find places and areas that can be cut.

Re-writing is a pain in the ass and hard to do. Your gut is saying oh god it’s terrible, but your heart is saying it’s fine, but you know deep down inside that you have to change it, you have to blow it up and start over. That stinks, but that will lead to something better.

The B/R Interview: Brandon Steiner

Max Tcheyan — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:22:45 -0500

Brandon Steiner is the CEO of Steiner Sports Marketing Inc., one of the largest sports marketing and memorabilia companies in the United States. He has paired together thousands of athletes and companies using sports as a marketing tool to reach audiences and is the leading producer of authentic hand-signed collectibles.

I arrived at the Steiner Sports headquarters in New Rochelle, NY and had a chance to admire the signed photographs featuring Steiner’s roster of athletes before being led into a large glass-encased office where I was met by Brandon Steiner himself. The following contains excerpts from the interview that day...

BS: What the hell are you going to interview me about today that's going to make this story different than the other fifteen hundred other stories that I've either commented on or have been done on me?

MT: Well, I want the theme of this interview to be—

BS: Hold on one second.

Steiner gets up from his desk and walks over to the door of his office where he begins chatting with a man in a New York Yankees cap who was delivering framed autographed photographs featuring Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

I sat in Steiner’s office looking at the various pictures, sports memorabilia, and artwork on display around the room.

There was Steiner with Michael Jordan and Bill Clinton, bats, gloves, and jerseys all signed by Yankees legends, and a Warhol-esque pop-art print of Albert Einstein behind his desk. It all made for an interesting assortment.

His desk had hardly anything on it and his keyboard was positioned far away from him. Only his mouse was accessible, which gave me the impression that he rarely responds to emails but instead forwards them on to either of his two attractive female assistants who then contact the sender, as was the case in my getting in touch with him.

Keeping half an ear on the conversation he was having with the man in the Yankees cap, I overheard Steiner continually referred to “Hal,” “George,” and “Cash” and it quickly occurred to me that was referring to the Steinbrenners and Brian Cashman, but unlike the majority of Yankees fans, he's on a first name basis with them.

The conversation moved to Steiner's account of the previous night's Knicks-Cavs game where he witnessed the in-game conversation held between LeBron James and Jay-Z while sitting courtside next to the rapper and his wife, Beyonce.

His week had also included a sideline ticket to watch his alma-mater Syracuse upset Notre Dame, where he had a chance to catch up with “Cash.”

BS: That was a guy from the Yankees so I had to see him. Where were we?

MT: What I’m hoping to learn in this interview is how your background, upbringing, and overall make-up has allowed you to take a passion for sports and turn it into an extremely successful career in the sports world. Really, and I hope this doesn’t sound cliché, I’d like to learn the philosophy behind Brandon Steiner.

Steiner lets out a long sigh indicating his patience was waning. I quickly got to my first question.

MT: Okay so going back a bit, growing up did you collect baseball cards, was there a trend towards memorabilia and an entrepreneurial spirit visible from a young age?

BS: I was a business kid. I was one of those kids, you talk about Wayne Gretzky used to skate at age three, I was making money at age five. So yeah I was a collector, and I was a big sports nut, enthusiastic, and I played sports, never on a level where I thought I was going to play professional, but I just loved sports, I enjoyed sports, I enjoyed competition, and I enjoyed making money.

I needed to make money, I had to make money. It’s hard to imagine, in today’s world, a nine or 10 year old getting up on their own and going to work. I did that.

There's a lot of pressure put on kids and people today, that they’ve got to find this niche and this destiny that they’re going to follow, and that it has to start when they’re a kid. It’s a misunderstanding, it’s a misconception, it’s bullshit.

MT: There is pressure put on kids from a young age to figure out what it is you want to do, but I think the way the world is changing lends itself to the fact that you don’t have to just do one thing your entire life.

BS: Well the amount of top positions today in ten years from now will be completely different. So how would you know, as a fifteen or eighteen year old kid, what you want to do in ten years when the best jobs will be completely different? The best jobs today didn’t even exist ten years ago. And some of the biggest companies that will be in existence in 2020 haven’t even started yet in 2008.

So it’s a complete misunderstanding and it’s really bullshit to think that way. The real question is: Can you find fun in the unknown? Can you actually find enjoyment out of not knowing where the hell you’re going and not knowing exactly how to get there?

But the real kicker is, and when I think my journey really started when I was a kid, is that it’s really not about what happens, it’s what you do with what happens, and the kind of character that you want to have. That stuff gets built up when you’re a kid.

I think integrity is a word that gets lost. When I was at Syracuse and I was an accounting major, not a great one by the way, I wrote for the accounting newsletter. I interviewed this partner at a CPA firm, and I asked, “What’s the most important thing about being an accountant, a CPA?”

He said two things: "You gotta be able to communicate and you gotta have integrity." And I think his answer is really two of the most important things of being an adult, he probably just misunderstood my question.

It’s a great answer. You don’t develop character and integrity and communication skills all of sudden when you become an adult. That’s the stuff you develop when you’re a kid.

MT: When did you decide that you were going to try and make a run at this sports marketing thing?

BS: In 1987 I really came from a failure. I was in the sport bar business and I couldn’t open up one of those. I was kind of bummed about it because I really thought I had a good idea. I was very involved with the early conception of the sports bar before they were established all over the country.

I’ve always been a very entrepreneurial guy. And whenever I’m in a successful situation I always say to myself, “What else, what’s missing?” And that’s how I really came up with the whole sports bar thing. When I was working at the Hard Rock Cafe I remember thinking to myself, “This place needs TV’s, this is great with rock and roll, but this should be with sports.”

I’d like to think that I was definitely a big part of that concept, I mean I was right there at the beginning of that idea and probably was doing the first electronic big time sports bar. I came up with that idea.

So I helped a bunch of athletes open up their own bars, and in doing so I realized that nobody was really helping these players with a lot of marketing and stuff like that. I thought, “Wow, maybe I should do that? Nobody seems to know where to go to get a player for an appearance or for a charity event or for a golf outing.” I thought I could be this sports marketing agent.

It’s funny I remember like it was just yesterday that I was sitting in an office a third of the size of this office now, about 250 square feet; pretty small, just enough room for my desk. I shared this office with an intern and I came in that day and said, “Listen we’re going to start a sports marketing for athletes company.

So we’re going to write a letter to every athlete known to man and ask if they want to be part of our service. While you do that I’m going to go out to as many companies as I can, and as these letters come in we’ll tell these companies that we have relationships with these athletes and that we have some great ideas for how we can use athletes to help drive their business.”

And by the way, still to this day, if you were a company that wasn’t a sports related company and are trying to make your numbers go, I still think you could bring a guy like me in completely unobjectively, and I could show you how to use athletes to drive your business.

A million times, a million ways, without spending a lot, spending a lot, anybody can go up and get Michael Jordan and then BOOM, but my theme was let me help give you a million other alternatives because most companies couldn’t afford Jordan. That’s how I built my business. I went out and found the goddamn work!

MT: And you were able to find these relationships between the athletes and the company?

BS: I didn’t find them, I created them. I’m a market creator and then I activate it. And the market I created was saying to companies, “Look, you don’t have to go sign an athlete up and make a commitment to one athlete. Tell me what you’re trying to do and let me come to you with a bunch of ideas with how athletes can fit into that and make what you’re trying to do better.” You can't argue it.

See what I did was when I sent out those letters to the athletes, I made them fill out a 50 question survey asking them about their favorite products, products they used often, and companies they’d love to work with.

And I compiled all that into a database so when I was with Tropicana orange juice I knew 10 guys who loved Tropicana, drank it everyday before they went and played ball. Companies love that data.

MT: How were you able to, especially when you were just starting out, get the athletes? I imagine many of the athletes you wrote to had never even heard of Steiner, so how did you start to acquire this roster of athletes?

BS: Well first of all nobody was doing it at the time. I don’t think it’s a good business model right now for someone starting, the void’s been filled. But at that time there were a lot of players that really nobody was representing and nobody was really going out and working for.

In those days there were no computers. I had a Rolodex full of different people in sports and I had like three phones to try and contact players. But I was out in parking lots, out in clubs until four in the morning just trying to meet players, telling them what I do and getting phone numbers. It’s been a long path, you use the players you know to get to players you don’t know.

And you do a good job, so then players are calling up other players saying that this is a good guy, you can trust him. Once you have integrity, people trust you, the word spreads. And I was hustling, I was coming up with a lot of work for a lot of players by myself; I was doing it all.

MT: How did you come up with or see in advance these unique relationships that could be established between a company and an athlete?

