Free Republic

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a relatively high-level sports executive about the election, which is to say we were discussing something terrible Donald Trump had said or done. We agreed that Trump was likely to lose. “But he could always still win — even Nate Silver says that,” I remarked. The executive then said something that stunned me, though the more and more I think about it, the more sense it makes. “If Trump wins, or if he refuses to concede, I’m telling you right now: There won’t be any sports for a month,” he said. “Maybe...

A few weekends ago, at a seersucker-in-November southern horse-racing event I attended with some lovely and friendly people who will nevertheless be the first ones taken out when the revolution comes, a family friend, an older white man, asked me what I, the one sportswriter he knew, thought of the kneeling NFL players. I told him that while I stand for the anthem myself, I supported the players’ right to express themselves politically and encouraged him to worry less about the kneeling and more about what the players were trying to say. He snorted and said he was done with...

I hadn't before seen Will Leitch, the Deadspin creator who now writes on politics for Bloomberg, in action. But on today's With All Due Respect, I found him funny and affable. Even so, he made one left-leaning assertion so absurd it was too much even for show host John Heilemann. Running parallel with the NCAA tourney, Bloomberg has been running a bracket of 64 non-presidential candidates. In the Final Four, Jon Stewart defeated the Pope and Tina Fey took out Warren Buffett. Asked to explain the results, Leitch alleged that Fey and Stewart have a "universality that maybe not everybody...