mind games

Best chess writing: 2014

I was paying attention when Fabiano Caruana tore through the star-studded field at the Sinquefeld Cup (including world champion Magnus Carlsen), but no, it wasn’t exactly viral.

So I agree with the premise of this Slate piece, and I highly recommend it for passages like this:

There are a few things you should probably know about FIDE—or the Federation Internationale des Echecs, if you’re feeling continental. FIDE is, by all accounts, comically corrupt, in the vein of other fishy global sporting bodies like FIFA and the IOC. Its Russian president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who has hunkered in office for nearly two decades now, was once abducted by a group of space aliens dressed in yellow costumes who transported him to a faraway star. Though I am relying here on Ilyumzhinov’s personal attestations, I have no reason to doubt him, as this is something about which he has spoken quite extensively. He is of the firm belief that chess was invented by extraterrestrials, and further “insists that there is ‘some kind of code’ in chess, evidence for which he finds in the fact that there are 64 squares on the chessboard and 64 codons in human DNA.”

Kudos, Seth Stevenson.

 

soccer

Wrong time to suspend Hope Solo

One of the many peculiarities of covering women’s soccer is seeing something you’ve known about and discussed in public for a long time suddenly becoming “news” because someone with a platform suddenly noticed it.

That was the case a couple of years ago, when one writer at a major publication wrote about Lori Chalupny’s predicament of being cleared to play in pro soccer but not cleared to play for the national team. Another major writer said he had been working on the same story. Women’s soccer reporters weren’t working on it because we all knew about it and talked about it openly, and it was a little surprising to see people surprised about this.

This year, it’s Hope Solo.

We all know for Solo was arrested in June and pleaded not guilty to two counts of fourth-degree domestic violence, a gross misdemeanor, after a family fight. Solo’s 17-year-old nephew says she got an argument with him, charged him and punched him. Then, he says, she attacked his mother when she tried to intervene. Solo’s lawyer says Solo was actually the victim and is looking forward to making that case Nov. 4.

The Seattle Reign briefly benched Solo, but she played most of the rest of the season without major incident.

Then came the controversial part.

With Solo poised to break the U.S. women’s shutout record, the press kicked into gear a bit. The most notable effort: Christine Brennan, my colleague from my USA TODAY days, who wrote the following:

These are disturbing charges against one of the more famous role models in women’s sports, coming at a time when the issue of domestic violence has become a focal point for the nation after the terrible Ray Rice video and his controversial two-game suspension from the NFL.

Nonetheless, U.S. Soccer, the national governing body for the sport in the United States, decided to go ahead with its promotion of Solo this week.

What a mistake this is.

This is not the time for U.S. Soccer to be celebrating Solo and her accomplishments.

Brennan followed up, traveling down to North Carolina to see Solo’s attempt to break the record, which was also apparently some sort of game between the USA and Switzerland. But Solo didn’t break the record, and Brennan was unable to interview Solo. There are a couple of sides to the story of how Brennan and Solo didn’t chat, but it has to be said that Solo has been evading the media this season the way Obi-Wan Kenobi evaded stormtroopers in the Death Star, and the code of silence in women’s soccer is far greater than it is in the men’s game. (Brennan, of course, was abused on Twitter — fans should know by now that the louder they shout, the more likely journalists are to tune them out.)

Fast forward a few weeks. The USA played a couple of games against horribly overmatched Mexico. Solo broke the record and was honored with the captain’s armband in the next game. Coach Jill Ellis gave a lot of players a chance to get some game time in those games, but Solo played the full 180.

Then, all of a sudden, “everyone” noticed that a domestic violence suspect was playing for the U.S. national team. And with the NFL dealing with Ray Rice et al, it was time for the outrage machine to spin into motion.

Washington Post, New York Times, ESPNW … everyone started talking about the case “no one” was talking about. They didn’t seem to mind how badly it undercut their point to mention a USA TODAY column that had been written a month ago.

Some of us had misgivings for weeks. I think it was absurd to make such a big deal out of the shutout record in the first place, and making her captain was just thumbing our noses at karma.

But here’s the thing: It’s too late for the outrage.

Sure, maybe some of you just put 2 and 2 together and realized there’s a domestic violence case in women’s soccer. And your concern is being hijacked by the “men’s rights” blowhards standing up for those poor oppressed men who get suspended for punching their fiancees unconscious in a case with a clear-cut evidence.

Solo’s case isn’t Ray Rice’s. First of all, the evidence is anything but clear-cut. Sadly, we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that we may never know what happened on the night in question. It’s two people’s word against Solo’s, and the police may or may not have enough evidence to figure out who’s telling the truth. Solo apologized on Facebook while understandably avoiding any details, which either means she’s sorry for something or was simply doing what her legal and PR folks wanted.