BS: Knowledge is power, it’s understanding the company. One of things, and listen I’m getting older now, but one of dynamics that I have, or used to have, I’m not sure I really have it anymore, was that with the education and experience I have, I could sit with an executive, a VP or President and be able to talk the talk.

At the same time I was able to sit with a bunch of athletes that may be just as smart but you have to communicate with them completely differently. So being able to talk out of both sides of my mouth was one of my strengths.

MT: Do you think the timing of it all, that you were first to market, had a lot to do with establishing your company as well as the exclusive deals you have with teams like the Yankees today? (Yankees-Steiner Collectibles is a partnership between Steiner Sports and the New York Yankees which provides fans with authentic, game used memorabilia direct from Yankee Stadium.)

BS: I think first to market is everything. I think if you’re not first to market you’re bullshit. I’ve been first to market so many times and with so many situations that I’ve developed a reputation for it. People say, “If you got something, you gotta go bring that to Brandon, and he’ll tell you what to do.” That’s the kind of credibility you develop. It’s a driving point. If I were in a classroom I’d say "What Else" times "What’s Missing" equals "First to Market."

MT: It’s that simple?

BS: It’s that simple, but you know the problem is that it’s not for everybody. Success isn’t for everybody and this kind of thinking isn’t for everybody. It is a lot of wear and tear. The Yankees deal took three and a half years to get it done, and a lot of people wouldn’t have the wherewithal; it was tough. The Yankees are a big company and they’re not an easy company. It’s a complex arrangement we have.

And that’s what people don’t realize about me, as aggressive as I am, and I am, I’m extremely energized and enthusiastic and aggressive, but I have patience way beyond what people know. Think about that for a minute. There’s not many people that have that kind of make up. That’s not normal, that’s very odd.

MT: What are you working on now?

BS: Well I'm doing interviews of players for the YES Network. And I like my radio, I'm a big radio guy, and I’m doing radio now about once a month for ESPN Radio. So when I grow up I'm hoping I can do more of that.

MT: When you grow up? Sounds like there's a lot still to come.

BS: Yeah I mean it’s funny, I still think like I’m a little kid. I guess it’s a problem because I’m not, but I still like to have a little kid approach about a lot of things. It’s difficult, you have to work harder as you grow older to remember and keep in touch with being a little kid.

That’s where all the good stuff happens, and I think that’s where the best ideas come from. That’s where Last Licks came from. (Last Licks Ice Cream is a chain of ice cream shops founded by Steiner that endorses sports memorabilia and promotes monthly public signings by professional athletes.)

MT: That's not a bad gig, serving scoops...

BS: Yeah, I'll probably be better known as a guy who owned ice cream stores than I will as a guy who owned all this.

MT: Any deals currently in the works?

BS: I’m working on another deal, I can’t tell you though, but it’s another similar type of Yankees thing. It’ll take me a couple of years to pull this thing together, but when it does happen it’ll be an industry changer.

The B/R Interview: Ted Robinson

Max Tcheyan — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:44:22 -0500

This week, I sat down with Ted Robinson, a two-time Emmy Award winning broadcaster. Since 2000, Robinson has been lead announcer for NBC's coverage of Wimbledon and the French Open, working side-by-side with John McEnroe. Robinson has also worked as a radio and TV announcer for the San Francisco Giants, Minnesota Twins and New York Mets.

Additionally, Robinson has been involved in major network coverage of both the Winter and Summer Olympics, most recently serving as play-by-play announcer for diving during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Currently, he hosts College Football Central, a College Football pre-and post-game show on Versus.

Enjoy the interview!

— Max

MT: Growing up, did you know you wanted to be a broadcaster? What influences factored into pursuing a career in broadcasting?

TR: Well, I was born in New York City, grew up just outside the city, and wanted to be a player, a professional athlete. And my mediocre - at best - high school career ended my junior year when I broke my ankle in four places playing football. At the time, sports medicine not being as advanced as it is now, that was the end of any slim hope I had of being a player. The injury brought finality to the childhood dream of being a professional athlete, and I think I was maybe a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of understanding my place. I realized I would never be a pro.

I had always been fascinated with broadcasting. I was the kid that when I was about 12 or 13, my parents let me have a TV in my room for the first time. I would go up and close the door when the Mets were on, turn the sound down and broadcast the game in my bedroom.

The family would come over and they constantly asked my mom, “Is he okay? What’s wrong with him? Who’s he talking to up there?”

So subsequently with my injury, I returned my senior year and went straight to the person in charge of our high school football program. I said to him that I would like to announce the games and asked if I could be the stadium announcer. He said sure, so I did the stadium PA announcing my senior year of high school and decided this was the path I was going to try to follow.

I was sixteen years old and I guess I was very fortunate that I had clarity at that point. This is what I wanted to do. So I applied to colleges specifically based on studying sports broadcasting; I was very narrow. I chose Notre Dame because it had a studio radio station that students completely ran and worked at. It had very few students that were there to pursue that as a living as Notre Dame did not offer a broadcast major.

So unlike, let’s say Syracuse - which is probably the most well-known broadcast school in the country but you stand in line like you’re at the bakery waiting for your shot - at Notre Dame, you didn’t have to stand in line.

MT: So you started as a freshman?

TR: I started as a freshman. I went to Notre Dame, started at the student radio station my second or third day there and worked all four years in college. I approached college as a vocational school. I knew I wasn’t going there to become a lawyer or a doctor, so my grades were not of the utmost importance. It was more the work experience and I worked at everything.

I was a student manager for a year-and-a-half and was on the field for the Rudy game. I wrote for the student paper, I worked in the sports information office and did broadcasting. That was the best experience...I had an incredible four years there.

MT: And you worked with Charlie Weis at Notre Dame’s student radio?

TR: I hired Charlie at the radio station. We were the same class and our senior year he tried out for the station and I hired him. Very smart sports guy, knew all sports, very opinionated, still is apparently. And he was like me, grew up in the New York/New Jersey area listening to Marv Albert and went through a phase where he thought he wanted to be Marv Albert. Obviously, he made a pretty good career move. [laughs]

MT: You mentioned that you were writing. Did you want to write as well or did you know you only wanted to go into broadcasting?

TR: Writing was Plan B and that’s the thing I always make sure to tell people. While I was very narrow in my focus, I understood the need to have Plan B and I tell kids today, when I go speak to college classes in particular, to write every chance you get. It’s still the most important tool and it transfers into so many other jobs and businesses in life; it’s a handicap if you don’t have the skill. If you can’t write, it is a major detriment to you progressing, I think, in just about any field.

I had to use writing skills because in my first few jobs, I worked in minor league sports for teams where I had to write press releases, media guides and articles, so I was writing as part of my job. Eventually, I worked at radio stations where I had to write for the ear as opposed to the eye which is a different form of writing. So it was important to be able to write.

MT: Did you have internships over the summer while in college that helped get your foot in the door and get you started after school working with these minor league teams?

TR: I had an internship only one summer. I was a caddy most of my life. Internships were not a big thing back then, not like they are today. You basically worked to make money in the summertime.

MT: So you were a looper?

TR: Yeah I was a super-looper...that was me. Caddyshack hit way too close to home. [laughs]

But the summer going into my senior year of college, I got an internship/job with the New York Nets where I sold tickets as part of my job there. I was a ticket salesman and I made commission money doing that and the intern part was on the PR side. So that was my one summer with hands-on experience, but I also made some money.

Really the biggest break I got was in my junior year of college. Notre Dame had a pretty good hockey team and the guy who was broadcasting the games left for a job with the NHL in the middle of the season. They needed someone to finish the season broadcasting games on a local radio station. I got hired and I think I was paid $25 a game, but I didn’t care; it was a job and it was a real radio station, not the student station.

MT: Then how did that “break” allow you to progress your career once out of college?

TR: The toughest job to get to this day is your first job out of college, because all you’re selling is hope. You have no concrete resume or experience, so you’re selling hope. Because an opportunity opened up for me as a hockey broadcaster in college, that was the path I decided to pursue out of college. I had a real tape, a real resume and some real experience. So I wound up applying to a lot of different places. I applied to radio stations also, but I got a break and I got hired just before graduation with a minor league hockey team in Oklahoma City. I packed up, moved there, worked for a year and then went to another team in the same league in Cincinnati the following year.

But that was the point. You basically follow a path of least resistance a lot of the time, because it gets you ahead. I always tell kids to think about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and you want to make sure that you’re getting there. Well, the path isn’t always a straight path. The path can sometimes wander a little bit. Now if you get turned completely in the wrong direction, that’s an issue, but you can meander a little bit on the path and still be okay. That’s what I chose to do.

