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THE MUSIC ISSUE
STARRING
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cover and th is page photographs by MATTHIAS CLAMER
ADDITIONAL CREDITS, PAGE 84
02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 7
02.03.14
DON’T MISS
40 COLLECTION
T-shirts from wannabe Super Bowl champs.
48 TENNIS
The new racket specs for Serena and Federer.
46 NHL
The larger ice in Sochi will put goalies on edge.
44 COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Cleanthony Early talks WSU’s shocking start.
42 BODY SHOT
Rodney Stuckey’s ready-for-contact abs.
25 SUPER BOWL PREVIEW
The stats that matter and the plays you’ll see on Super Sunday.
50 HIS GAMES TO WIN OR LOSE
For better or worse, these are Vladimir Putin’s Olympics. By Brett Forrest
14 OLYMPICS PREVIEW
Six U.S. medal hopefuls show of techniques that’ll be on display in Sochi.
116 THE FIX
Team USA’s backyard-grown luger. By Chris Jones
10 THE TRUTH
Leave the playofs alone, Roger. By Howard Bryant
12 THE NUMBERS
The benefts of hitting the glass. By Peter Keating
64 KILLER CROSSOVER
In the ever-evolving relationship between music and sports, Chris Paul and Kendrick Lamar have both fgured out how to play the game. By Sam Alipour
72 FANTASY ACTS
A backstage look at our so-good-you’ll-wish-it-were-real Super Bowl halftime show, featuring too many megastars to count. By Stacey Pressman
63 THE MUSIC ISSUE
The overlap between music and sports is everywhere. It’s seen sitting courtside at NBA games. It’s heard in anthems piped through arenas. And it’s lived by the athletes and musicians who constantly keep us on the edge of our seats.
87 TAKE IT FROM THE TOP
Drake is ushering in hip-hop’s new era with the same voracity as his predeces-sors while keeping both eyes on the sports scene. By Danyel Smith
92 &
Justin Tucker can sing (like, seriously sing), and Bieber is bros with Money Mayweather (well, sort of). Our rundown of the most ridiculous—and surprising—hookups across music and sports.
104 IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS A NIPPLE ...
Ten years after Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl snafu, we re-examine the 9/16 of a second that changed everything. By Marin Cogan
72MLBers Yonder Alonso and Manny Machado step up with reggaeton sensation Yandel (center) and crew.
ISSUE
THE
INSIDE PLAYBOOK
8 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014 photograph by BOB CROSLIN
MATTHIAS CLAMER (LAMAR)
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SPOTLIGHT DR. DEAN SANDIFEREvery year for LSU-Florida week, Sandifer, a 55-year-old critical care physician, loses the scrubs and spreads his voodoo
to the Gators-loving patients (and staff) at Lakeland Regional Medical Center in Lakeland, Fla. “When I moved here,
I got tired of all the talk,” says the LSU med school grad. So the LSU Witch Doctor dreams up a new costume for each
day of the game week and for each Tigers game he attends. This custom-made outfit was easily his most expensive:
Inspired by the Swiss Guard at the Vatican, it cost Sandifer about $2,000. As for his most controversial getup?
“Houndstooth is sacred to Alabama fans,” he says. “So to see it in purple and gold boils the blood—I fear for my safety.”
HOW TO BECOME AN ESPN INSIDER!
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2
It’s not every issue we get a four-time NBA MVP and a six-time Grammy winner together for our cover. In other words, this one’s wall-worthy. espnmag.com/covers
I WANNA BE ON THE COURT TOO. I CANÕT PLAY BALL, SO IÕLL BE A REFEREE.Ó
—KENDRICK
LAMAR
TAKE A PIC, IT ’LL LAST LONGER … AND IT ’S EASIER TO SHARE.
02.03.14ON FEB. 5, STAY GLUED TO ESPN.COM/RECRUITING FOR INSTANT COLLEGE FOOTBALL SIGNING DAY UPDATES +
10 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014 i l lustrat ion by MARK SMITH
by HOWARD BRYANTTHE TRUTH
[M]
[ PICKED CLEAN ] Roger Goodell is considering giving fans more of what they want—
playof football. But at what price?
benefts, even as some of the players call out the league for its mixed
messages, passing rules to curb the most violent hits on one hand but
considering adding more games on the other. “Every time they are doing
these things that make more money for football but don’t protect
players,” Steelers safety Ryan Clark said recently on Mike & Mike, “it
makes you question the way that we’re changing the game on the feld.”
Yet extra playof games don’t come just at the expense of player safety.
They will also diminish the quality of the product. Salary caps and
restricted free agency haven’t produced parity as much as exciting
mediocrity. The raucous, up-and-down NFL is trending toward
arena football, and because of the game’s breakneck speed, it remains
ultraviolent despite the rule changes. The cap, meanwhile, prevents teams
from paying for real backups. The result is a lower skill level, with turn-
overs and injury reports often determining the most important games.
The NFL basked in the illusion of wild-card weekend in all the close
games. It did this while curiously ignoring that for the sixth time in the
past eight years, multiple teams reached the postseason without winning
even 10 games. Goodell has responded to this reality by ofering seconds.
Under his proposal, with one additional wild-card team per conference,
10–6 Arizona would have made the NFC playofs. In the AFC, however,
the 8–8 Steelers would’ve beaten out the 8–8 Jets, Ravens and Dolphins.
But maybe the NFL wants it this way. Maybe the extra playof games,
in the name of fan interest, are simply attractive cover for the real
motive: to recoup the $765 million the NFL agreed to pay players in the
concussion lawsuit settlement, a number the judge on the case prelimi-
narily rejected for being too low. Or maybe, because injuries so dominate
the league, more playof teams are necessary, since a lower playof bar
indirectly softens the impact of broken bodies on a team’s fortune.
If these are the NFL’s reasons, so be it, but these reasons do not
promise a quality winning product. It is one thing to watch, quite
another to be fooled.
aybe Roger Goodell knows football is doomed and has
decided to plunder as much as possible from the village. As the commis-
sioner oversees a sport in which camera close-ups of concussed players
are routine and the mediocrity of fawed teams scoring on each other at
will passes as excitement, it is more honorable to see his recent proposal
to add two wild-card teams this way: He is emptying the tank of a
fnancially soaring—but morally suspect—enterprise.
Otherwise, the truth of the situation is far starker: that Goodell and
his owners might seek extra playof games in an era of CTE and eight-
win playof teams because they actually believe it is good for the sport.
Goodell was exposed as compromised on the issue of player safety
when he advocated an 18-game season in 2010, just as the severity of
concussions was coming into clearer, deadlier focus. Goodell reasoned
that players did not face increased injury risk from two extra games,
because the number of preseason contests would be reduced by two.
But that argument asked the public to believe that pros play the preseason
with the same intensity as they do when the Super Bowl is at stake.
So Goodell is once again looking to add games—high-stakes games—
and although he sells the appearance of responsibility and has taken some
credible actions to address the head-injury crisis (like bolstering concus-
sion protocols), the overriding consideration then, as now, is money.
Of course it is. The job of the commissioner is to increase the value of
franchises for the owners, and in this, there is no doubting his efcacy.
Ex-players might be in wheelchairs, and addled legends like Tony Dorsett
might have harbored suicidal thoughts, but NFL revenue is up an
estimated 3% from 2009, and viewership for the frst two rounds of this
season’s playofs spiked by 7% from last season. The public cannot get
enough, so Goodell wants to give it more. Meanwhile, the players’
association has no position on an expanded playofs because, according to
spokesman George Atallah, the NFL has not presented a formal proposal.
But should that come, it too will give plenty of weight to the fnancial
12 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014 i l lustrat ion by JASON SCHNEIDER
THE NUMBERS by PETER KEATING
[T]
[ SHATTERED GLASS ] NBA teams need a crash course in the benefts of crashing the ofensive boards.
That goes for the defending champs too.
defensive efciency and ofensive rebounding rates, as measured by
TeamRankings.com. Yes, the champion Heat get back quickly on D.
But you can hit the boards and still play transition defense, the way
the Bulls did before they started giving players away, or as the Pacers
did last season. It’s also possible to slough of ofensive rebounds and
get torched on fast breaks anyway—just watch the Knicks. I do, and
I’m treated to a team that’s 21st in ofensive rebounding rate yet ranks
last by a huge margin in points per possession allowed on fast breaks.
At frst glance, it’s hard to fnd a statistical relationship between
ofensive rebounding and winning; the correlation between ORs and
team winning percentage is actually negative this season (about
minus-0.19). But part of that is a mirage, because it’s easier to pile up
ofensive rebounds when you’re misfring on a ton of shots. For instance,
Charlotte had 375 ORs through Jan. 12, roughly akin to Phoenix’s 412
ofensive boards. But the Suns were shooting 45% and the Bobcats 43%,
which means more balls are clanking of the rim in Charlotte’s contests.
That’s why it’s crucial to look at ofensive rebounding percentage,
which is ORs as a proportion of available rebounds after missed shots.
Ofensive rebounding percentage reveals that Phoenix has actually been
grabbing a higher proportion of reboundable balls (26.1%) than
Charlotte (22.1%). And leaguewide, OR% correlates more closely with
winning percentage than raw rebound totals do (minus-0.05 versus
minus-0.19). Even more important, there’s a strong correlation (0.41)
between changes in a team’s ofensive rebounding percentage and
changes in its winning percentage. To see this in action, watch the
analytically smart Rockets, who have jumped from 17th in the NBA in
OR% to eighth since last season. They give up fewer points per posses-
sion on fast breaks—and are winning 63% of their games, up from 55%.
Fans love ofensive rebounding because it requires efort. GMs, take
heed: It wins games too. Now just imagine how scary the Heat would
be if they got the message.
hese days, the NBA seems to be giving up on the idea of
ofensive rebounding. It’s not just that teams are averaging 11 ofensive
boards per game this season, down from 14.4 in 1991-92, when Dennis
Rodman was the last player to grab more than 500 ORs in a season.
It’s that Miami ranks dead last in the NBA in total ofensive rebounds
(through Jan. 12), with Indiana, shockingly, 29th and San Antonio
28th. Apparently, the best minds in the league believe that crashing
the glass doesn’t win games.
Usually, I let Gregg Popovich and LeBron James go about their busi-
ness. But the numbers say that the teams that shun ofensive rebounding
do so at their peril. They are failing to maximize their scoring, and they’re
creating a giant opportunity for smart clubs to surpass them in the future.
Amid the NBA’s evolution from big men to mobile wings and sharp-
shooters, many organizations have bought into the notion that hitting
the boards leaves a team vulnerable on transition defense. But when a
team of MIT graduate students actually studied the trade-ofs involved
in crashing versus retreating, it found that “focusing on the ofensive
rebound immediately after the shot goes up seems to trump the gain
a team gets with a head start on getting back.” The study tracked how
every team in the NBA responded to missed shots during the 2011-12
season and concluded that an average team that missed 25 jumpers per
game could hike its net scoring by four points per game by regularly
sending two players to hit the boards instead of one.
Why the huge gain? For one thing, ofensive rebounds are even more
valuable than the extra chances they give an ofense. Players who grab
ORs are often near the basket and have already beaten opponents to the
ball, meaning they’re likely to shoot more efciently. As Dean Oliver, now
ESPN’s director of production analytics, wrote in his pioneering 2004
book Basketball on Paper, “Not only does an ofensive rebound preserve
a possession, it really does provide an easier opportunity to score.”