Her case is also much more complex. It’s difficult to imagine that Solo was just sitting quietly in her relatives’ house and was suddenly attacked by two people, but was she provoked? Whose words led to whose attack? Is anyone in the house blameless? (Even in the nephew’s account to police, he says he insulted Solo and her late father. That’s provocative in every sense.)

There’s really no case as yet to deny Solo her profession. I don’t recall any people insisting that she couldn’t play for the Reign. The Washington Post‘s Cindy Boren, who started the Solo outrage bandwagon on Friday but was well aware of the case in June. (If she called for the Reign to bench Solo, my apologies — I couldn’t find it.)

Was it proper for U.S. Soccer to honor Solo while a domestic violence case hung over her head? Probably not. And it wasn’t really necessary to play her at all in those friendlies, much less play her the whole time.

But now? Sorry, but that ship sailed.

You simply can’t suspend Hope Solo for Women’s World Cup qualifiers just because a few journalists suddenly saw a disconnect between her treatment and Ray Rice’s. Maybe you can do it if TMZ suddenly comes up with video from the house where Solo and her relatives had a disagreement. Otherwise, no.

The facts haven’t changed. You can’t go back and make Solo hand back the captain’s armband for her team’s ritual destruction of Mexico. It’s not OK for her to play for three months and then suddenly not play her just because a column went viral.

Algarve Cup next spring? We’ll see. For now? She plays.

Update: Here’s a statement from U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati: “U.S. Soccer takes the issue of domestic violence very seriously.  From the beginning, we considered the information available and have taken a deliberate and thoughtful approach regarding Hope Solo’s status with the National Team. Based on that information, U.S. Soccer stands by our decision to allow her to participate with the team as the legal process unfolds. If new information becomes available we will carefully consider it.”

I’d still like someone to ask Jill Ellis why it was a good idea to make a fuss over the shutout record, which is just a sign that coaches tend to leave her in the full 90 in the WNT’s many blowouts, and make her captain. Keith Olbermann just pounced on that like sportswriters pouncing on a buffet.

track and field

The unconscionable treatment of Lolo Jones

Clear your mind of any images. Now look at the following accomplishments:

– World indoor champion, 60-meter hurdles, 2008 and 2010

– World Athletics Final champion, 100-meter hurdles, 2008

– 4th place in 2012 Olympics

– 2nd place in 2010 Diamond League

– Leading 2008 Olympic final before tripping on a hurdle

– 6th place, 2007 World Championships

– Second-fastest time in the world in 2009

– Fastest time in the world (12.43, Olympic semifinal) in 2008. Since them, only three hurdlers have gone faster (Australia’s Sally Pearson five times, USA’s Brianna Rollins twice, USA’s Dawn Harper Nelson once). Rollins, the U.S. record-holder and current world champion, is just 23 years old and has a bright future.

– Sixteen international outdoor wins

The USA’s Queen Harrison, Danielle Carruthers and Kellie Wells have had some Diamond League success, which just underscores how tough it is to even make a U.S. Olympic team in this event. (Also why some people haven’t made it to the World Championships.) This person was the clear-cut No. 1 in 2008, then made it back in 2012 (after spinal surgery) and took fourth place behind Pearson, Harper Nelson and Wells.

Pearson and Harper Nelson also medaled in 2008 — flip the order with Harper Nelson winning and Pearson silver. They’re clearly the top two hurdlers of the past six years. Wells may be third — she took bronze in 2012 and was in good position for a major title (2011 World Championships) but stumbled.

So we could say the person in question was the best hurdler in the world in 2008 and still in the top four in 2012, an accomplishment after surgery.

Oh, by the way, she also won a World Championship gold medal in bobsled in the 2013 mixed team event, she made the U.S. Winter Olympic team in 2014, and she was named 2008 Visa Humanitarian of the Year after donating her prize money from the Olympic Trials to a single mother who was affected by flooding in Iowa.

OK, now you can put the picture back in your head. Obviously, we’re talking about Lolo Jones.

And that resume is considerably better than that of Danica Patrick or Anna Kournikova, two other athletes derided for being more famous than their accomplishments supposedly merit.

Patrick and Kournikova also take more flack than they deserve. We can debate Patrick’s GoDaddy ads or whether Kournikova put in the practice time to turn her potential into success in singles, but Patrick has the compelling story of a female driver carving out a space in a sport that has been rather harsh to women (you’ll never convince me Mike Wallace didn’t take out Shawna Robinson after she won the pole in a Grand National race), and Kournikova she still had a terrific doubles career.