The hockey world was a path of less resistance for me, it got me going, got me jobs and it got me credibility. Then I was able to parlay that into working for a big radio station here in San Francisco. At 25 years old, I got hired at KCBS Radio.

The concept was to take the job that was offered to you. I think I only turned down one job and it was for a personal reason. If a job was offered to me, Oklahoma City was offered to me, I took it. I was a New York kid, had never been to Oklahoma City in my life, and didn’t want to go to Oklahoma City, but it was a job.

And that’s one thing that concerns me about subsequent generations: I think perhaps young people have lost that willingness, the understanding that if you want to pursue a career you have to go where the opportunity is.

To be a broadcaster - an on-the-air broadcaster - I still think flexibility is an important trait to have. Very few people can pick the place they want to be at 21 years old in this business and make it happen. Circumstances bring you places, like it brought me to San Francisco, and this has become home.

MT: You eventually moved to television broadcasting for NBC where you have worked alongside John McEnroe covering Wimbledon and the French Open and just recently the Summer Olympics in Beijing. How did you reach that level?

TR: To get a job like that at NBC was a culmination of a lot of years of experience and a lot of luck and that doesn’t happen without a lot of good fortune. I didn’t plan for that. It was a completely random occurrence.

MT: What can you tell us about working at NBC with John McEnroe, who is a huge personality? Has he ever caught you off-guard?

TR: Boy, he catches me off-guard all the time. The best part about John is that he is exactly who you hear and see. There’s not a phony bone in his body. John does not act. He is genuine, it’s who he is. He’s incredibly smart. What I think I love most about working with him is that he loves spontaneity and I’m a very spontaneous broadcaster.

I don’t prepare with scripts because that’s acting. I’m not an actor and I don’t try to be one. The beauty of being in sports is that because it’s live and because it’s spontaneous, we don’t know what’s going to happen. And we love that.

The same goes for our commentary. John thrives on spontaneity and he doesn’t want to know what I’m going to ask him. It’s no different than the conversation we’re having or that we might be having over a beer at a bar. And I think that’s what people see.

MT: How does your relationship with your co-broadcaster factor in? Is there a chemistry that needs to be formed beforehand or does it develop naturally with the person you’re sitting next to?

TR: The best kind is the second one. The best kind of chemistry just happens. It happens when you’re actually doing something. You can’t predict it, you can’t plan it, you can’t force it. It just happens.

And from what many, many people have said through the years, it appears to be the case with myself working with John McEnroe. For some reason, we clicked and I’ve done 16 years with him now and it’s been great. There’s some reason that we have a little personal chemistry and rapport that works really well on the air and you can’t fake that. Most people know when something’s trying to be forced.

MT: Do you have a process or pre-game ritual that you go through in preparing for broadcasts?

TR: It depends on the sport. Each sport has its own set of demands. I would say that there are a couple of universal traits, one of which is that the preparation is ongoing. It’s not cramming for a test as much as it is perpetual, it’s continuous. And it’s constantly reading, listening, talking to people, being aware and accumulating files in your head; files of knowledge that you can reach to when you get assigned to a certain game.

MT: Do you ever need to update your internal files or do any last-minute preparation for specific games?

TR: There are some sports that do require last minute cramming...football probably more than any because the volume of people. Like with college football, there are 90 players on a team and far more teams, so you don’t have a base of knowledge to start with that you would with the NFL, for instance, where there are 32 teams and 45 players a team.

Doing tennis doesn’t require a whole lot of book work because there’s really not a whole lot to do. Its two players, it’s doing a little conversing, trying to find out what they’ve done lately.

The other trick that I learned early on that is so valuable is that the broadcast is like an oral exam. You prepare and you prepare and you may only use ten percent of what you prepare. If that’s the case, that’s cool. Don’t force it. Don’t feel obliged to use everything that you’ve studied. Only use what fits.

I was taught as a young guy by a great baseball announcer named Lon Simmons. He taught me that, “You’re here to watch the game. So watch the game and tell people what you see.” Wow, pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Sometimes you get announcers that are so caught in their homework, caught in their numbers and preparation, that they are constantly looking down and reading stuff instead of watching the game.

MT: Were there other broadcasters besides Lon Simmons who you learned from and who have had an influence on your broadcasting career?

TR: Oh absolutely, the biggest was Marv Albert. Growing up in New York in my time, everybody was a Marv Albert fan, everybody did a Marv Albert impression. We used to do “Marv-offs” in the back of rooms in high school, which was basically dueling Marvs. And we still, like when I work with John McEnroe, do that a little bit to this day.

Marv was an incredible influence on anybody in my generation who grew up in or around New York and wanted to be a broadcaster. I had a chance to meet him in college. He was doing sports on the NBC station in New York City and he invited me to come up to the station one night. He sat with me between the shows, and we talked for a while. He could not have been a nicer, more generous person; absolutely the biggest influence.

MT: If you could work with any broadcaster, alive or dead, who would it be?

TR: To work with anyone? That’s a good question. I’ve never been asked that question before, Max. There are people I’d like to work more with, but I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head...Vitale! Dick Vitale, there’s a guy. I did work with Billy Packer once, thoroughly enjoyed that.

I know him, I’ve met him, but I’ve never worked a game with him. And that would be fun because I love Dick Vitale’s enthusiasm and how genuine he is about his sport. He’s a great lesson for us. I went to Oregon State to do a game and the press book has a bio for all the players. And one question they always ask is, “Who’s your favorite announcer?” and 8-of-10 college players will say Dick Vitale. Here’s a guy who’s up around 70 years old and you’ve got 18-to-20 year olds that are all saying that this 70 year-old guy is their favorite announcer. That’s pretty special.

MT: What advice can you give to aspiring sports broadcasters?

TR: The staples I always say are learn how to write, keep writing, take as well-rounded an education as you can, do a general liberal arts education. The more subject matters you can converse in or at least have some exposure on, the better served you’ll be in any public forum that you’re either speaking in or writing about. Read as much as you can, open your mind up to as many views, opinions, and sources that you can.

If you want to be in broadcasting, I always encourage people to get involved in theater and do a theater production. You don’t have to make a career out of it, but do it as a learning tool, because theater teaches you how to stand in front of people, how to act with eyeballs staring at you and you learn how to project your voice.

And the last point is being flexible. If an opportunity comes along and it’s not precisely where you want to be or maybe when you want to be there, be flexible. Think about doing it, because you know what, you can always quit. And I don’t mean quitting in the bad sense of the word, but if it isn’t working either for you or for them, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “That’s enough, this isn’t working.” Very few things can’t be changed or can’t be fixed.

MT: Great advice both from a broadcasting perspective as well as overall life lessons. Finally as a Mets fan, I have to ask. Your favorite Met?

TR: Favorite Met was Tom Seaver, who I had the chance to work with as a broadcaster.

MT: Nice, Tom Terrific! The Franchise! Thank you again for sitting down with me today and dishing out some great advice. It has been a pleasure chatting with you.

TR: My pleasure. Thanks, Max.

Guess what B/R Members…

Ted Robinson has joined B/R! You can find links to his blog as well as other content on his member page. If you have any questions or comments about his sports casting, become his fan and ask him!

Hope you enjoyed the interview and stay tuned for next week’s B/R Interview with Brandon Steiner, Founder of Steiner Sports Memorabilia.

The B/R Interview: LZ Granderson

Max Tcheyan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:57:52 -0500

This week, I sat down with ESPN.com’s Page 2 columnist LZ Granderson. Granderson is also a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and host of Game Night, a talk show on ESPN360. As a regular contributor to Page 2, Granderson’s columns cover a variety of topics ranging from NBA commentary to editorials discussing sports and society in the United States. He has worked in print, online and television journalism, bringing his unique perspective on sports and culture to all three mediums.

Enjoy the interview!

--Max

MT: Hi LZ, it's Max from Bleacher Report.

LZ: Hey Max. How are you?

MT: Good, thanks. How are you? Are you hanging in there? (LZ was a bit under the weather when we did this interview.)

LZ: I'm doing okay. Doctor's orders were to not leave the house so I'm resting, watching Casino Royale for about the twentieth time and taking antibiotics and Vicodin.

MT: Well, thanks for toughing this one out and chatting with me.

LZ: Thank you for thinking of me to be a part of the series.

MT: So let's start with your background, where you grew up, went to college, your major and how you started on a path to a career in the sportswriting industry?

LZ: I'm originally from Detroit and I went to Western Michigan for undergrad, where I majored in Interpersonal Communications with a minor in Journalism. I worked for the student newspaper in college as well as radio and I interned at a newspaper called the Kalamazoo Gazette while in school.

And that was basically what I think is probably the last generation who studied journalism being taught that you only specialized in one medium.