Further, there’s actually very little correlation between fast-break
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The XXII Winter Games (Feb. 6-23) in Sochi, Russia, will be a blur of power, speed, grace and agility. To help you better understand what you’ll be seeing, we’ve broken down the techniques of six medal hopefuls representing Team USA. Look closely enough and you might even spot their golden edge.
1 CASTELLI: “I like to have
both my hands out on take-
of. There’s tension in my left
arm to create momentum,
and Simon puts his right
hand on my stomach to
guide me into the throw.”
2 SHNAPIR: “My job is to
assist her jump. She’s like
a continuation of my arms,
which should be straight
and extending forward.
They should point to where
Marissa is going.”
3 CASTELLI: “I take of
from the back inside edge
of my left foot, and I have
to relax as I do. If I’m tight,
I won’t go up in the air cor-
rectly. When we do it right,
I just hang out and spin.”
1
2
3
SOCHI
OLYMPICSPREVIEW
photograph by JOHN HUET
WHO Marissa Castelli and
Simon Shnapir
WHAT Pairs fgure skating
WHEN Competition starts Feb. 6
HOW Their considerable height diference—Castelli is fve feet, Shnapir is 6'4"—helps the reigning U.S. champions execute spectacular
lifts and throws. While the audience and judges focus on Castelli, Shnapir’s job is to project his partner up to four feet into the air, then
meet her when she lands more than 24 feet away. “It’s about sticking with what feels comfortable for Marissa,” Shnapir says. “I’m not
the one being thrown across the ice.” The duo, who frst competed together in 2007, showed us their unique twist on a move they added
to their free-skate repertoire in 2012: a throw quadruple salchow, one of pairs skating’s most difcult jumps. —NOAH DAVIS
4 CASTELLI: “I can always
get plenty of height,
so the trick is staying
steady. If there’s too
much up and down, I bring
my right leg out a bit to
catch myself.”
5 CASTELLI: “My arms help
me manage the rotation
while I’m in the air. I put
my right arm back and
out to the side to help me
control the speed of
the spin.”
6 CASTELLI: “On my last
half-rotation, I open up
and try to spot Simon.
I can’t really see or tell
where I am when I’m spin-
ning, so I look for him to
get my bearings.”
7 CASTELLI: “The hardest
part is the landing.
I have to land on the
back outside edge of my
right skate and then
immediately move into
our next element.”
4
5
6
7
02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 15
WHO Heather McPhie
WHAT Freestyle
mogul skiing
WHEN Competition
starts Feb. 6
HOW In Olympic freestyle mogul skiing, a superlative jump can be the diference between silver and gold.
“It provides the ‘wow’ factor,” says McPhie, a two-time U.S. champion. “It puts a big exclamation point on your
run.” No trick on the circuit involves a higher degree of difculty than the D-spin, or of-axis 720, and McPhie
is one of the only women to throw it in competition. The 29-year-old, who crashed in the 2010 Olympic fnal,
hopes to ride the D-spin to redemption in Sochi. Here’s how her wow move unfolds. —DEVON O’NEIL
1 “Coming in, I try to keep
my hands in front of me
and look past the jump as
I come into it. I want to be
like water. I think: What
would water do down this
path? How do I flow as
smoothly as possible?”
2 “A little lateral move-
ment in the upper body is
fne. But I try to keep my
shoulders square down the
hill. If I’m hitting the tops of
the bumps with my poles,
that gets distracting—and
it slows me down.”
3 “I’m almost to the end
of my run here, so at this
point I’m charging down
the hill, trying to maintain
speed, pumping the turns,
staying within a narrow
path—all so I get a huge
lift of the jump.”
4 “The D-spin is all about
the takeof. If you come
into the jump well, stand
tall and get big, the rest will
take care of itself and you’ll
accelerate. But if you skimp
on the takeof, you’ll be
working the entire trick.”
43
2
1
SOCHI
OLYMPICSPREVIEW
5 “On water ramps, you
know exactly when you
want to pop. On snow, it
depends on the jump and
the drop time. Unlike
water, snow doesn’t fall
away on the landing, so
I need a lot of air.”
6 “The frst quarter of the
trick is the scariest part;
I’m looking at my knees
instead of the snow. My best
spins feel easy and foaty.
I initiate them with my hips
and shoulders, bring in my
knees, and it just happens.”
8 “I spot my landing
three-quarters of the way
through the trick. I use my
left arm to spot the ground.
On my best tricks, it stops
rotating and slows me
down so I can home in and
get in position to land.”
7 “The high point can be
10 or 12 feet, depending
on the jump. The course in
Sochi has a lot of air time
on the bottom jump. There,
I’ll get closer to 20 feet
high. Then, on the way out,
you get a lot of hang time.”
02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 17photograph by JOHN HUET
8
7
6
5
WHO Steve Holcomb
and Steve Langton
WHAT Two-man bobsled
WHEN Competition
starts Feb. 16
HOW Holcomb, who drove the four-man “Night Train” to gold in 2010, says that when push comes to sled,
coordination is key. “If you’re trying to move a car, you don’t each push it individually—you need to move at the
same time,” he says. “It’s the same thing with a [500-pound sled].” In 2012 Holcomb and pushman Steve Langton
became the frst American team to win the two-man world championship. In November they won a World Cup
race in a track record of 1:49.22 with these ice moves. —ANNA KATHERINE CLEMMONS
1 Holcomb: “To start, I’m
in a track stance, with one
foot forward. I signal to
Steve that I’m ready, and
we start our cadence, a
countdown to us moving.
We want to hit the sled at
the exact same time.”
2 Langton: “I grab the
sled handles and crouch.
Steve says ‘set,’ I say ‘back,
set, ready,’ and we hit it
together. The frst 15 meters
aren’t timed, but we want
to be at top speed by the
time we get that far.”
3 Holcomb: “You hold on
and push as hard as you
can while you’re running.
But you should never be
sprinting upright. We don’t
run far, and we’re pushing
a 500-pound sled the
entire time.”
4 Holcomb: “Before I hit
top speed, I grab the
opposite side of the sled
and jump in. Lateral move-
ments slow it down, so I
jump forward.” Langton:
“He makes a gymnastics
move, like he’s on a
pommel horse.”
5 Langton: “After Steve
gets in the sled, I take
three to fve more steps.
I want to get in before we
hit top speed, so my last
step—usually with my left
foot—is really powerful.”
4
5
6
7
8
SOCHI
OLYMPICSPREVIEW
6 Holcomb: “If we load at
the same time, we’ll run
into each other. I have to
get my feet up front and
grab the steering ropes
before the frst curve.
That’s the trickiest part—
I have two seconds to grab
the ropes or we’ll crash.”
8 Holcomb: “We have
maybe three seconds to
get from the ice to being
seated and holding the
ropes, all while the sled’s
accelerating.” Langton:
“By the time we’re seated
in the sled, we’re going
almost 30 mph.”
7 Langton: “When I launch
myself into the sled, it’s
feet stick, butt hits, into
position, grab my handles.
My legs are slightly bent,
tucked around Steve’s
seat, and my head is down,
between my knees.”
photograph by JOHN HUET 02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 19
1
2
3
photograph by JOHN HUET
WHO Sarah Hendrickson
HOW Hendrickson, 19, has already landed almost 10,000 jumps in her life. “People ask if I freak out about fying so high, but I’ve done it so much, I don’t get nervous anymore,” says the reigning world ski champion, who started alpine skiing at age 2 and launched herself of a ramp fve years later. The 5'4" wunderkind can soar up to 437 feet and, provided she has recovered from right knee surgery, is a podium contender in the women’s K90 (70-meter) event, which makes its Olympic debut in Sochi. Here’s how she takes fight. —MATT McCUE
WHAT Ski jumping
WHEN Competition is
Feb. 11
22 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
1 “Before I start,
I crouch as low as
possible, position my
skis inside the ice
tracks in the snow
and balance on the
middle of my feet.
I want to be as low as
possible—you can’t
jump from straight
legs. By the time I
reach the end of the
ramp, I’ll hit 55 mph.”
2 “Race ofcials put
a tree branch down
six meters before the
spot where you’re
supposed to take of,
but I know instinc-
tively when to start
my move by feeling
the rhythm of the
hill. I push of from
my quads, and the
speed carries me into
fight position.”
3 “People think
the ramp tilts up,
but the end of the
inrun is actually at a
negative-10-degree
angle, so I have
to carry my speed
through to takeof.
My skis tilt down at
frst, but as I leave
the ground, they get
air underneath them.
It feels like I’m fying.”
4 “To start, I lean
forward and tilt my
ankles up to bring my
skis almost parallel
to my body. Then I
move my skis into a
V-shape because I’ll
catch more air in that
position. I try to keep
my body as still as
possible to combat
wind resistance and
earn style points.”
5 “The No. 1 rule
of ski jumping is:
Don’t bend your
knees. If you bend
them while you’re in
the air, your ski tips
will point straight
down, and you will
not land smoothly.
I’m in the air for three
seconds, and by the
time I land, I’ll be
going 100 mph.”
FOR MORE OLYMPIC TECHNIQUES, INCLUDING CURLING, HALFPIPE SNOWBOARDING AND SPEEDSKATING, GO TO: ES.PN/SOCHIOLYTECH
1
2
3
4
5
SOCHI
OLYMPICSPREVIEW
Team USA may be over 5,000 miles away,
but they can still hear us loud and clear.
It’s our time to get behind the athletes
who have worked so hard to get to Sochi.
Let’s tweet, blog, post and shout our support
from the rooftops. It may just mean one more
gold on the medal count.
THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS
TO OLYMPIC GOLD.
BUT HAVING A NATION BEHIND YOU
DOESN’T HURT.
SHANI DAVISTeam USA
att.com/TeamUSA
36 USC 220506. ©2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property. All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
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SUPER BOWL XLVIII PREVIEW
THINK THE DBS ARE WORRIED ABOUT PASS INTERFERENCE PENALTIES ON SUPER SUNDAY? THINK AGAIN.
IN FACT, HARASSING PEYTON MANNING’S RECEIVERS IS KEY TO A SEATTLE VICTORY. By David Fleming
LIFE OF PI
Seahawks CBRichard
Sherman
Broncos QB Peyton Manning
26 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014 FROM TOP: EVAN PIKE/CSM/LANDOV; RON CHENOY/USA TODAY SPORTS
On his way to the airport,
Ravens cornerback Jimmy
Smith always checks and
rechecks his backpack for the
one item he absolutely must
have when traveling home to
California: his Super Bowl
ring. A year ago in New
Orleans, Smith’s aggressive,
physical coverage on 49ers
receiver Michael Crabtree
on fourth and goal with 1:46
to play secured the Ravens’
win, despite the volcanic
protestations of coach
Jim Harbaugh, who simply
couldn’t believe Smith wasn’t
fagged. To this day, Niners
fans who cross paths with
Smith keep up the barrage.
“They still see me and go,
‘That was holding, that
was holding, that was
holding,’” says Smith. “I
always just fash my ring
and say, ‘Yeah, well, the only
thing I’m holding now is the
championship.’”
