Sports

ESSAY: Simone Biles Ends a Bad Year Better Off
Health, Sports

ESSAY: Simone Biles Ends a Bad Year Better Off

By Aaliyah Seabrooks In the midst of her muddled path to and through the Olympic summer games in Tokyo, it would have been difficult to imagine that four months later, Simone Biles would be celebrated as Time magazine’s 2021 Athlete of the Year. Midway into the competition where she had been expected to easily win several gold…

ESSAY: Naomi Osaka’s Journey to Self
Black Lives Matter, Health, Sports

ESSAY: Naomi Osaka’s Journey to Self

By Janáe Bradford Naomi Osaka seemed to sense that the optics were unsettling, and out of character. She was a top-ranked professional tennis player still a month before her 24th birthday, and she already had earned more money in one year than any woman athlete in history. Yet, there she’d been for all to see: banging…

Racist, or Not? It’s in the Eyes of the Beholders
Sports

Racist, or Not? It’s in the Eyes of the Beholders

By Gregory Smith Jr. First came the injury. For the third year in a row, arch rival Oklahoma whipped Texas in the Red River Showdown, a football classic. In Dallas, no less. In Cotton Bowl Stadium. (Seating capacity: 92,000.) In quadruple overtime. 53-45. It was a close contest with, unfortunately for some, a predictable outcome….

When Being First Matters, But Only So Much
Sports

When Being First Matters, But Only So Much

By Monét Bowen The Washington Football team ended its season boasting about its victories in matters of top-tier diversity, ways that it had jumped ahead of other teams in the NFL, where 70 percent of the players are Black, but a vast majority of the head coaches and front-office executives are not. The team announced…

Discovered: Black Gold in the NFL
Sports

Discovered: Black Gold in the NFL

By Gregory Smith, Jr. It was 33 years ago when Doug Williams became the first Black quarterback to be a starter and Most Valuable Player in a Super Bowl. Williams led the Washington Redskins to victory over John Elway and the Denver Broncos, 42-10. So much for those who had argued that Black athletes could…