MT: What do you mean by that exactly?

LZ: Well, I mean that was the last generation in which crossover was discouraged in terms of the different mediums in which you were a journalist. So if you were into print, TV journalists were vilified and online journalism wasn’t even considered at the time. And when I took my first job, I was told that if you wrote for a newspaper, you could never be a TV person because there was a different kind of mentality involved and if you were a TV person, you shouldn’t write.

MT: But in your work, you’ve done a fair amount of crossover.

LZ: Yeah, because I never believed in all that. I thought it was all bullsh*t.

MT: Yeah, I don’t see why there should be a restriction on that.

LZ: Well, you know, it’s an old school mentality and it’s part of the reason why the industries - both television and print - had a difficult time being prepared for what online media did to the industry.

MT: That’s a very interesting point that I think makes a lot of sense. So with your internships, were you able to get a job right out of school?

LZ: No, I was still trying to figure out what I was going to be when I grow up. [laughs] So I did a few things and I’m sure I should be ashamed to say this [laughs], but I used to work as an actor and a model. So once I got done with college, I went back into acting and modeling for a while. Then once I got tired of picking up jobs once every few months and getting rejected most of the time, I decided to go to graduate school.

MT: Where did you go for that? Was it for Journalism?

LZ: Oh no, I thought I was going to be a University President. I went to Grand Valley and studied in their College Administration Program with the hopes of being a University Administrator and one day becoming a College President. But I was a little behind the curve. By the time I started there, I realized that Academic Board Members were no longer looking within Academia for University Presidents, but instead were hiring from the business world as they were looking to grow their school’s resources.

So as I was going through the program, I just realized that studying education would not help me reach my goals and that I needed to be a businessman with an affinity towards education.

So that was a little discouraging, actually a lot discouraging. But I realized that I decided to go into a field that combined the best of both worlds and I became a higher education reporter and I ended up covering the university I had just attended for the newspaper. So with my higher education background and my journalism background, I was a perfect candidate for the job.

MT: Did that then lead to a transition to the sports journalist world?

LZ: I had kind of a weird path. I had always been a tremendous sports fan and when I was in college, I helped cover the football team and I was on the basketball beat, so I started doing official sports reporting when I was in undergrad.

But by the time I got to The Grand Rapids Press, I was openly gay. And I’m not saying that’s why necessarily I wasn’t considered for a sports writing job, but let’s just say it took a while to convince newspapers that I could do that particular job.

In the meantime, I tried out everything else. I wrote religion columns...I was a food critic...I did movie reviews...I was a pop-culture critic...I covered murders.

MT: So you just kept writing.

LZ: I just kept writing. Every now and again, I would sniff out a sports story. I remember one summer, when Shawn Respert had graduated from [Michigan] State and was getting drafted, I ended up playing pickup basketball with him. I convinced him to sit down with me for a couple of minutes to do an interview before he was drafted.

So the paper was kind of forced to run the interview because I was the only one that had one. It wasn’t assigned, but they were at least appreciative of my ingenuity and me taking advantage of the situation. I really think they begrudgingly ran my Shawn Respert story because I wasn’t being assigned any sports stories at the time.

MT: Do you think being openly gay made it more difficult for you to become a professional sportswriter?

LZ: Well, I mean it still is a profession that is dominated by straight, white males. So again, I don’t want to make excuses, but certainly being a gay, black male in a straight, white male environment can be seen as an obstacle for some people who have pre-conceived notions about people who are different.

I remember applying for a job to help cover the Pistons. And you have to understand, I grew up watching the Pistons, I grew up reading everything about the Pistons. When they won their first championship, I remember camping out in Detroit outside to make sure I had the perfect parade spot. And I did it both years because they repeated. So you talk about someone who knew the history and knew the Pistons and had known them for a number of years and I remember applying for the job to cover the Pistons, and the sports editor at the time looked at me and said, “What does a gay guy know about the Pistons?”

MT: I’m a little surprised by that and maybe I’m a bit naïve to the time period, but I’ve always thought of the writing profession as almost a faceless industry where you are judged on your words, but I guess that was the reality at the time.

LZ: Yeah, it was the reality. I mean, I got a job as a home design lighter and I had absolutely no background in home design lighting whatsoever. But because I was gay, it was kind of assumed that I could figure it out. But it was not assumed that as a die-hard sports fan - as a complete diehard Pistons fan - I could figure out whatever you needed to know about the NBA. I mean that was sh*t.

And I still can’t decorate to save my f*cking life by the way.

MT: [laughs] Then did you move to ESPN from The Grand Rapids Press?

LZ: No, after The Grand Rapids Press, I went to the AJC (Atlanta Journal Constitution) where I was offered a job to be the home design writer. So I took that job and I did the home design thing for a while. Then I moved over to help start the entertainment section and from there, I kind of made the transition to sports.

There were a couple of people who believed in me as a sportswriter in Atlanta and that helped me to start making that crossover. So one of the things I developed as part of the entertainment section was a sports tab which I justified by saying that people go to sporting events as a source of entertainment. So I could write for that tab, which was considered a feature, and that way the sports department couldn’t do anything about it. And eventually that led to me becoming a columnist for the sports department.

So it was sneaky, it was definitely sneaky, but I knew what I wanted.

MT: That showed some real persistence on your part.

LZ: Dedicated, persistent, a d*ck; you could use any of those phrases. [laughs]

MT: So at that point, you’re in sports and you have this writing pedigree. What took you from the AJC to that next level of being an ESPN writer?

LZ: I did a couple things in Atlanta. One, I created a home decorating contest and two, I was very active in finding ways to incorporate the internet and our website with the entertainment section. So I ran a contest where people could vote online and the results would come out in the paper the following week. So I created ways in which the website and the print were able to interact with each other. That, along with my strength as a writer and editor, helped me to get a job at ESPN The Magazine in the NBA department.

MT: Along your way to ESPN, were there writers who you consistently read who influenced your own writing?

LZ: There were two writers who were very influential for me. The first was Mitch Albom from the Detroit Free Press. I grew up really poor and I can remember gathering pop bottles and turning them in for ten cents a piece so I would have enough money to buy a paper so I could read his column. He just kind of has this amazing way of putting you there.

And then the second was Nathan McCall, and he wrote his autobiography Makes Me Wanna Holler and used to write for the Washington Post. When I was in college, he released his autobiography and it documented his life up until the point where he was working for the Washington Post. And his life was so similar to my own, and it gave me so much hope and belief in myself. You know he made some mistakes with the law and he talked about racism and the emotions you have to control as a black man when you see injustices and things like that. I was really able to identify with all the things he was talking about and how he was able to persevere through all those obstacles whether they be self-imposed or not. That really helped me see my potential as a writer.

Before, it was like I was doing it, but you know people who weren’t like me were setting the bar. So you kind of wonder if you could actually ever get to that level.

MT: That’s similar to what we’ve seen with the past election, because everyone is told that they can grow up to be President. But now that Obama has been elected, I think a lot of African-Americans in particular have expressed that now it really IS possible.

LZ: Exactly. You know my son is eleven and he has no excuses now.

And Obama grew up a lot like most of America. I mean, half the damn country is divorced and there are a lot of single parent homes out there. It’s no longer that perfect, elitist background defines who can make a difference anymore.

And you’re right. He’s given a lot more people hope. Not just blacks, everyone. And many years ago, McCall’s autobiography did the same for me, it gave me hope. It showed me that I could write and that I could write for somewhere big and make a difference.

MT: That’s powerful and I think it’s the same relatable-ness that has garnered so much support for Obama, no matter your background. Now to switch gears a little bit and learn more about your writing, do you have a particular process you go through with your writing?

LZ: Well, I certainly have a formula. My goal whenever I write is to try not to go over 800 words when I’m writing a column. Every now and then I go over, but I try. If I can’t say what I need to say in 800 words, then I’m trying to say too much and I need to focus it more.

MT: And what advice could you give to the members of the Bleacher Report community for their own writing?

LZ: I would say the first piece of advice I have, when I think of myself, is stay humble to the craft. It took me a long time to respect writing, probably because it came so natural for me. I assumed that it was easy and I didn’t respect it enough. I didn’t respect the gift that God had given me. And because it came so naturally, I just assumed that it wasn’t that difficult of a thing to accomplish to be able to write something.

But once I started interacting with people in college and graduate school, I came to see the hesitation and the fear from people’s faces at the thought of having to write something, that’s when I realized that this was something special.

So I think first is if you truly have a gift, respect it and stay humble to it, because it is a gift. Writing is a very special talent, and just because it’s been bastardized by corporate America, doesn’t take away from its value.