Smith’s mostly incidental
contact with Crabtree did
more than help the Ravens
procure the world’s most
ostentatious trump card,
featuring 243 diamonds
and custom amethyst. It also
ushered in a new, ingenious
and highly efective tool
for defensive backs in this
pass-happy era of the
NFL—and that tool played
a big role in determining this
8S T O P C A R I N G A B O U T P E N A LT I E S
Eight of the past 12 Super Bowl winners were fagged for more penalty yards than their opponents. This is a clear departure from the
regular season, in which teams that are fagged more have just a .452 winning percentage since 2001. So memo to all Broncos and
Seahawks: Bump, interfere and hold all you want. If history holds, you’ll be leaving Jersey with a nice trophy.
S I X W A Y S
T O W I N T H E
S U P E R B O W L 1
Kuechly wasn’t flagged for PI (top), and Bailey didn’t commit a penalty all season.
28 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
year’s Super Bowl matchup.
Watch closely downfeld
inside MetLife Stadium
during the big game and
you’re sure to see the same
sleight of hand Smith and
the Ravens pulled a year ago:
not just embracing pass
interference but using it
as an efective weapon. In
today’s NFL, the choice is
simple: Defenses can back
of, stay penalty-free and
surrender 500 yards passing,
like the 3–13 Redskins (one
pass interference call all
season, 29.9 ppg allowed).
Or they can follow the lead
of Seattle (NFL-most 13 PIs,
NFL-best 14.4 ppg) and push
the boundaries of what the
rulebook allows.
Bruising Broncos corner
Chris Harris certainly did.
He had seven penalties (four
for defensive holding) for a
Denver defense that fnished
with 10 PI calls, but he’s
out with a torn ACL. And
make no mistake: He’ll be
missed on Super Sunday. The
otherwise soft Denver pass D
gave up 254.4 ypg this
season, 27th in the league.
Veteran Champ Bailey will
shift over from safety to
replace Harris, and as
counterintuitive as it sounds,
Bailey (zero penalties in
2013) may want to consider
digging out the mugging
gloves that got him seven
yellow hankies in 2012. “It’s a
no-brainer,” says Smith. “I’d
rather risk a PI than play too
tentatively and let Crabtree
catch the game-winning
touchdown in the Super
Bowl and never, ever be able
to redeem myself.”
The numbers suggest
the NFL is cracking down
more than ever on PI—233
penalties cost defenses
4,058 yards in 2013; by
notorious noncall of the 2013
season. In Week 11, the
Panthers held on, literally, to
beat the Patriots 24-20
when, on Tom Brady’s fnal
throw into the end zone,
linebacker Luke Kuechly was
initially fagged for impeding
tight end Rob Gronkowski’s
path to the ball. The
underthrown pass had been
intercepted, and gun-shy
ofcials ultimately picked
up the fag, claiming the ball
was uncatchable. “The refs
gave me a bone there,”
Kuechly admits now.
Expertly exploiting the PI
loophole helped catapult
Kuechly and Carolina into
the playofs. Last year
Smith’s touchy coverage
helped the Ravens secure
their Super Bowl bling.
Now Seattle’s ultra-aggressive
secondary has set the
Seahawks up for a chance at
their frst-ever NFL title. For
defenses trying to survive in
this pass-happy league, if you
want a shot at a Super Bowl
ring, the message is clear:
Just reach out and grab it.
comparison, fve years ago
those numbers were 154 for
2,534 yards. But the truth is
that defenses are actually
camoufaging new, überag-
gressive coverage techniques
by hiding them in plain sight.
It’s the same logic loophole
long used by ofensive
linemen: hold on nearly
every single play because refs
simply won’t throw 50 fags
in a game. The same
principle works on defense.
If everything in the NFL
looks like pass interference,
that’s the same thing as
saying nothing is. It’s genius,
really. “Coaches tell us that
now: ‘Hey, they can’t call it
on every play,’” Smith says.
“You see how much Seattle
gets away with? They get
called for it a lot, but they
also get away with it a lot.”
That’s because referees are
often tentative, confused and
fat-out fatigued watching all
the holding, pushing and
hand-checking going on
during nearly every pass play.
That, in turn, only increases
the upside to a DB’s risk/
reward calculation. What’s
more, when corners and
safeties do get called for
interference, it’s not a
punishment but a license to
be even more aggressive,
knowing that odds are, they
won’t get fagged again right
away. A pass interference
call once shamed DBs into
compliance. Now it embold-
ens them to harass receivers
even more. “That concept is
very prevalent out there, but
especially so with the teams
in the playofs,” says Gerry
Austin, an NFL ofcial for 26
years who now serves as a
rules analyst for ESPN. “NFL
leadership has very serious
concerns not just about the
number of PI calls being
made but the number of PI
calls not being made. The
whole thing is headed for a
major review.”
More than likely, the
investigation will start with
the Seahawks, who led the
league in both penalties
(1,183 total yards) and total
defense (273.6 ypg). The
connection is no coincidence.
In the past decade, the most
penalized pass defenses
(holding and PIs) all have
one thing in common:
winning records. Pass
interference, materially
impacting a receiver’s
opportunity to catch the ball,
is a spot foul that results in
an automatic frst down.
Even so, defenses still lost
only 17.4 yards per game
from PI calls this season. The
trade-of is so advantageous
that, in the Legion of Boom,
interference fags don’t mean
you’re sloppy or undisci-
plined—they mean you’re
doing your job. “You have to
go for it and play as aggres-
sively as you can,” says Earl
Thomas, Seattle’s All-Pro
safety. “If that means a PI
call goes against you, so be
it.” Adds teammate Richard
Sherman: “Maybe years ago
it would have been better to
back of and not risk that
30-yard penalty. You just
can’t do that anymore.”
On Super Sunday, the
Seahawks DBs will meet their
match in Denver’s crafty
wideouts. Broncos receiver
Eric Decker drew fve PI calls
this year, tied for third most
in the NFL, and Wes Welker
had a dubious divisional
round fourth-quarter fop in
a win over San Diego. Most
observers thought it was
inadvertent contact between
Welker and safety Marcus
Gilchrist; refs said it was a
23-yard foul.
The reality is, however,
that refs usually are reluctant
to toss an interference fag in
a game’s critical moments.
Take, for example, the most
5-1D O N ’ T L O A D T H E B O X
Since 2006, Super Bowl ofenses that faced a loaded box on more than 20% of snaps are 5–1. The reason? Overall, the
stats from the past seven Super Bowls indicate that crowding the line of scrimmage with more defenders than the
ofense has blockers nearly triples the likelihood that the ofense will score a touchdown on that play.
S I X W A Y S
T O W I N T H E
S U P E R B O W L 2
WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF THE NUMBER
OF PASS INTERFERENCE CALLS IN THE
NFL THIS SEASON?
TOTAL VOTES: 16,905 through Jan. 17
Not enough
Too many
Just the right amount
37.7%
47.2%
15.1%
Once pass interference is called, how good are
refs at spotting the ball? We analyzed tape
of 167 PI calls from 2013, respotting each
ball where it should have been placed. The
verdict: Refs get PI spots wrong by at least one yard 71.9% of the time. Often it’s much
more than a yard (24.6% of calls were
three-plus yards of), and that matters—
especially in the Super Bowl. —KC JOYNER
71.9%
30 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
THROWING DOWNQBs threw more than 18,000 passes in 2013, and ESPN Stats & information tracked where and how far each one traveled and whether the pass was completed. The result is a comprehensive look at the strengths and weaknesses of every QB and pass defense. The grids below plot the completion
percentages of Russell Wilson and Peyton Manning, along with what the defenses they’ll face on Super Sunday allowed in the regular season.
SEAHAWKS BRONCOS
1 0 2 0 3 0
1 0 2 0 3 0
Lin
e o
f sc
rimm
ag
e
1 0 2 0 3 0
1 0 2 0 3 0
Lin
e o
f sc
rimm
ag
e
61 72 78 7163 69 75 6152 34 39 37
N/A* 55 82 6772 70 73 73N/A* 39 77 N/A*
60 56 67 4975 57 71 6149 38 39 38
Behind the line Behind the line0-15 yards 0-15 yards15+ yards 15+ yards
RUSSELL WILSON VS. BRONCOS DEFENSE PEYTON MANNING VS. SEAHAWKS DEFENSE
Wilson’s 16.6 ypa on these
throws is second in the NFL. Denver has allowed
637 yards here, second worst.
Manning’s 5 TDs on these throws is tops in the league. Seattle faced
only three such passes this
season.
1 WR Wes Welker (1A) and TE Julius Thomas (1B) run basic underneath routes. The goal is to draw the attention of the LBs and FS (1C). If the D backs of either player, Manning has an easy completion.
2 Because of his 14.8 ypc average, WR Eric Decker (2A) forces the
PICK YOUR POISONPeyton Manning’s record-setting season—5,477 yards and 55 TDs—was paved by plays like this iso and go. It’s impossible to cover all four Denver pass catchers. All it takes is one faulty move by the D and the Broncos are ripping of yet another big play. —FIELD YATES
nickel corner (2B) and SS (2C) to account for the deep ball.
3 Demaryius Thomas (14 TDs, second in the NFL) has been the true target all along. If everything goes to plan, Manning will have Thomas isolated one-on-one with nothing but green in front of him.
THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE MATCHUP
2.11S TA R T T H E S E C O N D H A L F W I T H T H E B A L L
Since 2001, teams have averaged 2.11 points per drive in the second half of the Super Bowl, compared with
just 1.52 points per drive in the frst half—a 39% diference. Post-halftime drives have netted nearly 5% fewer
points in the regular season over that same span.
S I X W A Y S
T O W I N T H E
S U P E R B O W L 3
2A
2C2B
1B1A
3
1C
*Sections listed as N/A did not meet the minimum attempt threshold.
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32 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014 GREG TROTT/AP IMAGES
Wins by Peyton Manning in nine career outdoor starts played in freezing temps since 2001. That’s the fewest of any QB with at least eight such starts over that span. FYI: It’s supposed to be a little nippy in New Jersey on Super Sunday.
3
DO NOT PASSIn this era of quick-strike QBs, it should come as no surprise that six of the past eight Super Bowl winners have boasted above- average pass D’s. As the chart shows, that gives the Seahawks’ top-ranked pass D the advantage over the Broncos’ 27th-ranked unit.
BR
ON
CO
S
SE
AH
AW
KS
LE
AG
UE
AV
ER
AG
E
172
254.4
235.6
4:51C O N T R O L T H E C L O C K
The past 12 Super Bowl winners have had, on average, a time of possession advantage of 4:51, and teams
that control the clock are 9–3 in the big game since 2001. That .750 winning percentage is higher than even
the .678 mark compiled by teams with a positive time of possession margin in the regular season since ’01.
S I X W A Y S
T O W I N T H E
S U P E R B O W L 4
KNOWSHON MORENO, BRONCOS4 . 3 YA R D S P E R C A R RY
MARSHAWN LYNCH, SEAHAWKS4 . 2 YA R D S P E R C A R RY
SEAHAWKS DEFENSE3 . 9 YA R D S P E R C A R RY A L LOW E D
BRONCOS DEFENSE3 . 9 YA R D S P E R C A R RY A L LOW E D
5.8
4.9
4.4
4 .2 4 .2
4.1
3 .5
5 .6
3 .5
5 .3
4.5
2 .5
5 .0
3 .2
4.3
5 .3
3 .1
4 .4
4 .23 .7
WHERE TO RUNKnowshon Moreno’s 5.7 yards per carry on runs outside the tackles ranked second among all RBs with 40 such carries this season, and it just so happens the Seahawks’ No. 7 rush defense is weak of left tackle. The Broncos D usually controls the middle well, but Marshawn Lynch is a beast up the gut: He has 737 carries inside the tackles since 2011, most in the NFL.
