A Very Big Deal (February 2020)

Sports as the funhouse mirror of a nation in crisis

This is Throwbacks, a weekly-ish newsletter by me, Michael Weinreb, about sports history, culture and politics. Welcome to all new readers/subscribers, and if you like what you’re reading, please subscribe and share, however you feel comfortable sharing. (It’s still free to subscribe: Just click “None” on the “subscribe now” page.) The best way you can help out is by spreading the word as much as possible. That said, I have set up payment tiers, if you wish to give something—I’ve made them as cheap as Substack will let me make them, which is $5 a month or $30 a year.

My friend and occasional editor, Patrick Hruby, asked me to write an essay of sorts about how sports has dovetailed with the pandemic for Global Sport Matters, an offshoot of Arizona State’s Global Sport Institute. You can read the originally published version here.