And then two - and this is definitely true of myself - if you’re not uncomfortable with what you’re saying so far, maybe you’re not digging deep enough. I would say that about in three fourths of the pieces I write, certainly over the past year, there’s a line or a passage or theme that makes me uncomfortable. And that’s when I know I’m on the right path.

MT: Well, LZ, this has been very insightful and I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you. I appreciate you lending your time to me and to Bleacher Report.

LZ: I definitely appreciate the opportunity and thank you for thinking of me.

MT: Thanks LZ and feel better. Chicken soup and bed rest…

LZ: And Vicodin, woohoo! [laughs] Thanks Max.

Guess what B/R Members…

LZ Granderson has joined B/R! You can find links to his weekly column as well as other content on his member page. If you have any questions or comments about his writing, become his fan and ask him!

Hope you enjoyed the interview and stay tuned for next week’s B/R Interview with NBC Broadcaster Ted Robinson…

The B/R Interview: Jeff Pearlman

Max Tcheyan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:17:29 -0500

This week’s interview is with Jeff Pearlman, a columnist for ESPN.com’s Page 2 and author of the new book Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty.

In his new book, Pearlman delves deep into the on-and-off-field issues that surrounded America’s team during the '90s. His coverage of the Cowboys through countless interviews with players and personnel intimately documents the achievements and controversy surrounding the team that won three Super Bowls in four years.

With an emphasis on Michael Irvin, the relationships between owner Jerry Jones and head coaches Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer, and a variety of eccentric and bizarre stories, Boys Will Be Boys is one of the most entertaining sports books I have ever read and one that will have you re-reading passages in disbelief of what you just read.

Pearlman is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller The Bad Guys Won! which documents the ’86 Mets, as well as Love Me, Hate Me, a book about Barry Bonds. To learn more about Jeff Pearlman you can visit his Web site, where you can find more information about his works, links to articles, and his blog.

Enjoy the interview!

--Max

MT: Hi Jeff, thanks for speaking with me today.

JP: Hey how’s it going? Thanks for having me.

MT: To start out could you give us a bit about your background, where you grew up, went to college, what you majored in, how you got into journalism?

JP: I was born in Mahopac, NY, which is about an hour north of the City. My first journalism experience was as the sports editor of my high school newspaper, The Beaverton. And as a track and cross country geek, I saw it as a way to get a little attention. I wrote stories like “Cheerleading is Stupid” because I knew the cheerleaders would yell at me, and that was as close as I could get.

Actually I have a true story from high school; it’s really embarrassing but I like telling it. There was a girl that I had a huge crush on who was the keyboardist for a rock band at my high school. So I told the editor that I should do a huge profile on her for the paper.

I remember being really nervous when I called her up. I think I was a Senior in high school at the time, and I’d never kissed a girl, never went on a date, you know, just a geek.

Anyways, I called her up and lied to her. I told her that my Dad gave me money for having a big story, her profile story, in the student newspaper, and that I needed her to go out with me for the story. And she uh, she totally shot me down.

MT: [laughs] No way, you’re kidding me!?! That is cold!

JP: The funny thing is that I did a story a couple years ago, it never ran anywhere, about tracking down girls I had crushes on to find out if I could have acted any differently so that I would have gotten better results.

I found the girl and invited her to go apple picking. We’re both married with kids, so both our families went apple picking together. And that day I asked her, “Did I have any shot at all?” And she goes, “Absolutely zero.”

MT: [laughs] Well at least she was honest...

JP: [laughs] Yeah right. Anyways, that was high school. From there, I went to the University of Delaware and I wrote for my college paper, as sports editor and then editor.

MT: And what did you major in while at UDel?

JP: I was a History major with a minor in Sociology. We had a really good college paper, and I was pretty much the standard controversial college-student columnist that would write stuff to piss off the fraternities and rip the administration, stuff like that. It was a great experience, and I had a couple of internships during my college summers.

After college, I was hired as a food and fashion writer for The Tennessean. That was my first job. I didn’t know anything about food or fashion, but I had interned there, and I guess they liked me and that was the only thing they had, so that was my first job.

MT: So you started in food and fashion and then how did you transition to sports?

JP: Well, basically, I was a chronic f@#*-up at the Tennessean. I would always get dates wrong and there were errors in my stories all the time. I was the worst reporter—cocky, arrogant, and a real asshole—someone I would never want to work with today.

I came out of college and I thought I was sort of "the Man," hired at a pretty good paper at a young age. I was terrible, just the worst. I hate looking back at myself.

But while there, the best thing to happen to me was that my editor forced me to go on the cops beat. She basically said that I was either going to get fired or go on the cops beat. So I went to the cops beat, and it was a great experience for me because it showed me how to check facts. It really wasn’t about writing; it was about getting all the correct details in there.

MT: I’m sorry, your editor put you on what exactly?

JP: The cops beat, or the police beat. I was the guy listening to the scanner at two in the morning. And it was great. It really forced me to focus on getting the facts and details right. It’s wasn’t about being a snazzy writer.

That was a real eye-opener for me. It was a wake-up call to cut the attitude and just focus on my job. And really, it taught me about reporting—how to report things and write a certain way, how to make the extra call and be dogged. I really needed that in my life.

MT: I think you bring up a good distinction there. That, while it’s important to be confident in your writing, you have to be careful not to come off as arrogant. It seems like this humbling experience helped you to lose that arrogance while at the same time become more focused and confident in your work.

JP: Well there’s never an excuse to be arrogant. That’s why I’m really bothered by it, and it bothers me when I see it in other people today. Whether you’re Michael Phelps or some writer or plumber or the President, there’s no reason to be arrogant.

You can be confident in yourself without telling other people about it all the time or talking shit about other people. I was the worst, I really was. It’s embarrassing because at the end of the day, we’re all going to die one day, so it’s important to be a better person after all. That’s kind of how I look at it.

MT: A learning experience nonetheless...

JP: Yeah, it was, and I needed it. So when I got off the cops beat, I got the highly-coveted high school wrestling beat. That was a great experience because I had a terrific sports editor in Neal Scarborough, who kind of guided me through and let me do some different things.

MT: And from there you went on to Sports Illustrated?

JP: Yeah, well during all this I kept applying to Sports Illustrated, which was my dream job. I wrote a freelance piece for them, which kind of got my name out there a little bit, and then I was hired as reporter in 1996, where I was kind of like a fact-checker. And I worked my way up to become a Senior Writer there.

MT: As you were working towards your dream job as an SI writer, were there writers who you looked up to and/or consistently read who influenced you?

JP: Oh yeah, I had a wide range of writers who I sort of tried to emulate. One of these guys was Steve Buckley, from the Boston Herald, who, when I was in college, wrote me this six-page letter critiquing my clips, which was invaluable. I still have it.

MT: Very cool, did he reach out to you with that?

JP: Well, I had applied for an internship and the guy replied with this six-page critique to all my clips that were in my portfolio, it was amazing. I try and do the same now whenever I receive writer’s pieces.

MT: I guess Buckley must have seen potential in your writing...

JP: Yeah, and I always remember he wrote in his comments, “I have a feeling you’ll be a player in this game one day.” That made me feel so good.

Also Mike Freeman, who’s now at CBS Sportsline and used to be at the New York Times. He was also a Delaware Blue Hen like me, so I always read everything he wrote and studied his work. He was another guy who really helped me out, analyzed what I wrote, and gave me advice.

He was one of these guys who said, “Listen, don’t be cocky because once you’re here, once you’re writing for real, it doesn’t do you much good.”

And one other guy is Greg Orlando, who was a writer at Xbox Nation. I’m not a big video game guy, but someone turned me onto this guy, and he is one of the best writers I’ve ever read in my life, nobody knows who he is.

I also read a lot of Sports Illustrated growing up. But I never read Sports Illustrated just to read it. I would study the transitions and how writers constructed phrases and different approaches they took. So that had a big influence on my writing as well.

MT: Cool, very interesting stuff. Now, to talk about your writing, it’s clear that a ton of research and fact checking has gone into your new book. Do you have a template or a specific writing process that you go through, or does it change from piece to piece?

JP: I pretty much have a template that I use. I don’t know if it’s the best way, I just started doing it this way.

Basically what I do, and I’ll use my book on the Cowboys as an example, is that I find copies of the team’s yearbooks from the dates I’m covering. So, for the Cowboys, that was from 1989 to 1996.

Then, I make a Microsoft Word file for any player who played for them during that time period, and I go about finding each of them. That’s basically through whitepages.com, or whatever it takes to find them.

Then I call each and every one of them, and at the same time I’m doing that, I do a Lexis search for any article that has the words Dallas Cowboys in either the headline or the lead during the time period.