Critics hate Lolo Jones because … she’s self-promoting? Not at the expense of anyone else. Because … she’s considered attractive? First of all, that hasn’t hurt a lot of male athletes. Second of all, shouldn’t we be happy that athletic women are lauded for their looks? Isn’t that a healthier body image than the emaciated figures who have dominated modeling and Hollywood for so long? As much as I cringe at the Alex Morgan fanboys who turn up at Portland’s road games and care nothing about the home team or any other players, at least they’re getting out of their parents’ basements, getting some fresh air and being pulled away from tweeting a bunch of misogynist crap about female athletes.

If you think Dawn Harper Nelson should get more attention than Lolo Jones, I have a novel suggestion. Write about Dawn Harper Nelson. She’s a two-time Olympic medalist who ran a personal best of 12.37 in London, second only to Pearson’s Olympic record of 12.35. Her coach is the legendary Bob Kersee. She’s remarkably consistent, winning the Diamond League season title in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

And she exists on social media. She has a solid Facebook presence with 1,514 likes. She’s also happy to be in an algebra textbook.

Bottom line: Track and field doesn’t get as much attention as it should. If someone actually manages to be noticed and gets on Dancing with the Stars, good for her. If you think it’s unfair that other athletes aren’t getting as much attention, do you think it helps those athletes when you snark on Lolo?

Lolo Jones is a world-class athlete with a charismatic personality. Dawn Harper-Nelson is the world’s most consistent hurdler who gets a kick out of being mentioned in an algebra textbook. No reason we can’t appreciate them both.

sports culture

Championship time in football offshoots

Besides the USA, two other countries have a prominent game called “football” that is not played with 11 people kicking a ball at a goal without using their hands, and this is the season for their versions of the Super Bowl:

In Australian rules football, we’re down to a surprising final four. The playoff format, which I’ve long argued should be used in U.S. soccer, favors the top four seeds, giving them a second chance if they lose their openers. Last weekend, No. 3 Geelong and No. 4 Fremantle got the boot. See North Melbourne’s two-minute defensive stand to stop Geelong on the AFL site, which also has an eight-minute highlight reel that shows you how deep a hole Geelong had to climb out of.

This weekend’s “preliminary finals” (we would call them semifinals, since the winners advance to the final) will be shown in the USA, though not necessarily live. Sydney, which won a three-way tiebreaker with Hawthorn and Geelong to take the top seed, hosts sixth seed North Melbourne. No. 5 Port Adelaide goes to Hawthorn.

I’m finding broadcasts at 11:30 p.m. ET Friday (Fox Sports 2) and midnight Saturday/Sunday morning (Fox Soccer Plus). That should be Sydney-North Melbourne first and then Hawthorn-Port Adelaide, but I couldn’t verify it.

The Grand Final, an event with all the pomp and excess of the Super Bowl, is Sept. 27. Fox Soccer Plus has a live broadcast at 12:30 a.m. ET.

A lower division final (no, there’s no promotion/relegation) was recently stopped at halftime by something even more violent than the game itself, with fans getting involved.

In Gaelic (Irish) football, Donegal faces Kerry on Sept. 21 in the All-Ireland final, which had a few good storylines leading up to it, including Donegal’s massive upset of Dublin and a semifinal replay controversially moved away from Croke Park by the Penn State-Central Florida (American) football game.

In other Gaelic sports a little farther removed from football:

– Hurling: Kilkenny and Tipperary played to a draw in the All-Ireland final Sept. 7. They’ll replay it Sept. 27.

– Camogie: Cork rallied to beat Kilkenny today in the All-Ireland final of the women’s equivalent of hurling.

If you want to see the football and hurling finals, chances are you’ll need to check out your local Irish pub. As if you needed an excuse.

tennis

USA avoids relegation in Davis Cup … did you hear?

Fresh off their record-setting U.S. Open win, the Bryan brothers clinched the USA’s spot in the 2015 World Group (top tier) of the Davis Cup, beating Slovakia.

We hope the crowd was a little better for the Bryans than it was for singles.

Busted Racquet throws much of the blame at the USTA and local folks for underpromoting and overpricing the event. Maybe the media deserve a bit of the blame, too, for failing to pay attention to such a terrific tournament.

Or blame the ITF for shoving aside reform ideas ranging from forcing top players into the event or playing more than one round at a time.

The USA hasn’t won the Cup since 2007, when Andy Roddick and James Blake combined with the Bryans to win the trophy, but it hasn’t been relegated out of the 16-team World Group since 1987.

soccer

Top football prospect / unknown soccer player chooses soccer

Drake Davis is a sudden celebrity within the soccer Twittersphere. The high school junior and four-star football recruit with scholarship offers from major programs like Alabama and Florida State apparently wants to play soccer instead.