All yards-per-carry numbers from the regular season.
Passing ypg allowed
IF PEYTON MANNING WINS ANOTHER SUPER BOWL, WHERE WILL HE RANK AMONG THE BEST QBS OF ALL TIME?
28%
TOTAL VOTES: 21,568 through Jan. 19
25%
NO. 2
OUTSIDE THE TOP TWO
NO. 1
47%
Tow. Haul. Build anyTHing.
toyota.com/tundra Prototype shown with options. Production model may vary. ©2013 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.
34 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014 GREG TROTT/AP IMAGES
RING OF TRUTHPlaying in the Super Bowl is no doubt the pinnacle of an NFL player’s career. But at what price? In a poll of more than 300 players conducted by ESPN.com’s NFL Nation reporters, an overwhelming majority admitted they’d play in the title game even with a concussion.
85%
T R U E O R FA L S E I’D PLAY IN THE SUPER BOWL
WITH A CONCUSSION.
BOMBS AWAY
THE AGE-OLD QUESTION: YOUTH
VS. EXPERIENCE
Anyone who’s written of the read-option hasn’t watched the Seahawks lately. They’re averaging 4.8 ypc on read-option rushes, and perhaps more important, the scheme is also efective at loosening the secondary
and opening up the vertical passing game, as shown in this play. —FIELD YATES
1 RB Marshawn Lynch (1A) was second in the NFL with 301 carries in 2013, so the D can’t ignore the possibility that QB Russell Wilson (1B) will hand the ball to Lynch rather than keep it. When neither happens, the defense is left scrambling.
2 WR Jermaine Kearse (2A) runs
a seam route, which draws the attention of the free safety (2B).
3 Despite his 5'10" frame, Golden Tate is a great jump-ball WR. With Kearse distracting the FS, Tate is left one-on-one up the sideline. Tate has 4.42 speed, so that’s a tough cover for any CB.
Don’t expect the frst punt return TD in Super Bowl history to happen against Seattle. It allowed 82 total punt return yards in 2013, fourth fewest of any Super Bowl team since 1978.
82
6.1L E AV E T H E B L I T Z E S O N T H E B U S
Since 2006, defenses have employed a standard pass rush on nearly 75% of QB dropbacks in the
Super Bowl. The reason? Bringing four or fewer pass rushers nets a sack on 6.1% of dropbacks—
nearly double the 3.2% sack rate when D’s blitz.
S I X W A Y S
T O W I N T H E
S U P E R B O W L 5
PEYTON MANNING, DEN
RUSSELL WILSON, SEA
240
32208
2 0 1 3
SUPER BOWL
XLVIII
FRAN TARKENTON, MIN
KEN STABLER, OAK
214
511631 9 7 6
SUPER BOWL
XI
JOHNNY UNITAS, BAL (COLTS)
CRAIG MORTON, DAL
172
291431 9 7 0
SUPER BOWL
V
FRAN TARKENTON, MIN
TERRY BRADSHAW, PIT
187
511361 9 7 4
SUPER BOWL
IX
JOHN ELWAY, DEN
CHRIS CHANDLER, ATL
219
981211 9 9 8
SUPER BOWL
XXXIII
As the chart shows, this Super Bowl features the largest experience disparity between
starting QBs in NFL history. But consider this: Since 1999, nine QBs in their 20s have won
Super Bowls; none over age 35 has. Advantage: Russell Wilson.
DIFFERENCE IN STARTS
STARTS BY MORE EXPERIENCED QB
STARTS BY LESS EXPERIENCED QB
1A1B
2A
3
2B
GO BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE 10TH PUPPY BOWL: ES.PN/
PUPPYBOWL2014
For more results from the NFL Nation Confdential, go to es.pn/1aBURkS Only regular season starts included; Source: Elias Sports Bureau
T R U E
photograph by JOHN LOOMIS 36 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
The distinguished gentleman settles into
his chair in a hotel dining room, eyes his
breakfast companion the way he did
middle linebackers 40 years ago and says
with a slight smile: “This isn’t going to be
about race, is it? I would much rather it
be about the importance of opportunity.”
Then James Harris turns to the waiter
and says, “I’ll have the oatmeal, please.”
With all due respect, the story of James
“Shack” Harris, now a senior personnel exec
for the Lions, is very much about race. In
1969, a year before the NFL-AFL merger,
Harris started Week 1 for the AFL’s Bills, the
frst black quarterback to do so in either
league. The headline previewing that game
in the Sept. 10 New York Times read: jets
are likely to face harris, bills’ negro
passer, on sunday. Put another way, his
story is about the door he left ajar so Super
Bowl QBs Doug Williams, Steve McNair,
Donovan McNabb, Colin Kaepernick and
Russell Wilson could push it open. To think,
this season began with nine black starters
under center, the most in NFL history, and
ended with two of them fghting for a Super
Bowl berth. In 1974 Harris became the frst
black QB to even start a playof game.
So if you thought it was headline news
when 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh pulled
Alex Smith for Kaepernick in 2012, imagine
1974, when Rams coach Chuck Knox
traded John Hadl, the 1973 NFC player
of the year, midseason and started Harris.
For the next two seasons as the Rams’
No. 1 QB, Harris endured a death threat,
front ofce politics and thinly veiled racism.
What follows are remembrances of
those on or around the Rams when, as
Harris recalls, “all hell broke loose.”
RON JAWORSKI RAMS ROOKIE QB THEN, ESPN ANALYST NOW
I was excited to get to camp. I’d followed
Hadl’s career and I’d seen Harris play in
Bufalo. I was a Bills season-ticket holder.
Section 23, Row 13, Seat 3.
JOHN HADL
RAMS STARTER THEN, KANSAS ASSOCIATE AD NOW
The Chargers traded me after 11 seasons,
but my two years with the Rams were the
best time I ever had in football. I loved
Shack and Jaws. Going over at weigh-in
cost $100 a pound, a lot of money then.
WHEN RUSSELL WILSON STARTS SUPER BOWL XLVIII,
FANS WON’T BAT AN EYE. BUT WHEN JAMES HARRIS STARTED A PLAYOFF
GAME IN 1974, AMERICA WASN’T SO COLORBLIND. By Steve Wulf
“ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE”
SUPER BOWL XLVIII PREVIEW
38 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014 NFL PHOTOS/AP IMAGES
Well, you can take of 6 pounds if the guy
behind you lifts up your buttocks with his
fsts. Shack and I did it all the time.
CHUCK KNOX*
RAMS COACH, 1973-77
My second season begins, and we win three
of our frst fve games. This would be fne for
most teams, but it meant we had already
lost as many games as in all of 1973. And in
the public’s and management’s eyes, that
meant trouble. Coach Dan Devine of Green
Bay calls. He sounds as desperate as I’m
starting to feel. He says he needs a quarter-
back. Bad. He needs our MVP, John Hadl.
*Knox’s quotes from Hard Knox, his 1988 autobiography.
HARRIS I was trying to fgure out how I ft
in. Hadl was the present, Jaws the future.
Then Chuck gave me the news—I thought,
Does he know I’m black? After I got home,
my phone started ringing of the hook.
WARREN MOON
STAR QB AT LA’S HAMILTON HIGH SCHOOL THEN, NFL HALL OF FAME QUARTERBACK NOW
I was a huge Rams fan, and to suddenly
have an African-American quarterback
I could look up to was great. We’d go to
training camp and sneak into the Coliseum
through a fence to see him in preseason.
He had tremendous arm strength, but I
really tried to emulate how he stood in the
pocket, so tall and calm. I frst met Shack at
the University of Washington, but he came
to see me at West LA College. He later told
me he watched from his car because he
didn’t want to cause a commotion.
On Oct. 20, 1974, in his frst Rams start,
Harris threw for three TDs and ran for one
in a 37-14 rout of the 49ers. He went on to
lead the NFC in passer rating (85.1) and
made his only Pro Bowl as LA won seven of
its last nine games. Harris also led a 19-10
playof win over the Redskins to set up the
NFC championship game at Minnesota.
KNOX We’re down late 14-10. It’s second
and goal from the 6-inch line. I call a QB
sneak. [Defensive tackle] Alan Page jumps
ofside, but the umpire says [guard] Tom
Mack has drawn Page ofside. Now we’re
at the 5-yard, 6-inch line. We run a couple
of yards and then try a surprise pass.
The ball is tipped, then intercepted.
HARRIS I still go to sleep trying to fgure
out a way to win that game.
KNOX Instead of blaming the ref, or even
Mack, the fans and some media had the
audacity to blame him for that call.
Blamed it on what they thought was his
sometimes-ofbeat signal cadence. Can you
imagine that? Maybe by then fans had
realized that James Harris really was our
starting quarterback. Since they didn’t like
him, they had to fnd something against
him. And that’s how it started.
JAWORSKI In ’75 I get to our room before a
game and he’s clearly nervous. Some club
ofcial told him they were beefng up
security after a death threat. Not to make
light, but I told him maybe I should ride
with [running back] Rob Scribner. We
couldn’t aford to lose both quarterbacks.
HARRIS That was the longest night of my
life. We had security outside the door.
They escorted me to the game. Man, I ran
through that tunnel to the feld as fast as
I could. I don’t remember much about the
game. But I do remember running fast
through the tunnel on the way out.
KNOX After the 1975 season, owner Carroll
Rosenbloom invited [wife] Shirley and
me to one of his infamous dinner parties.
I think Jonathan Winters and Ricardo
Montalban were there. With this spark in
his eye, he said: “Let’s play a game. Let’s
vote on who we want for president this
year, and then, just for fun, we’ll vote on
who we want for Rams quarterback.” So he
passed around these little pieces of paper
and everybody voted. Shirley and I were
the only ones who voted for James Harris.
SKIP BAYLESS
LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITER THEN, CO-HOST OF ESPN’S FIRST TAKE NOW
The 1976 season was total chaos. You
literally would not know who was starting
until the morning of the game. Shack
had the players’ backing, and Jaws was
getting antsy because of his potential. But
Rosenbloom favored [rookie] Pat Haden.
It was pretty clear that he and GM Don
Klosterman were pulling the strings.
KNOX We’re heading to Miami for a game
scheduled on the Jewish holiday Yom
Kippur. Rosenbloom raised all kinds of
hell with commissioner Pete Rozelle about
not honoring a Jewish religious event. We
play anyway, and after being down 21-7,
Harris throws for [436 yards] and we win
31-28. Afterward Rosenbloom, in a big
show in the locker room, kisses Harris on
the cheek and says, “Great job, from one
member of a minority to another.” Five
games later, Harris is benched.
HARRIS The Rams made me, but they
also ruined me. I was never the same. My
passion, my motivation was gone. After
all I’d been through, I didn’t want to go
through it anymore.
LAWRENCE MCCUTCHEON
RAMS PRO BOWL RB THEN, RAMS NATIONAL SCOUT NOW
He’d done everything humanly possible to
win the job. He was worn down by the
whims of the front ofce, fed up with the
racism of the fans. Any of us would have
said the same thing had we gone through
what he went through: What’s the use?
KNOX I think James Harris could have
been one of the NFL’s all-time great
quarterbacks.
Harris, 21–6 as the Rams starter,
never won over the front ofce.