So, right now, I’m literally staring at three huge cardboard boxes with over 10,000 articles about the Dallas Cowboys between 1989 and 1996.

MT: Wow, that really shows the thoroughness of your research.

JP: Well, you have to be. I like the books that are thorough in detail because you never know what you might come across.

For instance, I didn’t talk to Troy Aikman. Troy Aikman wouldn’t talk to me for this book. And the instant reaction is, “How can you write a book on the Dallas Cowboys without talking to Aikman?”

But I don’t see it that way, I actually like the minutia more than the bigs. I’m a fan of finding small, little obscure guys, small, little obscure facts, the things you wouldn’t have otherwise known.

If you do the sort of day-by-day article search about the Dallas Cowboys, you will inevitably stumble across an article about Nate Newton judging an apple pie eating contest in Savannah, GA or something like that. And those are the articles that are golden, so that’s why you have to be so thorough.

MT: And I imagine that most times, the bigger-named players will give you their biased opinion in an effort to make themselves look good, where as the smaller-named players are more likely to give you the real-life facts about what actually happened.

JP: Right, it’s true, the smaller the guy, the better off you are. So I always go for the kickers and the equipment guys and the clubhouse managers and the backup offensive linemen. They are much more important than the Emmitt Smiths or the Troy Aikmans or the Michael Irvins.

MT: How did you approach your interviews with the players so that they would have confidence divulging information to you about the team?

JP: Actually, it wasn’t that hard. I make it clear to them that I’m not trying to kill them. I’m not trying to write a kill the Cowboys book. I just approached it basically saying that I wanted to talk about their memories as a Cowboy.

And for most of these guys, to be honest, it was the greatest time of their lives, so they’re pretty willing to talk about it. It’s like talking about your old frat days, you know like, “I hooked up with this girl, it was awesome!” So they are pretty happy to talk about it because this is really the equivalent of old college stories for most of these players.

MT: Let’s talk about the book now. It’s a great read, and I flew through it. Your voice and how you portray the Cowboys team throughout it makes it incredibly entertaining.

JP: Thank you, I appreciate that.

MT: Coincidentally, many of the themes you talk about in the book seem to be mirroring themselves with the current Dallas Cowboys. How would you compare these Cowboys to the '90s team you wrote about in the book?

JP: Well, they are not as good. That’s first and foremost. People who compare the two teams are missing one huge difference, which is that those Cowboys of the '90s were insanely talented, and the current Cowboys are not; they’re just very good. So when you’re insanely talented and winning, you can deal with a lot of distractions.

But the owner is the same, and he’s always been a risk taker and a swashbuckler, and sometimes the risks he’s taken have really paid off well. You can’t really argue with the Terrell Owens signing at this point. But I just think the one thing Jerry [Jones] has forgotten over time is that he built the '90s team off of draft picks and cagey smaller trades, getting obscure guys, free agents.

And now he’s trying to build with big blockbusters. Just look at Daniel Snyder when he brought in Bruce Smith, Deion [Sanders], and all those guys, it just doesn’t work.

To me, he [Jones] was doing it right for a few years. He got the Cowboys to the right place last year, they disappointed at the end, but they still had a hell of a team. And I think he’s made the mistake of panicking a little bit right now. He almost needs a Jimmy Johnson type guy there to say, “Listen man, calm the f#@* down, this is football, it’ll be okay, stay the course.” I don’t think he’s willing to stay the course.

MT: You mentioned Jimmy Johnson, and a large part of the book is devoted to exploring the relationships between Jerry Jones and his two coaches: Johnson and Switzer. Can you talk about that a little?

JP: Jimmy [Johnson] ran that team, it wasn’t Jerry [Jones] doing it, it wasn’t Aikman or Emmitt [Smith], it was Jimmy’s team. And Jerry was at his best, his smartest, when he let Johnson call the shots, dictate the drafts and the player moves, while he hung back and handled the finances.

That’s when the Cowboys were at their best. The problem was that Jerry [Jones] didn’t want that. He wanted to be more involved. He saw himself as a smart football guy, even though he wasn’t. He saw himself as "the Man," but he wasn’t really "the Man" at that point.

So basically, when he brought Barry [Switzer] in, he found a guy that would listen to his every word. The problem was that Switzer wasn’t a very good pro-football coach. And Jerry [Jones] has done that ever since; he’s never hired a great, in his prime, other than Parcells, football coach, and I think the reason that is, is because he doesn’t want to play second fiddle. He wants to be the top guy. He wants to be the guy the cameras come to after the football game.

MT: The book starts and ends with Michael Irvin; can you talk about him and how he contributed to the book?

JP: I tracked him down at his Hall of Fame Induction, and we talked for about an hour, hour and a half. He’s great, he’s my favorite character I’ve ever written about. He’s ying and yang, either the best guy in the world or your worst nightmare. He was the hardest worker on that team, and it’s very profound that your best player is your hardest worker; it has a major impact.

On the other hand, he was out until three, four in the morning. He used drugs, he cheated on his wife incessantly, and he was addicted to women. Irvin was a double-edge sword who was an indispensable member of the Cowboys.

MT: Would you compare him to any other player now, T.O. for instance?

JP: Well, Owens is a great player and he has charisma, but Michael Irvin would never throw a teammate under a bus the way T.O. has with Donovan McNabb or Jeff Garcia. Irvin would never do that, he considered his team to be his family. So no, there’s nobody like Michael Irvin, he’s the most unique sports figure I’ve ever come across.

MT: To finish up here, what advice could you give to the writers at Bleacher Report, many of whom aspire to break into the sports-writing profession?

JP: Go to law school…

MT: Law school, really!?!

JP: No, I’m just kidding. No. 1: The best way to separate yourself seems to me is to be able to report the hell out of everything. Don’t just think you can write your way out of it all, or don’t just think your words will get you by. Report the hell out of absolutely everything. Report, Report, Report!

And I would say be as aggressive as possible. Make the extra call, find unique ways to look at something. When you cover a game, don’t just go to the pitcher who won, go to the backup catcher and ask him about the pitcher’s background. Find different people to talk to. Think outside the box. There are millions of people trying to do this job, so think as uniquely as possible.

MT: That’s great, I think that is some really great advice.

Okay, we’ll finish up on these last couple questions: Favorite Hall & Oates song?

JP: "Rich Girl"

MT: And if Irvin is your favorite Cowboy, who’s your favorite Met?

JP: George Foster...

MT: All right, Jeff, it has been an absolute pleasure talking with you and thank you for lending your time to Bleacher Report.

JP: You got it, thanks Max.

Guess what B/R Members…

Jeff Pearlman has joined B/R! You can find a link to his website as well as other content on his member page. If you have any questions or comments about his new book or his writing, become his fan and ask him!

Hope you enjoyed the interview and stay tuned for next week’s B/R Interview with ESPN.com Page 2 writer LZ Granderson…

NBA's All-Anything Team: "High" Flyers

Max Tcheyan — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:54:51 -0500

With the NBA season underway, we take a look back at some of the NBA's most psychedelic superstars with the NBA's All-Anything Team:"High" Flyers.

Coincidentally, they all have cool nicknames...

G: Jason Williams, Sacramento Kings

White Chocolate was suspended for the first five games of the 2001-2002 season for failing to comply with his drug-treatment plan. Prior to that, Williams was kicked off the team his sophomore season at Florida for testing positive for marijuana. Surprisingly he still excelled at no-look passes and behind-the-back dribbling.

G: Damon Stoudamire, Portland Trail Blazers

Part of the Jail Blazers Portland teams, Mighty Mouse was charged with possession of the ganja when a bag was found at his home in February of 2002. He was later cleared of the charges, as prosecutors could not justify their warrantless search. Often times he seemed unmotivated on the floor and extremely relaxed on the bench.

F: Chris Andersen, New Orleans Hornets

The Birdman received a two-year ban from the NBA after violating the league's substance abuse policy in 2006. Question: Exactly how stoned was he during the '04-'05 Slam Dunk Contest?

F: Isaiah Rider, Timberwolves, Hawks, Blazers, Lakers

Rider, who inexplicably gave himself the nickname J.R., was arrested for possession of marijuana with all these teams. If I had to guess, I'd say the J.R. stood for Jonesing Reefer.

C: Bill Walton, Portland Trail Blazers

Wow, another Trail Blazer—I'm starting to see a trend here. This one's a gimme, the Big Red-Head was a Deadhead—there's no way he passed on grass.

So there you have it, the starting five. Let me know if you have any suggestions to fill the bench, because there is no way these guys have the lung capacity to get up and down the court for a full 48 minutes.