So is this the Day of Much Rejoicing, in which the USA gets a big-time soccer player to give up a football career for soccer stardom? Top Drawer Soccer’s J.R. Eskilson has the reality check:

Davis is a mystery in college soccer recruiting. There is hardly any mention of him from the prep scene.

I’m glad TDS couldn’t find much on him, because I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me.

And now that Davis has left his Louisiana home and transferred to Fork Union Military Academy in rural Virginia, what sort of club soccer can he play?

So in the era of Development Academy and other ultraserious clubs accounting for the bulk of college prospects, can a great athlete (I think we can assume that from his football credentials) make it in soccer without such developmental advantages? Will he get a full scholarship offer from the limited money college soccer programs can spread out among recruits?

It’s hard to see this as any sort of tipping point for U.S. national programs. If you’re nowhere to be seen in the national scene as a junior, the odds of being the next Oguchi Onyewu (Deadspin says Altidore, but he’s listed as a “striker/sweeper,” and there’s more demand for players on the backline) are quite small.

But we can dream, right?

olympic sports

Jordan Burroughs’ second career loss and one-day wrestling

Jordan Burroughs is pushing for the title of best U.S. wrestler of all time. He’s 92-2 in his international career, with two world championships and Olympic gold. (Hence the Twitter handle: @allIseeisgold)

The second of those losses might merit an asterisk, as the headline implies: Jordan Burroughs sprains MCL, wins bronze at World Wrestling Championships | OlympicTalk.

To give credit where it’s due: Russia’s Denis Tsargush, who beat Burroughs, is a former world champion himself and the man who has given Burroughs a couple of tough matches in major events.

But seeing Burroughs lose on a hobbled leg raises a question: Are wrestling and other combat sports better off in the current format of running through an entire weight class in one day?

The format is still relatively new in wrestling. (It’s older in judo.) In 2000 and 2004, wrestlers had two or three days of competition, starting with small round-robin pools before advancing to a knockout bracket. By 2008, they switched to one day per weight class.

Maybe a different format couldn’t have helped Burroughs recover from his injury in time to have another classic match with Tsargush. But what are the advantages to making wrestlers do everything in a day? It doesn’t add any drama. Broadcasters, let alone reporters, have no time to build the story of a wrestler, particularly an underdog, moving through a tournament to the final.

When wrestling was placed on the Olympic chopping block last year, FILA reconsidered its rules but left the one-day format intact. Bloody Elbow’s Mike Riordan sees a better way:

The NCAA Division I wrestling championships stand alone as the true gold standard when it comes to well-attended television-friendly amateur wrestling tournaments. At the NCAAs, all weights compete simultaneously in six sessions spread over a three day period. The semifinals, which determine the match ups for the finals, take place at the end of day two, and the finals take place at the end of the third day. This creates a situation where all of the event’s most anticipated matches fall on a Saturday night, with a whole day left before them to ensure proper coverage, allow for decent marketing, and maximize fan anticipation.

If FILA seeks to eventually optimize the product of its World Championships and Olympics, then it needs to eventually abandon the one-day model, and continue to progress into a format which resembles the NCAA championships.

The NCAA doing something right while the international organizer gets it wrong? Go figure.

soccer, sports culture

Women’s soccer hazing injury sparks suit against Clemson coaches

Siri Mullinix is a distinguished women’s soccer alum — starting goalkeeper for the national team while Briana Scurry struggled, terrific player in the WUSA. Eddie Radwanski has a lower profile, but he’s fondly remembered by those of us who saw him play professionally. He had the misfortune of having his peak years fall in between the NASL’s demise and MLS’s launch, so he carved out a career playing indoor and in the USISL/A-League.

And so the natural first reaction upon seeing that Radwanski, Mullinix and many others at Clemson are being sued for a 2011 hazing incident is along the lines of “Say it ain’t so.”

The lawsuit was filed last month but had not yet hit the local news organizations until today, when a colorful site called FITSNews offered up the lawsuit document itself in PDF form. The Greenville News has now published an early story that doesn’t add many details, but they are trying to reach attorneys.

The first few pages aren’t particularly damning. Plaintiff Haley Hunt claims Radwanski, who took over as Clemson coach after she signed with the program, tried to dissuade her from coming to Clemson and made fun of her for being a good student and a member of the Christian group Young Life.

