Azzurri, cyclists, boxers, Berlusconi, Balotelli, strapping Fascist men preparing to bear arms, strapping Fascist women preparing to bear children, the shirtless Duce, Ferraris, Vespas, doping scandals, World Cup celebrations,

In 2008, when entertainment magnate Lalit Modi launched the Indian Premier League, he took a title that was new to the world of cricket: Commissioner. Modi’s idea for the structure of the IPL had American origins.

Did you watch the game last night? No matter if you live in Australia, England, India, Ontario, or the US, chances are you’ve heard that question today. Televised sports are a constant presence in contemporary culture,

In the classic 1973 film The Sting, Robert Redford and Paul Newman lead a team of con men in an elaborate scam to take revenge on a dangerous crime boss and a corrupt cop. The final play takes place in a high-stakes poolroom,

This past October, David Stern announced that he would step down as commissioner of the National Basketball Association in February 2014. In Stern’s three decades at the helm, the NBA has seen its domestic fortunes rise and ebb.

“Around 380 BC, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in the Republic about the idealized society as having a “united influence of music and sport” where its people “mingle music with sport in the fairest of proportions.

This past September an independent panel commissioned in 2009 by the British government released its 395-page report on the Hillsborough Stadium disaster of April 1989. The published findings and the accompanying release of documents confirmed what had...

Today we are talking to Declan Hill about his new book The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime (McClelland & Stewart, 2010). Most of my research focuses on corruption and the link with organized crime. I have read commissions of inquiry, court cases,

My wife is a sports fan. Together, we have cheered from the stands at college football games and track meets, for local minor-league baseball clubs and hockey teams. We’ve spent Sunday afternoons watching the National Football League,

Of all American sports, baseball has contributed the greater number of folk heroes to the larger culture. Fictional characters of awe-inspiring ability, like the mighty Casey and Roy Hobbs, or quirky sages such as Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra are broad...

This past August, the saga of Lance Armstrong came to its inglorious end. The seven-time champion of the Tour de France and Olympic medalist ended his defense against charges that he had engaged in blood doping during his cycling career.

In the history of American sports, few athletes were as famous and hated in their day as Jack Johnson. The first African American boxing champion, Johnson was an astonishingly brash figure who flouted the prejudices held by white Americans.

During the 1960s attendance fell at cricket grounds across England. Just as the Church of England lost members in droves in the same period, it appeared that this other pillar of English tradition was becoming irrelevant amidst the social and cultural ...

There are few moments in recent sports history as riveting, perplexing, and widely debated as Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt to Marco Materazzi in the final match of the 2006 World Cup. Think of your own reaction when the referee stopped play to attend to...

A number of modern sports are credited to a particular 19th-century founder. The inventive work of some of these figures, like basketball’s James Naismith, American football’s Walter Camp, and judo’s Jigoro Kano, is firmly planted in history.

American women dominated the swimming competition at the London Olympics, earning a total of sixteen medals in seventeen events. This template of success was set already at the 1920 Games, the first Olympics in which American women swimmers competed.

If you watched the U.S. broadcast of the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, you may have heard Matt Lauer and Bob Costas mention Jim Thorpe during Sweden’s entrance. Thorpe, arguably the best all-around athlete in U.S. history,

The 2012 London Olympics are here.  To mark the event, New Books in Sports offers another of its occasional seminar episodes.  And as with any great seminar, you’ll be eager to tell people what you’ve learned.

26.2 is one of the most recognizable numbers in sports. It is also a curious number. The length of the marathon race is the only distance in track that is still measured in English units. Yards have become meters. The mile is now the 1500.

During this week of the 4th of July, it’s appropriate to mark America’s national holiday with a podcast about that most American of sports: college football. As past guests on the podcast have explained, widely followed,

The one play of my football career that my father remembers most fondly came in my very first game, when I was eleven years old. Younger and smaller than the other players, I was positioned out of harm’s way at outside linebacker. But on one play,

Two days before this year’s Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich, the top two women’s clubs in Europe played on the same pitch, at Munich’s Olympic Stadium, in the final match of the Women’s Champions League.

The NBA Finals are under way, with the Oklahoma City Thunder facing the Miami Heat. Network executives and the sports punditocracy are elated with the match-up. Ratings for Game 1 of the series were up more than 10 per cent over last year,

There are a lot of balls in my house. Baseballs, soccer balls, tennis balls, footballs, basketballs, volleyballs. We have Wiffle balls, Nerf balls, and Super Balls. My children and I occasionally use the balls for their intended purposes.