The B/R Interview: Dave Zirin

Max Tcheyan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:02:38 -0500

To start the series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dave Zirin, a writer who has never shied away from exploring the relationships between sports and politics. Zirin, Press Action’s 2005 and 2006 Sportswriter of the year, has been called “The best young sportswriter in America,” by Robert Lipsyte, author and former New York Times sports columnist.

Zirin’s weekly column is featured on his website edgeofsports.com, and his Edge of Sports radio show airs at 12 noon (EST) on Saturdays, XM Satellite Channel 167. His books include Welcome to the Terrordome, Muhammad Ali Handbook, and What’s My Name, Fool!. In addition, Zirin is a columnist for Nation Magazine, SLAM Magazine, the Progressive, SI.com, and an op-ed writer for the Los Angeles Times. He has also appeared on such television programs as CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutch, ESPN’s Outside the Lines, and C-SPAN’s BookTV. Just recently he was featured on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered.

In his newest book, A People’s History of Sports in the United States (The New Press), Zirin explores the role sport has played in relation to politics, race, pop culture, and society throughout the history of the United States. Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four, said of the book, “Finally, the long-awaited prequel to all the sports books you’ve ever read. Put this first in the line of sports books on your shelf. It will help make sense of all the others.”

Part of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History series, Zirin has been able to effectively demonstrate how influential sports in the United States have been with respect to civil rights, gender equality, and corporate America. This is a must read for any sports fan with an interest in politics, and a book that I wish I had had in high school while I struggled to stay focused in my US History classes.

Enjoy.

--Max

MT: Hi Dave, thanks for chatting with me today.

DZ: Sure.

MT: I came across your new book, actually my Mom told me about your new book, A People’s History of Sports in the United States, after she heard you on National Public Radio (NPR). So naturally, as I always heed the advice of my Mother, I picked up your book and as I began reading I couldn’t help but wish this book had been around when I was in high school, enrolled in American History 101. Your book, through examining the roles sports have played in society, is able to engage the reader on some of the major issues and political events throughout American History. It is really a great read.

DZ: [couple laughs], Thank you very much.

MT: Okay, we’ll come back to the book, but to get things started would you mind going into your background a bit for our readers and how you got into sports writing.

DZ: Sure, I was born and raised in New York City, grew up just an absolute insane sports fan with very little interest in history or politics, but that really did change for me as I went to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The thing that made me start thinking about the intersection between politics and sports was the controversy that surrounded Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, the Denver Nuggets player who refused to participate in the National Anthem before games. I heard several commentators compare him to people like Tommie Smith, John Carlos, or Muhammad Ali, saying [Abdul-] Rauf was following in the tradition of these other sports radicals. And that really opened my mind up because I had no idea, even being such a big sports fan, that there was a tradition of these sports radicals; that there were these political athletes and that any tradition between politics and sports even existed. At that point, the seed was planted in my head, which was about 12 years ago, for this book. And I really wanted to find a book that chartered that tradition, but it didn’t exist.

MT: So you were still in college then?

DZ: Yeah, the book didn’t exist that chartered that tradition of politics and sports and so at the time I thought, “Gee wouldn’t it be great if there was a book like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, that talked about sports.” So then I started thinking about the book.

MT: So then you actually hooked up with Zinn because this is part of his New Press A People’s History Series?

DZ: Yeah, its part of his series. Howard Zinn is a big sports fan, and he somehow got a hold of my first book, What’s My Name, Fool!, and offered to do an event with me in Boston, and then that’s how we got to know each other. I mean Howard Zinn has always been such a hero of mine, and every time I talk about my book, I always make the point to quote Howard Zinn who once said that, He doesn’t study history to relive the past, but He does it so that he can change the future. And that’s really why I wrote this book because I think if people want sports to be different, want sports to be more fulfilling, more interesting for the fans, or for the athlete for that matter then I think by learning the history it gives people a sense, a bit of a road map, in which to look forward to change sports.

MT: And I think that’s what has made your writing resonate so strongly with readers as your book chronicles many issues throughout history that are still being seen in sports and society today.

Going along with that, you devote major sections of your book to three of the biggest figures in the history of United States sports in terms of their impact on society: Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jordan. And your take on each of them is really how they were able to use, or avoid using as in MJ’s case, their athletic platforms to influence politics and society. Can you speak to how you portrayed each of these men in the book?

DZ: Sure, in many ways, they are products of the period in which they emerged. And these people aren’t just these mechanical products of their period; they also played a role in shaping their period. Jackie Robinson emerged at a specific time and place, when there was a belief that, after the defeat of Fascist Germany in WWII, we would see the end of Jim Crow in this country and that racism would be something that would be made irrelevant to the past, and he reflected in a lot of ways those hopes. But then towards the end of his career he reflected a lot of the bitterness that those hopes were unfounded.

And for Muhammad Ali, if it wasn’t for the theater of the 1960s, he may not have gone down in history as Cassius Clay, a great boxer who brought the showmanship of professional wrestling into boxing. He was very much a product of his time and place.

MT: Your work on Muhammad Ali is extensive, with you prior books about him, and an interesting fact you clarify was how the name a person chose to use when referring to Ali demonstrated his or her stance on Civil Rights. By using his former name, Cassius Clay, a person was basically expressing their racist sentiments, where as using his converted Muslim name expressed a progressive attitude in support of the Civil Rights Movement.

DZ: Yeah, that’s where you stood; it’s who you rooted for. I mean sports was political theater in so many ways. And to take it to even another place with Michael Jordan, he was very much a product of the 80s and 90s, where you saw a real chopping down of politics in sports at the expense of trying to market it as a global franchise.

But I don’t want to make it seem like they were all just all plastic products of their time. There were athletes in Jackie Robinson’s time that didn’t have any of his courage, certainly there were athletes in Ali’s time that didn’t expand their social struggles, and there were athletes in Jordan’s time who actually did take a stand. So while all three were very evocative of their time and place, they also showed tremendous amounts of human agency or lack there of in Jordan’s case. Which is why we talk about them frankly, because they all do so sharply reflect these historical moments, they all teach us something about these moments in time.

MT: Your research ranges all the way back to the pre-19th Century perception of sports, to Native Americans playing lacrosse and the clarification of the true origins of baseball during the 19th Century, and continues up through the 20th Century. So it’s clear that you did your homework. Could you discuss how you broke down the time periods in history and how you went about your research and incorporated it into the writing process?

DZ: Well there’s something really interesting to me that, in a broad sense, you have these three very definable periods in American Sports. I think it’s interesting to see how they play off each other. Like the way that in the founding of this country, sports were seen, in the broad sense, as something that at best, as a pastime, and at worst, as a waste of time. It was a reflection of a society that was focused on moving westward and conquering the land, and sports were seen as a waste of time. And I wanted people to really get a sense of the fact that this hasn’t always been a sports-mad country; that there was a time when sports were actually seen as something evil.

Then you move forward into the 19th Century and you enter this period where a distinction begins to be made between good sports and bad sports. And then of course you have this third period today where it’s not about good sports and bad sports, it’s about sports as a global big business, an all-consuming big business.

What’s really gone on in this country is a remarkable journey as sports being seen as something actually bad, to something beneficial, to now really taking the place in the national light to the point which presidential candidates argue over who’s the better hockey-mom. I mean it’s kind of crazy in a way. I mean the economy is going to hell, and on the same day, a couple weeks ago, when the market just imploded, Bush greeted the Boston Celtics at the White House.

MT: Right, I remember that, and that actually relates to something I wanted to ask you about. With the current economic crisis that we are in, how are you seeing the relationship between politics and sports right now? And have you drawn any comparisons to The Great Depression’s impact on sports, which you talk about in your book?

DZ: Hmm, that’s a really good question. I think one of the things about today is that sports is going to have to radically reconstruct the economic model that it has been existing on for the last several decades if it wants to survive this economic crisis. I think that’s just fact.

During the Great Depression people could trade in milk bottles, my Father in the 1940s was one of these people, for a couple coins to go see a baseball game. So the idea of sports being this ready-made escape during very hard times was very real. But now there are some very different times here, and the economy of sports is a big business built on things like personalized seating licenses and publicly funded stadiums. And I don’t see how either of those things will survive this current period. Like I don’t see how people are, first of all, going to be able to afford season tickets, and I certainly don’t see how these municipalities who are running hundreds of millions of dollars in debt are going to be able to justify paying for these publicly funded stadiums.

MT: Now in reading your book it is clear that an incredible amount of research went into producing this book. Could you talk about how you went about your research and how it translated to the actual writing process?