FOR THE FULL STORY ON SHACK, GO TO
ESPN.COM AND SEARCH: JAMES HARRIS MAG
BLACK QBs IN
THE PLAYOFFS
STARTS
TOTAL QBs
JAMES HARRIS
50T H R O W T H E B A L L O U T S I D E T H E N U M B E R S
Six of the past seven Super Bowls have been won by teams whose quarterbacks have thrown
more than 50% of their passes outside the numbers. Why, you ask? Since 2006, passes
toward the boundaries have a 1.3% INT rate, compared with 4.5% on throws inside the numbers.
S I X W A Y S
T O W I N T H E
S U P E R B O W L 6
Compiled from an informal study; Super Bowl XLVIII not included in 2013 starts total.
1974
1975
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6
What does being
lucky feel like? Let me
check...hmm, sorta
smooth and round.
“
”
A Nut
Above
the RestOnly 1 in 100 peanuts is lucky enough to
become a delicious M&M’S®
Peanut. And being one of a
kind is what makes Yellow
America’s favorite nut.
Photography by Martin Wonnacott
©
®/TM trademarks ©Mars, Incorporated 2013
facebook.com/mms
40 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
PLAYBOOK VISUALS
COLLECTION
NO, YOU’RE NOT IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE.
THESE CHAMPIONSHIP TEES REALLY
EXIST, EVEN IF YOU’LL PROBABLY
NEVER WEAR THEM.
Somewhere in the world, the 2007 Patriots really did go
undefeated. With Bill Belichick’s squad 35 seconds from winning
Super Bowl XLII, thousands of “19–0, Perfect Season” tees were
set to be released. But all of the Pats items, including the gear
from their Super Bowl XLVI rematch, made their way to World
Vision. Every year since the mid-1990s, the nonproft has donated
thousands of preprinted “championship” T-shirts, hats and other
merchandise from every major league to the underprivileged
around the globe. (The items would otherwise be destroyed.)
Good luck getting your hands on anything: The leagues strictly
forbid the donated goods from being sold in the U.S. So
here, anyway, the ’07 Patriots will always be 18–1.
—ANNA KATHERINE CLEMMONS
photographs by THOMAS LIGGETT
Did you know? Your subscription includes FREE Insider, the
all-access pass to ESPN’s premium digital content.
For full access, go to:
ESPN.COM/ACTIVATE
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photograph by DUSTIN SNIPES42 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
PLAYBOOK BODY SHOT
NBA
“Growing up, I was short and
chubby, but as I got into high
school and started growing,
I got tall and skinny. Once I
entered college, I started hit-
ting the weights and building
muscle. To take care of my
body, I make sure I eat right.
I don’t eat meat, I stay away
from carbs, I eat yogurt and I
drink a lot of water and almond
milk. Being able to take
contact is really important
in basketball. You have to
be strong to go up against
seven-footers every night. I
need to be able to penetrate
and attack the basket, so
having strong shoulders and
abs is key. For training, I like
to do P90X. It’s fun! One day
you’re doing legs; the next
you’re doing back; three times
a week I do abs. It’s pretty
intense. I also love hot yoga.
It takes the stress away.”
PISTONS GUARD
RODNEY STUCKEY,
27, ON STAYING FIT
FOR CONTACT:
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PETER G. A IKEN/GETTY IMAGES
PLAYBOOK COLLEGE BASKETBALL
You had a big season last year after
joining the Shockers as a transfer.
Why’d you choose a New York junior
college [Sullivan County CC] over
a bigger program?
I had interest from a number of
Division I schools coming out of prep
school in 2010. But that summer, my
older brother [Jamel Glover] drowned
in the Hudson River extension—he
was swimming, jumping of the
docks. He was like a father fgure to
me. He protected me, had my back
and gave me comfort. I didn’t want to
be too far from home after that,
so I chose a juco 45 minutes away.
How’d you hear about his death?
I was at my friend’s crib. It was a
summer day. It was so sunny. And
then as soon as I got that call, the
weather changed. It got nasty out.
There was a storm. We had to
go identify the body upriver where
they had recovered it. It was awful.
I can see it like it was yesterday.
What were things like after that?
My mom was a single mom.
Everything wasn’t all peachy. But
there was love. I play for him. I
play for my mom, my grandma,
people who have my back. I don’t
take anything for granted. I live
for a purpose.
Is that what your daily tweet—
“Thank God for today”—is about?
I’ve done that every day since prep
school. It’s something so simple.
It is a reminder to be appreciative
and grateful for what we have.
During your recruiting trip to
Wichita, you got stuck there due
to Hurricane Irene. How did that
infuence your choice?
It was crazy—I was here an extra
four or fve days. It went past the
glamour of the two days when they
do the meet and greet; I was a part
Nothing about Cleanthony Early is conventional. Not his name, not his road to
Wichita State and not his decision to stick around for his senior season—one in
which the Wooden Award candidate leads the Shockers in scoring. Fitting, really:
Wichita State is on a winning ride that’s anything but typical. —ANDY KATZ
of the program. Everyone thought
I was going to San Diego State,
but I wanted to be at a place that
was under the radar. I wanted
to go somewhere where we could
shock the nation.
What’s it like playing for coach
Gregg Marshall?
He’s intense, but there is a method
to the madness. You’ve got to believe
in the system as much as you believe
in yourself. If you’re not diving on
the foor, you’re not playing.
How did last season’s surprise Final
Four run change Wichita State?
People knew us before, but now we
can’t go anywhere. Even when I go
back home now, everyone knows me.
They want to take pictures and sign
autographs every time we go out.
There were reports that you
were considering turning pro after
that. Why did you return for your
senior year?
I had so much more to learn and
improve and understand. I knew
I could increase my stock and could
get in a position to think like a pro.
I also knew we could be so much
better than we were.
How is this Wichita State team
[17–0 through Jan. 13] better than
that Final Four team?
We rebound just as good and our
defense is just as good, but I feel like
we can score better than that team.
What are the Shockers’ chances
to win the national title?
If we can continue to work, then
the only team that can beat
Wichita State is Wichita State.
I don’t see nothing stopping us.
You don’t have to have the better
team in March Madness. You
just need to stay hungry and stay
humble and continue to fght.
We want to play angry. We feel we
belong. We’re Wichita State.
K ATZ KORNER
“WE COULD SHOCK THE NATION”
SEE THE MANY SIDES OF JAY
BILAS IN THE COMING WEEKS
AS HE GOES ONE-ON-ONE
WITH THE VERY PLAYERS
IMMORTALIZED ATOP THE
WOODEN AWARD TROPHY.
WOODENAWARDVOTE.COM
WATCH
JAY BILAS AND THE
WOODEN
AWARD 5
EARLY SCORES 1.394 PPP* IN TRANSITION—PLACING HIM IN THE 89TH
PERCENTILE AMONG D1 PLAYERS.
CHECK OUT KATZ KORNER
TUESDAYS AT 1 P.M. ET ON ESPNU
*THROUGH JAN. 13
INTERNATIONAL RINK
STANDARD NHL RINK
The blue lines are six feet closer on inter-national ice, so defensemen will shoot closer from the point.
The NHL surface is 200 feet by 85 feet, while international
rinks are 15 feet wider and the neutral zone is eight feet
deeper. Most of the extra space
is on the outside and behind the
net. “You can lose your angles
a little bit on the bigger ice,”
Richter says.
“Good players can take five or six steps from here and build speed by the time they get to the net, making them hard to defend,” Richter says.
RINKS CHEAT SHEET: NHL VS. OLYMPIC
PLAYBOOK NHL
FROM LEFT: JUAN OCAMPO/NHLI/GETTY IMAGES; RYAN REMIORZ/THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP IMAGES;
WILL SCHNEEKLOTH/ICON SMI; JOHN TLUMACKI/THE BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES; TONY GUTIERREZ/AP IMAGES
46 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
BIG ICE, BIG PROBLEMSTHE LARGER SURFACE IN SOCHI COULD AGAIN STYMIE THE U.S. AND CANADA, WHOSE GOALIES HAVE SLIPPED UP ACROSS THE POND. By Ben Arledge
Since NHL players frst laced up for the Olympics in 1998, Games held outside of North
America have not been kind to teams from the U.S. and Canada. But it’s not the language
barrier or the foreign cuisine that’s the issue. It’s the larger surface. Like Nagano in 1998
and Torino in 2006 —where both the Americans and Canadians failed to medal—the
Sochi Games will be played on international ice, which is 15% bigger than an NHL-size rink
(see right). “The larger ice favors skill,” says Mike Richter, who tended net for the U.S. on
rinks of both sizes over three Olympics, winning silver in Salt Lake City in 2002. “A guy like
Alex Ovechkin or Evgeni Malkin or Sidney Crosby will have more ice to work with.” That extra
room tests the positioning and timing of goalies accustomed to cozier surfaces, and their
ability to adjust to the diferent angles depends much on their style. For example, those
who play out beyond the crease—such as the U.S.’s aggressive trio of Jonathan Quick,
Ryan Miller and Jimmy Howard—must make reads and react on shorter notice. By contrast,
those goalies who stay deep in the net, like Sweden’s Henrik Lundqvist, are rarely caught out
of position because they can more easily recover in the fast-paced, east-west style of play.
But as Miller proved in 2010, when he posted a stellar .946 save percentage over six games,
a hot hand in net is key regardless of surface. “The Olympic tournament is short and
extraordinarily intense,” Richter says. “You need a goalie to catch fre and ride him.”
CANADASWEDEN, FINLAND,
RUSSIAUNITED STATES,
2.32 2.08
1.97 2.28
1998 (NAGANO) AND 2006 (TORINO)
2002 (SALT LAKE CITY) AND 2010 (VANCOUVER)
OLYMPIC GOALS-AGAINST AVERAGES
OLYMPIC EXPERIENCE
STANLEY CUP CHAMPION
VEZINA TROPHYWINNER
DEEP IN
THE CREASEEach contender will have familiar names between the pipes.
UNITED STATES
Jonathan Quick
Ryan Miller
Jimmy Howard
CANADA
Carey Price
Roberto Luongo
Mike Smith
SWEDEN
Henrik Lundqvist
Jonas Gustavsson
Jhonas Enroth
FINLAND
Tuukka Rask
Antti Niemi
Kari Lehtonen
RUSSIA
Semyon Varlamov
Sergei Bobrovsky
Alexander Yeryomenko
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DARRON CUMMINGS/AP IMAGES; SCOTT BARBOUR/GETTY IMAGES; SUSAN MULLANE/USA TODAY SPORTS; MATTHEW STOCKMAN/GETTY IMAGES
48 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
PLAYBOOK TENNIS
21
ROGER FEDERERSERENA WILLIAMS
WILSON BLADE 104
After a straight-sets loss
to Caroline Wozniacki in
March 2012, Williams asked
Wilson about switching to
the strings Federer uses.
She tried the mix of natural
gut and synthetic strings
he favored, then switched to
a new synthetic string
the company hadn’t
released yet. Since then,
she has gone 130–4.
WILSON PROTOTYPE
Frustrated after his ranking
slipped to No. 5, Federer
switched from a 90-inch
racket to a 98-incher after
the French Open last year.
But a 3–2 record had him
quickly reversing course.
After failing to improve
his standing, Federer
announced in December
he’d be using the 98-incher
at the Australian Open.
ANDY MURRAY
HEAD YOUTEK GRAPHENE
RADICAL PRO
98-square-inch head16x19 pattern, 310 g Switched to a lighter
racket in 2013.