Then comes the hazing incident, which sounds pretty typical at first: The upperclassmen (all named as defendants) dragged freshman players out of their dorm rooms and tossed them into cars. The freshmen are told to perform “humiliating and demeaning acts” that aren’t further described, then taken to the Tigers’ stadium to run blindfolded and do other “demeaning acts and calisthenics.”

Nothing ridiculous so far, right? But then we get to paragraph 51:

Ms. Hunt complied with the orders to run faster. Unaware of where she was running because of the blindfold, Ms. Hunt veered away from the field and sprinted directly – face first – into a brick wall. The momentum of Ms. Hunt’s collision with the brick wall threw her body backwards, causing her to smash into a nearby table and fall to the ground. The players heard Ms. Hunt scream and observed her clench her bloody face. One player described the sound of Ms. Hunt hitting the brick wall as “metal hitting metal.” The impact with the brick wall caused Ms. Hunt to sustain serious injuries to her brain, head, face, and hands. Ms. Hunt was knocked unconscious and had to be physically assisted by the other players.

Horrifying. And now it gets worse:

A few players took Ms. Hunt to the locker room, where they called the Clemson Coach Defendants. Mullinix arrived on the scene and called Michelle Bensmen, an athletic trainer for the Team. Some of the players expressed their opinions that an ambulance was necessary; however, Mullinix instructed them not to tell anyone what had happened. Ms. Hunt was not taken to a hospital. Instead, she was examined by Bensman, who applied a butterfly bandage to her face and sent her to her dorm room without medical attention or any supervision from the Team staff

Bensmen/Bensman (lawyers can’t spell — “Radwanski” is misspelled on at least one occasion) is not a defendant. According to the suit timeline, Hunt later calls her parents, thinking she needs immediate medical attention. (This all takes place in August, so Hunt may not have had a lot of dormmates and friends at this point.) Her parents call “one or more” or the coaches, and Mullinix goes to check on her and eventually stay with her that night. Then Hunt gets treatment from the team doctors, a neurologist and a plastic surgeon.

At this point, we’re talking about a delay in medical treatment that deserves some follow-up questions. But nothing worse.

Until paragraph 62:

Immediately following the Incident and prior to any investigation into the Incident, the Clemson Coach Defendants called a Team meeting and implored the Team that they must not tell anyone about what happened. Specifically, Radwanski told the players: “if you care about our jobs and our Team, then you will not tell anyone about this. We cannot have anybody finding out about this.”

Now comes a curious part — the team doctors cleared Hunt to play, though she was still in pain and having difficulty reading. Again, doctors and trainers are not named as defendants. If the coaches were following medical advice by letting her play, would the burden here fall on the doctors?

But the focus shifts back to Radwanski.

Following the Incident, Radwanski ignored Ms. Hunt’s serious injuries and continued to belittle Ms. Hunt for her academic achievements and involvement with Young Life. In fact, Radwanski was so reckless with Ms. Hunt’s safety that on one occasion he ordered her to climb a soccer goal to untangle the net, which resulted in the goal tipping over and nearly crushing Ms. Hunt under its weight. Radwanski made jokes about this and the other occasions in which he forced Ms. Hunt to perform dangerous, demeaning tasks.

Hunt’s family contacted the Clemson athletic department, which investigated but decided not to penalize anyone.

Enter the Clemson Office of Community and Ethical Standards for a separate investigation. This all happened quickly: The incident was the evening of Aug. 18; the OCES took a statement Aug. 31. The OCES found that the team had violated several university regulations on “harm to person, hazing, and violations of student organizational conduct.” (Wouldn’t the first one trump the next two?) Players had to go through a workshop and give a PowerPoint presentation on what they had learned.

For a couple of years, Hunt remained with the program. She redshirted in 2011, then played 15 games in 2012, racking up academic honors. She played a couple of games in 2013, but according to the suit, her symptoms got worse, and a neurologist told her to stop playing. She was honored in April 2014 with the Bill D’Andrea Tiger Paw Award for “outstanding commitment and selflessness within the team culture,” sharing that award with Hailey Karg. At the same banquet, Vanessa Laxgang won MVP honors and Morgan Hert took the team leadership award.

Laxgang, Karg and Hert are now co-defendants.

The suit, filed Aug. 15, does not mention a specific dollar amount of compensation. “Plaintiff prays for Judgment against the Defendants individually, jointly, and severally for all actual damages, for an appropriate amount in punitive damages in an amount to be determined by the jury at the trial of this action, those attorneys’ fees and costs incurred by this action, and for such other further relief as the court deems just and proper.”

Could the case be resolved out of court? In the Pickens County court records, the case includes an action for “ADR/Alternative Dispute Resolution (Workflow)” with a start date of March 13, 2015.

(Will update if new info arises in the next couple of days)