DZ: Well I went about it really with a loose idea of the themes that I wanted to hit, and then it was about trying to find the books that either backs those themes up or that tear them apart. And I tried to do a combination of things by going to some of the history books of sports I really respected like Elliot Gorn’s and Warren Goldstein’s book A Brief History of American Sports, which is terrific, to try and go after some real sources. If you look at the bibliography at the end of the book you’ll see it’s a combination of history books but also a lot of newspapers, a lot of out of print papers, and other direct sources which are invaluable. One of the things with these books that I try and do is use the less known sports press’, such as the African-American and radical papers, which were almost like a Greek chorus during different times in history. I think these sports writers were really the historians who were recording the struggles in real time and were able to provide various perspectives on time period.

MT: Your book also mentions Grantland Rice, who you say was really the first ever sports writer. What other writers did you follow initially, growing up, and as you were starting your career?

DZ: Well for me one of the people was Robert Lipsyte who covered Muhammad Ali for the New York Times, and also Ralph Wiley and Frank Deford. So a lot of the long form Sports Illustrated writers back when they used to do the really long articles. And I think that was really an art that I respected a great deal; someone who could write a 10,000 word article about a specific athlete or a specific moment. Growing up with the old Sports Illustrated, it was really just a gold mine, looking back I don’t think any of us really knew what they were doing, and now that it’s gone I think people realize what we had.

MT: What advice could you give to our members at Bleacher Report, many of whom have goals to be professional sports writers?

DZ: Well, I like passing along the advice that was given to me, which has really served me well. This is more directed towards the newer writers than those who have been doing it a while, but the best advice I ever got, in two words, was “Writers’ write.” And the point of that is to say that it’s very easy for writers to get caught in what they call “analysis paralysis” where you get so caught up in not knowing what to write about that you end up writing nothing. And that can be very harmful for a writer. Being a writer is like being an athlete, it’s a muscle that you have to constantly exercise and hone it or it will get flabby and weak. It’s very important to know that it’s a process, it’s an actual process that every writer has to go through to develop a voice that you can distinguish as your own. I’ve never heard of a writer that was able to establish a unique voice from the second they picked up a pen or opened their laptop. I mean it takes time to develop it. Even if you’re writing about something that you think is crazy or stupid, that’s okay, because the point is the writing not the subject. The writing is actually more important than the subject, particularly for young writers.

MT: That is great; I think that’s terrific advice, which speaks to the fact that it’s not always necessarily what you’re saying, but how you say it.

And last question, what does the C.R.E.A.M. title mean?

DZ: Oh yeah, “Cash Rules Everything Around Me,” that’s a Wu-Tang Clan song from the mid-90s, I guess I’m kind of dating myself there.

MT: [Laughs] No, not at all, I know Wu-Tang and I think the same can be said for many of our writers, though some of the younger ones may be unfamiliar with them. What’s going on with them? Reunion tour?

DZ: I don’t know man, I mean a couple of them are dead now, I guess I just look old talking about the Wu-Tang Clan. [Laughs]

MT: [Laughs] No way, that wasn’t too long ago, I’m sure there’s still some Wu-Wear in circulation…

Well Dave, it’s been great chatting with you and learning about your new book A People’s History of Sports in the United States and I look forward to listening in to your XM satellite radio show “Edge of Sports” which airs at 12 noon (EST) on Saturdays, Channel 167 as well as reading your weekly column on your website at edgeofsports.com. Thank you Dave.

DZ: Thanks Max.

Guess what B/R Members….

Dave Zirin has joined B/R! You can find links to his weekly column as well as other content on his member page. If you have any questions or comments about his new book or his writing, become his fan and ask him!

Hope you enjoyed the interview and stay tuned for next week’s B/R Interview with Jeff Pearlman, ESPN.com’s Page 2 writer and author of the new book Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty…

Confessions of a Fantasy Football Addict: How Big Blue Saved My Life

Max Tcheyan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:07:08 -0400

Last year, my first ever playing fantasy football, I took home a fantasy football championship trophy. It was a great year, starting with the draft and ending in fantasy football immortality. After it all, I vowed to never partake in fantasy sports ever again. This is my story.

It started innocently. Upon receiving the CBS Sports Fantasy Football Champion t-shirt, I forged the signatures of every single fantasy player I used throughout the year onto the shirt, and wrote made-up notes from them to myself saying things like:

“Great year Max, you’re an awesome fantasy football player!”

                    Sincerely,
                    Marion Barber, your RB1

And, “Thanks for the mid-year waiver-wire pick up, hope to see you in the draft next year!”

                    Your friend,
                    Greg Jennings


It was really sick (not the cool “sick”, the mentally ill one), but I wore it proudly to all the postseason fantasy football parties. These parties were crazy. I didn’t even know they existed, and as someone new to the fame and fortune that came with winning a fantasy football championship, I gave in easily to the pressures that accompanied these soirees.

They combined fantasy football groupies alongside an endless supply of caffeinated substances that would keep the fantasy chatter and stat checking fueled throughout the night. You name it—coffee, Red Bull, Adderall, it was there. These people never stopped, it was fantasy football time all the time, and the lifestyle started to take a toll on me.

The worst part of all this was that I had become a jerk; a conceited fantasy football know-it-all who had alienated his friends through shameless self-promotion in the fantasy realm.

Even worse was that, during these parties, I would get all hopped up on caffeine and begin making absolutely absurd predictions. I would yell out things like, “Shaun Alexander is going to lead the league in rushing,” after he was cut by the Seahawks and “Bryon Leftwich is the TRUTH, watch out Big Ben!”

Fellow fantasy footballers thought I was insane, and I was becoming the laughing stock of the fantasy circuit; a cautionary tale about the effects the fast-paced world of fantasy football can have on a young player. I had hit rock bottom and knew I had to get help.

I decided to consult my parents, who advised me to evaluate my current state to my life Before Fantasy Football (B.F.F., not to be mistaken with “best friend forever”). B.F.F. I was a loyal fan of the New York Football Giants.

What I realized was that fantasy football had drained my passion for the G-Men. With the likes of Tony Romo, MBIII, and the Dallas Defense lining up for me electronically on Sundays, I had nearly converted into a Dallas Cowboys fan; a proverbial sin in the realm of New York Giants faithful.

Furthermore, I was obsessively checking the scores of my fantasy football matchups rather than settling into my couch nook to enjoy the televised games on Sundays.

It didn’t stop there. During the week, I would be continually checking Rotoworld.com, ESPN.com, and BleacherReport.com to get the latest fantasy football updates. This was especially time consuming and draining, as I basically found myself reading and re-reading the same exact fantasy football news and statistical commentary on different sites.

Furthermore, B.F.F., I considered myself a fan of the game. Someone who looked forward to witnessing moments of on-field greatness as a result of elaborate systems developed by coaching at its highest level. That’s what the NFL used to mean to me, but now it was simply a vehicle fueling my statistical addiction.

Now, I can’t knock everything about fantasy football. Because of it, my NFL knowledge had grown considerably. Players, stats, and matchups all seem to have been encoded into my brain, to the point in which I could regurgitate these facts without hesitation (kind of like that scene in Old School where Will Ferrell blacks-out during the debate).

Additionally, fantasy football helped keep me from losing my sanity while working as a corporate paralegal this past year. As you can imagine, there wasn’t a whole lot to be done, given the current state of our economy, hence I occupied myself by devouring fantasy football news and notes daily.

The results of my evaluation seemed to overwhelmingly make a case against fantasy football. So I cleaned myself up and quit cold turkey. I stopped going to the fantasy football ragers and set my computer’s parental controls to prohibit me from visiting any fantasy-related websites.

Fortunately, this was all happening alongside the Giants' incredible Super Bowl run. With the fantasy season over (I refused the invitation to join a playoff league), I was able to watch the games with friends and was uninhibited by the need to check my fantasy team’s progress. In retrospect, if the Giants hadn’t gone all the way, I’m not sure what would have happened to me. Big Blue saved my life.

When I received the invitation for this year’s fantasy league, I immediately deleted it. I had made the decision not to play; however, I was coaxed in to it by my friends who needed a 12th man for our 12-team league.

While my competitiveness has once again compelled me to frequent fantasy news sites, monitor the waiver-wire, and consistently re-assess my lineup, the feeling now is different.

No longer a wide-eyed rookie fantasy leaguer, I feel more confident in my ability to control my fantasy appetite. Maybe it's because I’m a year older, a year wiser, a year more mature, but the difference is apparent. And in my opinion, I owe this transformation to the G-Men.

On Sundays I now concern myself with the Giants first, my fantasy team second, and my wife and kids third. I have a new lease on life, and I owe it all to Eli and his goofy grin, Plax and his tardiness, Osi and Strahan and their ballin’ dance, and the rest of the New York Giants.