“After suffering through several years of misery and ignominy, it’s like old times for Tiger…” John Cassidy looks at five people who might’ve had a hand in Woods’s comeback: http://nyr.kr/16Ucywq

“The conventional wisdom, though, was that James needed to “grow up” as a player and a teammate in order to win games and the affection of fans. But James was compelled to grow up long ago, way back in his late teens—to become the savior of a unlucky franchise, a torchbearer for several multinational corporations, and the public face of an entire sport. Maybe what we’re remembering now is what sentimental sports fans have always known—that we like our athletes most when they play the game the way that we swear we’d do it if we had the chance. At twenty-eight, it seems, LeBron James is finally old enough to act like a kid.”

Continue reading Ian Crouch on LeBron James’s transformation: http://nyr.kr/XLBY8g

Photograph by David Santiago/AP.

(Source: newyorker.com)

Reeves Wiedeman on Sloane Stephens’s surprising victory over Serena Williams in the Australian Open quarterfinals: http://nyr.kr/UW8oO1 

Photograph by Paul Crock/AFP/Getty

Ian Crouch on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s decision to elect nobody to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year: http://nyr.kr/ZsAIHJ

Reeves Wiedeman on Alabama’s win over Notre Dame in last night’s B.C.S. championship game:

In case you fell asleep, Alabama beat Notre Dame by twenty-eight points in last night’s college-football national championship. Even that score suggests that the game was closer than it was. By the start of the second quarter, Alabama had twenty-one points. Notre Dame had twenty-three yards. By the third, lines were already forming at sporting-goods stores in Alabama to pick up official championship gear. By the end of the fourth, Alabama head coach Nick Saban had pulled his starters, unofficially instituting the mercy rule. When Alabama is on defense, the school’s Million Dollar Band often plays “Look Down,” from “Les Misérables.” Feelings about the movie aside, Alabama would have been kind to heed the song’s opening line: “Look down, look down, and see the beggars at your feet / Look down and show some mercy if you can.”

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/VMRdxi

Photograph by Chris O’Meara/AP.

“Desire is suffering. The Lakers are an illusion. Jobs are an illusion. Kobe is an illusion…”

In today’s Daily Comment, Steve Coll considers what it would take for the N.F.L. to remain something better than professional wrestling… 

it will have to become faster, more acrobatic, more compelling for gamblers, less choppy and interrupted on the screen, and more located in the human mysteries of teamwork and coaching leadership than it is already.

Continue reading.

(Source: newyorker.com)

Reeves Wiedeman on the N.F.L.’s contract dispute with the referees, and their controversial replacements: http://nyr.kr/Pe9rqA