RAFAEL NADAL
BABOLAT AEROPRO DRIVE 2013
100-square-inch head 16x19 pattern, 300 g
Seeking even more topspin, he changed rackets in 2013.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC
HEAD YOUTEK GRAPHENE
SPEED PRO
100-square-inch head18x20 pattern, 315 g
Switched deal from Wilson to Head in 2009.
VICTORIA AZARENKA
WILSON JUICE 100 BLX
100-square-inch head16x18 pattern, 304 g
Switched deal from Head to Wilson in 2012.
LI NA
BABOLAT PURE DRIVE GT
100-square-inch head16x19 pattern, 300 g
A heavier racket helps make her one of tennis’s hardest hitters.
WHY TWO LEGENDS
SWITCHED RACKETS
TO SUPERCHARGE
THEIR CAREERS.
By Kevin Fixler
Last year Serena Williams had
one of the greatest of her 17
seasons: trophies at the French
and U.S. Opens, 11 titles and 45
weeks in a row at No. 1. At 32,
she is the oldest woman ever to
top the rankings.
Williams credits a return to
top form in part to a change in
racket strings. Inspired by Roger
Federer’s control, Williams went
from all-natural gut strings to a
mix of natural and synthetic in
March 2012.
Meanwhile, Federer, also 32,
has switched back and forth
from 90- to 98-square-inch
racket heads over the past year,
with mixed results. He started
this year at No. 6 in the world and
with the 98-inch model he tried
last summer. Maybe he holds out
hope that his new gear can make
up for his not-so-new body.
Here’s a look at how the two
icons’ new rackets are serving
(or not serving) them well.
i l lustrat ion by CHRIS PHILPOT
4⅜" GRIP
UNKNOWN WEIGHT A heavier racket
provides more power and stability and
transfers less shock to Federer’s body.
27" LONG
289 g UNSTRUNG A lighter racket is more
maneuverable, and Williams can swing
it faster.
4⅝" GRIP
104-INCH HEAD
A larger head brings more power to Williams and is more forgiving on mishits due to a larger
sweet spot.
18x19 PATTERN
A tighter string pattern provides increased control and longer
string life.
27.5" LONG
16x19 PATTERN A more open pattern
allows for more spin on the ball but can lead to more broken strings.
98-INCH HEAD What a smaller racket face lacks in power, it
makes up for in control.
Whether as part of an endorsement deal or to fx part of
their game, most players try a diferent racket at least once.
IN WITH THE NEW
STRING THEORIES
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02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 51
WHAT TO ASK THE RULER? Last summer I joined the presidential press pool in Sochi,
Russia, the home of February’s Olympics. Russian president—and self-appointed Sochi
Games manager—Vladimir Putin was in town to christen an Olympic hockey rink and
watch a junior game between the U.S. and Russia. The woman from his press ofce said
I would have the chance to ask him a question. This was a signifcant proposal. Putin
holds just one press conference a year, and even that is more like an autograph
session. • I hopped inside the van outside the Sochi Breeze Spa Hotel, near the eastern
coast of the Black Sea. I was the only foreigner. The rest were journalists from state-
controlled TV. We drove along Sochi’s winding main road, past the construction zones
that had plagued this resort town for the past seven years, past Olympic rings, 20 feet
high, set among a tangle of new highway overpasses. My foreign colleagues were sociable,
and we conversed in Russian. It wasn’t long, however, before they pressed me to answer
for America’s shortcomings: the NSA’s gathering of personal data, Barack Obama’s
THE DEFIANT STRONGMAN OF A DETERMINED NATION, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN IS PULLING
OUT ALL THE STOPS TO DOMINATE THE WEST WITH HIS OLYMPIC SHOW. By Brett Forrest
HIS GAMESTO WIN OR LOSE
SOCHI
OLYMPICSPREVIEW
Several men in dark suits
ran us through a body
scanner. The detector
emitted a few beeps and
blips, but no one seemed to
pay much attention.
We waited in the hockey
rink’s press room for a few
hours, but no sign of Putin.
He is a notorious dawdler.
He has kept the pope
waiting for him. Queen
Elizabeth too. He is also
tautly disciplined. He carries
himself with controlled
menace and rarely smiles.
When he walks into a room
and coolly levels his gaze at
those gathered around him,
this is no act. His opponents
have routinely wound up in
exile or in prison. In Putin,
there is nothing of a Western
political leader, the perpetual
candidate who charms his
public, conveying a person-
able disposition. Putin is in
charge, and he doesn’t care
what anybody thinks.
This delay gave me
plenty of time to consider
my question. Maybe I
should ask: How will
these Olympics afect the
international perception of
Russia and your leadership?
After all, Putin has concocted
a story for his people, that
he is the one man strong
enough to defend Russian
territory and values against
the Western invaders.
sinking approval rating.
Having lived in Russia from
2003 to 2008, I was used
to these types of questions.
I just smiled. I had other
things to consider.
Hoping to strike the right
balance, professional but
probing, I thought I might
ask Putin: What is the
meaning of the Sochi
Olympics for the Russian
people? Then I imagined he
would purse his lips, as he is
known to do upon felding a
dull question, and quack out
a pat reply. That wouldn’t do.
As one of my colleagues
asked me why I wanted to go
to war with Syria, I thought
I should ask Putin something
as provocative. There was no
shortage of material.
These are Putin’s Games,
after all, a product of the
ego, built by blunt com-
mand. The command is to
construct a stage on which
the style of Putin’s “managed
democracy” will enlighten
the world. Yet as the
Olympics approach, that
stage sure is getting
crowded. The Russian
parliament recently ratifed
a bill, signed by Putin, that
outlaws gay propaganda. And
just 200 miles north over
the Caucasus Mountains,
the leaders of Russia’s
Islamic insurgency have
pledged to disrupt the
Olympics with terrorist
violence. Every country has
its troubles, but given
Russia’s theatrical scope,
here problems assume
dramatic proportions.
We arrived at the coastal
cluster, a collection of ice
rinks where the skating
competitions will take place.
PAGE 50: ALEXEI DRUZHININ/RIA NOVOSTI/AP IMAGES; THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE LEFT: DMITRY ASTAKHOV/ITAR-TASS/ZUMA PRESS;
ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/ITAR-TASS/ZUMA PRESS; ALEXEI DRUZHININ/RIA NOVOSTI/AP IMAGES; ALEXEI DRUZHININ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
52 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
Putin’s photo ops
are meant to
project an aptitude
for mastering
difcult skills,
but he can portray
the fearless,
resourceful leader
a bit too lustily.
THE STORY HE HAS CONCOCTED FOR HIS PEOPLE IS THAT HE
ALONE CAN DEFEND RUSSIAN VALUES FROM WESTERN INVADERS.
surprised most everyone—to
the International Olympic
Committee in Guatemala.
He then pledged $12 billion
from the state budget to
build the Sochi Olympics
from scratch. (The 2010
Vancouver Olympics cost
$7 billion.) The frst of that
$12 billion fowed into Sochi
from the state starting in
late 2007, funding the
construction of ski resorts,
roadways, rinks and power
plants. It soon became
clear that Putin’s estimate
would have to be adjusted.
Considerably. Last February
RIA Novosti, Russia’s state
media service, announced
that the Olympics had cost
the government $50 billion,
transforming Sochi into
the most expensive
Olympics ever.
When he assumed power
in 1999, after a calamitous
decade in which his
predecessor, Boris Yeltsin,
devolved into a bumbling
alcoholic, Putin brought
stability to his country,
relative to the period that
preceded his presidency.
That much is indisputable.
Principally, he accomplished
this because of rising global
oil prices (Russia projects to
be No. 3 in the world for oil
production in 2013) and his
re-establishment of state
rule over business. He also
clamped down on political
opposition and the free
press, peddling his concept
of state control to the
populace over Kremlin-
owned TV. Increasingly, he
used the imagery of sports to
communicate his vigor to his
people, from his longtime
practice of judo to his recent
conducting his press
conference, and I was free to
take notes. I looked around
the room, searching for
support from my Russian
colleagues. There was none.
One cameraman pointed his
lens at the TV screen and
began to record.
AS PUTIN ENTERS his 15th
year in a position of power,
he has never been more
securely in control of Russia.
Part of this is by design, part
plain coincidence, condi-
tions having conspired to
make Putin appear to be the
world’s craftiest statesman.
The onetime KGB ofcer
and former prime minister
has faced down the U.S. on
Syria, defusing the chemical-
weapons controversy, and
also the EU on Ukraine,
lending Kiev $15 billion to
remain in the Russian
sphere. He has granted
asylum to Edward Snowden,
the NSA whistle-blower. He
has trivialized a domestic
opposition movement. In
October Forbes named him
the most powerful person in
the world. He leapfrogged
Obama in the rankings,
and how much fun that
must have been for Putin, a
virtual unknown when he
was appointed president in
1999. Now the West, and
the rest of the world, will
be compelled to come to
Sochi to live under his
decree for a while.
Like almost no national
leader before him, Putin has
expended personal capital on
these Olympics. In 2007 he
presented Russia’s Olympic
bid—speaking in both
English and French, which
Russian victories at Sochi
will prove this.
The press woman led us
upstairs to watch the game.
Then Putin appeared, down
at center ice, his voice
emanating from the PA
system. The press woman
promised we would see him
after the game. Now what
I wanted to ask Putin was:
Will I ever see you?
The fnal buzzer sounded
and we hurried to a
conference room. We waited
more. I peeked through the
doorway and down the hall.
There I saw the great
commotion that attends the
approach of a very impor-
tant person. The moment
was nearly upon me, and
I inhaled deeply.
Several large security men
barged into the room. “Get
out,” they barked. They
ushered us into a storage
room and closed the door.
There were a few chairs
there, a small TV and a box
of chocolate marshmallow
bars. The press woman
ficked on the TV, and the
image on the screen was of
the conference room we had
just left. A group of men
fltered into the room, Putin
bringing up the rear. Seated
at the conference table, he
spoke with a measured tone.
He said he was proud of the
Russian victory in the game
that had just ended. This
was a good sign, a harbinger
of Olympic victory.
I asked the press woman
why we had been ejected
from the conference room.
Her face tightened. She
spoke to me as though I
failed to grasp the utility of
my situation. Putin was
FROM TOP: THE YOMIURI SHIMBUN/AP IMAGES; MICHAEL HEIMAN/GETTY IMAGES; THE YOMIURI SHIMBUN/AP IMAGES54 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
COST AND EFFECTPUTIN SPARED NO EXPENSE WHEN IT CAME TO PREPPING RUSSIA FOR
THE WORLD STAGE. HERE’S A LOOK AT WHAT $50 BILLION CAN BUY.
BOLSHOY ICE DOME This 12,000-seat arena is one of two venues that will host hockey. The other, Shayba Arena (below), sits 1,000 feet away.
COASTAL CLUSTER The six venues in Adler, which include both hockey arenas, were designed for a fve-minute commute to the Olympic Village.
$303M
SHAYBA ARENA The U.S. women’s hockey team plays the frst game of the Games on Feb. 8 at this movable structure, which seats 7,000 fans.$27M
$1.4B
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skiing, snowboarding and
sledding events will take
place. He referred, in his
own way, to how Putin took
Russia back from the
oligarchs who ruled Russia
in the 1990s and gave it not
“to the people” but to those
like himself—ofcials from
the KGB, the military and
the security services, who
have divvied up Russia’s
spoils anew. “These KGB
people are really low-quality
people,” he said, slurring his
words. “Like Putin.” Sochi
has been another such
opportunity and an example
of how the system fostered
by Putin works via kickbacks
among government
contractors or, perhaps
worse, an absence of legal
agreements or any collegial-
ity between builders and
operators. In Russian
development, sometimes it
is better to put your head
down and go it alone, no
matter if the job and the
building may fall apart.
A few people within
earshot shuddered to
hear such blunt talk. The
Russian government
under Putin has jailed and
handed stif punishments
to people who have done
little more than attend
political protest rallies.
The vindictiveness has
unnerved people into
believing even simple words
could result in life-threaten-
ing consequences.
Adding to the tension of
the moment is the fact that
Putin has only just been in
Sochi, a mere 30 miles away.
He spent an evening at the
waterfront nightclub
Platforma, entertaining his
at whim. In January,
Pyatigorsk, just 168 miles
east of Sochi, was put on a
terror alert after police
discovered six bodies riddled
with bullets beside a series of
explosives rigged to go of.
Soon afterward, in Nalchik,
195 miles east of Sochi,
police arrested fve terror
suspects, claiming they were
country in the world.
But when it comes to
real-world dilemmas, Putin
has his real-world limita-
tions. The city of Volgograd,
which stands 400 miles
northeast of Sochi, has
sufered three suicide bomb
attacks in recent months.
The latest bombings, carried
out frst at a train station
and then on a trolleybus on
consecutive days in late
December, left 34 dead. The
attacks showed that Russia’s
Islamic terrorists, headquar-
tered just over the Caucasus
Mountains from Sochi, can
perform coordinated actions
close friend Steven Seagal.
Two summers before this,
Putin, a black belt in judo,
entertained Jean-Claude
Van Damme. This is Putin’s
level, the people he enjoys
having around him. Imagine
a country ruled by Frank
Dux, played by Van Damme
in Bloodsport, an Army
ofcer looking for a fght. Or
Nico Toscani, Seagal’s role in
Above the Law, a special ops
veteran, a renegade Chicago
cop on a mission. In Russia
there is no need to imagine.
Vladimir Putin is like a
1980s action hero, except he
commands the largest
dabbling in hockey. He’s
been photographed fshing,
hiking, hunting and riding
horseback, all without a
shirt. The 61-year-old’s
photo ops provide steady
reminders that today’s leader
of Russia is alert at the helm.
He can portray the
resourceful, fearless
commander a bit too lustily.
In 2011 Putin went scuba
diving at an archaeological
camp of the Russian coast.
He soon re-emerged
carrying the remains of what
looked to be earthen jars. He
strode up the dock in his
wet suit, a satisfed look on
his face, apparently having
made an archaeological
discovery. “Treasure,” he
said. It turned out that these
were Greek pieces from the
early medieval period. It also
turned out that the archae-
ologists working in the area
had unearthed these jugs
some time previous to
Putin’s recreational dive and
placed them in shallow
water for Putin to fnd.
The resulting perception
that he was playing a role
hardly mattered. Putin so
monopolizes Russia’s
national conception of itself
by now that whatever he
does is by defnition
acceptable. After all, there
is no other candidate, no
other option.
THE MAN WHO was talking to
me at Starbar, a locals’
watering hole, was involved
in his own competition,
overturned shot glasses
forming the Olympic rings
on the bar in front of him.
We were in the village of
Krasnaya Polyana, where the
After several
bombings near
Sochi and social
unrest, Putin is
dispatching 37,000
security ofcers.
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no “Free Pussy Riot”
placards in Sochi, no
interviews on NBC Sports
with Khodorkovsky’s
lawyers. Putin scored
points as the compassionate
leader, Vladimir the Kind,
proving that it’s easy to be
merciful, if at frst you are
without mercy.
IT IS AFTERNOON at the
nightclub Cabaret Mayak in
Sochi. Without the evening
clientele, it is difcult to
fgure out what sort of club
Mayak is. But the beefcake
shots on the wall give it
away. Isn’t this just the sort
of “gay propaganda” that was
made illegal recently? Putin
has made a point of vilifying
the growing support for gay
rights in the West. This is a
strange topic to stress, with
so many important issues to
choose from, but his version
of Russia is a conservative,
insular, anti-Western
country built on a clear
choice: either Putin or a
morally decrepit West,
where identity and gender
are blurring into a single
perverted mongrel.
“Europeans are dying out,”
Putin said in a speech in the
will challenge Putin, Gudkov
believes. “If we do poorly, it
will be the failure of the big
illusion. People will need
someone to blame. And it
can bury this regime.”
Gudkov is perhaps too
hopeful. Putin has grown
crafty through his years in
power, manipulating
perceptions with surprising
timing and deftness. Without
warning, in late December,
Putin freed Russia’s three
most celebrated prisoners,
two members of the punk
collective Pussy Riot and
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who
was once Russia’s richest
man. The amnesty was
something less than it
appeared to be. All three
prisoners were due for
release within months. No
matter. This was a brilliant
move. Now there will be
I MET DMITRY GUDKOV in a
Moscow café. Gudkov
is a member of the Duma,
Russia’s lower house of
parliament. For a time, he
belonged to the political
party A Just Russia, one of
the few opposition fgures in
the chamber that exists as
Putin’s rubber stamp. This
explains why, despite the
absence of reliable oversight
on the $50 billion of state
money that has gone into
Olympic development, there
has been no discussion
about Sochi in the Duma
for the past few years.
Gudkov is one of the few
elected politicians in Russia
who is willing to speak about
such things. His father,
Gennady Gudkov, did the
same, before his fellow
Duma members voted
him out of the chamber
on fraud charges.
There are issues in Russia
far more important than
Sochi. Gudkov mentions
education, road construc-
tion, health care. But Putin,
he says, has persuaded those
who sufer most acutely
from society’s shortcomings
to look to the Olympics for
salvation. “People are
waiting for a miracle,”
Gudkov says. “The Russian
president has been building
a big illusion that there are
enemies all around us. Putin
is considered to be a very
strong leader. And because
we are strong, we will win
these Games.”
But there is a fip side that
in possession of grenades,
ammunition and a home-
made bomb.
A few days after the
Volgograd bombings, Putin
skied down the slopes in
Krasnaya Polyana as TV
cameras followed him,
showing how safe it was.
“Putin is heading forward to
his cherished goal,” said a
friend of mine, a Volgograd
native. “Hosting the Winter
Olympics in a subtropical
beach resort next to the
Caucasus, where bombs
explode virtually every day.
It’s where he likes to ski, and
he’s going to force everyone
to like to ski there. No
matter what it costs.”
FROM TOP: ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/ITAR-TASS/LANDOV; MATT SLOCUM/AP IMAGES58 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
For six-plus years,
Putin has assumed
a second job, as
general manager of
the Sochi Olympics.
PRESSURE’S ONPUTIN IS INSISTING THAT RUSSIA REVERSE THE TREND OF DECLINING
MEDAL COUNTS—ESPECIALLY THE GOLD-COLORED ONES.
1ST2ND 3RD 4TH5TH 11TH1ST * **
1994Lillehammer
1992Albertville
1998Nagano
2006Turin
2002Salt Lake City
2010Vancouver
1988Calgary
GOLD MEDAL RANKING
WINTER OLYMPIC GOLD, SILVER AND BRONZE
MEDALS
Alex Ovechkin, the
NHL’s top goal
scorer (34 through
Jan. 15), is making
his third Olympic
appearance.
*MEDALS EARNED AS USSR **MEDALS EARNED AS THE UNIFIED TEAM
Rookie to All-Star.
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radio, his voice concealed by
the noise, and said, “I know
where they’re buried.” He
said there is a mass grave in
the mountains, holding the
bodies of 50 or so workers.
I asked him where this grave
was located, if he could take
me there. His face went
slack, and he mumbled
something indecipherable.
Later, others spoke of such a
grave. It exists as a phantom
of local conviction, that the
Russian state and its
contract construction frms,
in their authority, are
capable of ripping up not
only the land but the people.
IT IS SAID that when Putin
visited Sochi over the past
few years and clouds
happened to speckle the sky,
exceptional measures were
taken to accommodate him.
As the presidential plane
descended, military
helicopters took fight. Their
rotor blades spinning, the
helicopters dispersed the
clouds. In this way, Putin
could obtain an unobstructed
view of his creation along
the coast of the Black Sea.
Back in the storage room,
watching Putin speak a room
away, eight hours into a day
administered like Russia
itself—by fat, without much
planning and with no
accountability or protest—I
fnally saw what I should ask
Putin: How will the Sochi
Olympics truly refect your
view of the world?
But when I turned to go
fnd Putin, security guards
blocked the door. I was
going nowhere. So I grabbed
a marshmallow bar and
watched the rest of the show.
Olympics, Russia has
medaled only twice, once
earning silver, once bronze.
While Russians revere the
dominant Soviet team with
emotional attachment, they
deride its pathetic Russian
successor, stocked as it has
been with individualistic
mercenaries from the NHL.
With the games in Sochi,
under Putin’s banner of
new Russian strength, the
pressure on the team will be
immense. It will be stocked,
but the general manager of
one Scandinavian national
team says: “Russia might
not medal.”
The players’ eyes moist-
ened in the memory of what
was, nostalgia strongest in
those who have lost a (cold)
war. All they talk about is a
Sochi fnal matchup with
Canada, their old antagonist
and measuring stick from
the days of the Canada Cup.
Alexander Stus, a manager
for Olympstroy, gestures at
the rink. “Why do you think
we built all this?” he asks.
“If we lose, they should
shoot everyone.”
Russia’s hockey players
aren’t the only ones who
might be concerned about
their future. In Krasnaya
Polyana, my taxi drove past
hundreds of muddied
migrant workers. Workers
have continually complained
of late payment. In October
one laborer appeared at
Sochi’s Olympic media
center, his lips sewn together
in protest of two months’
worth of unpaid wages. In
2012 more than 25 laborers
died in accidents on
Olympic-related sites. My
driver turned up the car
fall. “Gay marriages don’t
produce children ... Without
the values at the core of
Christianity and other world
religions, without moral
norms that have been
shaped over millennia,
people will inevitably lose
their human dignity. [In
Western Europe] there is a
policy equating families
with many children with
same-sex families, belief in
God with belief in Satan.”
Mayak’s owner, Andrei
Tenichev, said he has faced
no crackdown since the new
law went into efect. He said
his club operates as it always
has, with no interference,
here right of the Black Sea
beach. “Sochi has always
been a tolerant place,”
Tenichev said. “I’m worried
about extremism in Russia,
but we haven’t experienced
it so far.” Putin is perhaps
too smart to give such
ammunition to the openly
gay delegates, including
Billie Jean King, whom
Obama is sending to Sochi.
I JOINED A hockey game in
the coastal cluster just a few
months after the fake
presidential press confer-
ence. I skated with a team of
employees from Olympstroy,
the state-owned contractor
for Olympic venues. We
played on a modest practice
rink, which national teams
will use at the Olympics.
On the bench, the players
discussed the importance of
Russia’s winning gold in
hockey. Vladimir Cherkasov,
the manager of the Olympic
rinks, mentioned the
humiliation of Russia’s last
Olympic game, a 7-3
quarterfnal defeat to Canada
in Vancouver. “Other teams
will come here to win or
lose,” he said. “We will win,
or we will die.”
They speak in the context
of the Soviet hockey team,
the Big Red Machine, symbol
of Soviet geopolitical power.
There is strong in Russian
society, and there is weak,
and there is nothing else. In
the Soviet era, the national
hockey team dominated
international tournaments
(de facto professionals in the
amateur competitions),
winning gold in seven of the
nine Olympics in which it
entered. In the last fve
ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES60 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
IF WE DO POORLY, IT’LL BE THE FAILURE OF THE BIG ILLUSION.
D M I T R Y G U D K O V , D U M A M E M B E R
Our fi nest almonds delicately kissed with cocoa
powder. Just one of our decidedly refi ned fl avors.
EmeraldNuts.com
A little taste of the good life.
02 .03 .14
ISSUE
THE MUSIC
02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 63photograph by MATTHIAS CLAMER
ADDITIONAL CREDITS PAGE 84
IN WHAT KIND OF WORLD
DOES NICKI MINAJ STAND
TALLER THAN KOBE BRYANT?
A world in which Jay Z,
Drake and Timberlake
brand teams. In which
musicians are years ahead
of athletes in rights and
revenue streams. A world
in which half a second of
nipple can loom larger
than the Super Bowl itself.
In which the games might
be over the moment theyÕre
played, but some Fall Out
Boy song will blast arenas
(and crank out residuals)
for eternity. And so we ask:
Who stands tallerÑthe
5'2" singer or the 6'6"
guard? But never mind. ItÕs
actually a trick question.
See? SheÕs wearing heels!
FOR BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEOS,
PHOTO GALLERIES AND AUDIO FILES,
GO TO ESPN.COM/MUSICISSUE
Many of the stories in this issue contain mature subject matter.
64 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
KILLER CROSSOVERONE HAS ELECTRIFIED A FRANCHISE. ONE IS CHALLENGING AN INDUSTRY. CHRIS PAUL KENDRICK LAMAR AREN’T JUST BUDS. THEY’RE THE FACE OF THE NEW MUSIC/SPORTS PARADIGM.BY SAM ALIPOUR PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHIAS CLAMER
PR
EV
IOU
S S
PR
EA
D A
DD
ITIO
NA
L C
RE
DIT
S,
PA
GE
84
66
PAUL: I respect fans that’ve been straight Lakers
and don’t come over. I respect that loyalty.
LAMAR: But it’s all love, because it’s all LA.
Still, within the LA hoops and music scenes,
competition isn’t a terrible thing. Kendrick, you
get it—you made some waves when you dropped
that verse into Big Sean’s track “Control,” where
you called out virtually every young MC in the
game.2 Is competition as important to you as it is
to Chris’ day job?
LAMAR: It’s very important. It only helps the
craft. If you’re making good music, I want to
make good music too. I want to be right there
at that level. If you always have this competitive
nature, as far as upping our game, the people
will always be happy. The music will live forever.
PAUL: When I heard that verse, I immediately
texted him and told him how crazy it was.
[Laughs] But like he said, competition is what
keeps you going. When I played against Steve
Nash the frst time, the night before, I couldn’t
sleep. He’d just won MVP, and I couldn’t wait to
compete against him. Now, it’s funny, I’m nine
years into the league, and there are so many
great young point guards in our league. They’re
coming for me like I was going for Nash. It’s
competition—it’s why we do this.
Today we’re seeing a symbiotic relationship
between music and sports, with each side using
the other to sell its product—whether we’re
talking about Bieber walking Floyd to the ring, or
how Beats by Dre wouldn’t be Beats without
LeBron. Have you guys thought about what the
other side can do to help sell what you’re selling?
PAUL: That’s something me and my brother, my
business manager, have been working toward.
We had a great opportunity recently to talk
about brand-building with O.G. Juan.3 We’ve
also spoken to Scooter Braun,4 who works with
Justin Bieber. That stuf is big, and we’re still
trying to fgure it out.
THE MAG: You’re both LA-based celebrities.
Have you two ever crossed paths?
PAUL: Actually, it’s crazy—we frst connected
on Twitter.
LAMAR: [Laughs] Yup.
PAUL: I tweeted that I was listening to his album
on the way to a game. I was following him on
Twitter. I don’t know if he was following me.
LAMAR: Yup. And then I sent him a DM.
PAUL: And I told him, “Every fight, every bus
ride, your album is our team’s theme music.”
LAMAR: It’s dope because I wasn’t feeling like
I was in the starlight. That was before Good Kid,
probably during Section.80.1 I’m a new artist, so
I’m looking at him like he’s famous, know what
I’m sayin’? [Both laugh] I let him know that
his trade to the Clippers was perfect timing
because what’s about to happen to LA is going
to be great for the music scene. Then we
chopped it up. He’s a real good dude.
Kendrick, growing up in Compton, I’m guessing
you claimed the Lakers?
LAMAR: I gotta go, day one, with the Lakers,
of course. I support the Clippers too, because
they’re LA, but I ain’t about to jump on their
bandwagon just because of my boy right here,
know what I’m sayin’? [Laughs]
Inside a Hollywood studio, Clippers guard Chris Paul is shirtless, baring his ravaged skin to Kendrick Lamar. The Compton-bred rapper? Uncharacteristically tongue-tied. “Looks like I got a bunch of hickeys, right?” Paul says, pointing to the circular discolorations on his newly separated shoulder. “I tore this and this, so they put these suction cups on me. And then they stabbed me, to pull out all the bad blood.” “Blood?! That’s crazy,” Lamar says, grimacing as if some of it had been squirted directly into his eyes. “That’s another reason I couldn’t do what you do.” Lamar does what he does just fne. In 2012 the 26-year-old released his major-label debut, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, a platinum album that cemented his status as one of rap’s most compelling storytellers. Leading the applause for Lamar is his new pal Paul, who, in his third season in LA, has led the once-moribund Clippers to title
contention and his locker room to harmony. In CP3’s bag of tricks: making Lamar’s smooth sound a permanent fxture in the team’s iRotation. A week into the new year—and less than a week removed from a shoulder-frst tumble to the hardwood that should sideline the Clippers captain into February—the two gathered for a sit-down to discuss the busy, and lucrative, nexus of sports and music.
C H R I S P A U L
is a six-time All-Star in his third season as Clippers point guard.
K E N D R I C K L A M A R
has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards this year.
1 Lamar’s second album, which has sold 148,000 copies. 2 “I’m usually homeboys with the same n—s I’m rhymin’ with / But this is hip-hop and them n—s should know what time it is / And that goes for Jermaine Cole, Big K.R.I.T., Wale / Pusha T, Meek Millz, ASAP Rocky, Drake / Big Sean, Jay Electron’, Tyler, Mac Miller / I got love for you all, but I’m tryna murder you n—s / Tryna
make sure your core fans never heard of you n—s / They don’t wanna hear not one more noun or verb from you n—s. 3 “O.G.” Juan Perez, former president of the now-defunct Roc-La-Familia label. 4 Braun, 32, who owns School Boy Records and Raymond-Braun Media Group, has a reported net worth of $40 million. His client list includes Justin Bieber, Asher Roth and Carly Rae Jepsen.
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68
LAMAR: Hip-hop and being a pro athlete go hand
in hand. When they come together, it’s a win,
not just for your business brand but also for
culture. I always use the word “culture,” because
that’s frst—everything else falls behind it. When
they see that this guy loves rap the way he does,
and this guy loves basketball like he does, the
business is gonna fow behind it.
PAUL: That word “culture” is everything. For
example, earlier today, you mentioned Beats by
Dre—do you remember when they frst started
being worn?
The 2008 Dream Team, right?
PAUL: That’s right—our 2008 Olympic team.
Everybody saw us walking around with those
headphones on, and now everybody’s got one.
LAMAR: Uh-huh, that’s the culture right there.
PAUL: And it was brilliant. It shows you the
cultural infuence of basketball. But I don’t care
what anybody says, there’s nothing like the
cultural infuence of hip-hop. For me, hip-hop
culture is involved in everything—it’s in me, in
who I am, in how I dress, how I talk. It’s in my
son and my wife.
It can reach an audience that basketball can’t
reach on its own?
LAMAR: Yeah, it’s a force.
PAUL: That’s exactly right—and something me
and Kendrick talk about. I play basketball and
I love what I do, but when I went to Kendrick’s
show and saw him on that stage, I was envious.
I’m envious of the audience he’s able to touch.
LAMAR: These kids out here, yo, they’re hanging
on every word you say—everything. That’s why
you have to be cautious about what you say. We
could be playin’ around, and I’ll say, “Slap your
mama,” and a kid goes home and slaps his
mama. It makes you realize hip-hop’s power.
You both wield that power in a positive way. CP,
you’re a husband, father, union president.
Kendrick, you’ve spoken out against everything
from Molly to weed. How have you sidestepped
the land mines in your felds?
LAMAR: The negative infuences, the drinking
and smoking, you’re around it every day. But
that doesn’t entice me. You do it, and you think
it’s cool because your boys are doing it, so you’re
a follower. I reached a point in my life where
I wanted to be a leader. If this stuf don’t entice
me, why am I following you? Once I looked in
the mirror and decided this is who I am, and I’m
not scared of who I am, and I’m not scared that
I can’t be like you, and I’m good with just doing
me, that’s when I found myself, as a man.
PAUL: Family was real important in putting me
on my path. I’m so blessed to come from a home
with a mother and a father. What I do for
a living, a lot of people didn’t have that. And like
Kendrick’s saying, I learned not to give in to
peer pressure. You think those people are your
friends, but I think they see it as a weakness.
If you don’t give in that frst time, that second
time, not only will they leave you alone, but
they’ll realize how strong you are. You know, I’m
a little brother. I’ve always been small.5 People
have said I have a Napoleon complex. But I’ve
always had to fght for everything that I have.
LAMAR: That’s what makes the relationship
between sports and music so cool. At the end of
the day, what’s most important is that these two
kids who kept on grinding super hard are
coming together. And that shows the next little
kid in the neighborhood, if Chris and Kendrick
can do it, I can do it.
PAUL: That’s the other side of the business
relationship: Genuine friendship has to be there
too. I mean, my brother is my ace, my wife is my
wife, but some of the things I go through, they
can’t understand. That’s where this relationship
with Kendrick initially comes from—you see
somebody just like you who overcame hard
times and strives to be the greatest in their feld.
Back in the day, the relationship between music
and sports was one-sided: Musicians mostly
stayed in their lane, while athletes got into the
music biz, as MCs or heads of labels. You know
the names: Shaq, Deion—and suddenly dozens
of ballers were recording music.
LAMAR: And I’m still waiting for that Allen
Iverson album.6
L E T ’ S F A L L I N L O V E
( P A R T S 1 & 2 )The Isley Brothers
1979
A G A I N S T
A L L O D D S2Pac1996 W I N D O W S E AT
Erykah Badu 2010
R O A D S Portishead
1994
S L I P P I N ’DMX1998 A R E B E L L I O N
Ab-Soul featuring Alori Joh
2012
KENDRICK LAMAR
T H E P L A Y L I S T
To fnd his fow, CP3 punches up KL. So what’s emanating from Kendrick’s
Beats? A surprisingly timeless mix.
HIP-HOP IS IN WHO I AM,
IN HOW I DRESS, IN HOW I TALK.
IT’S IN MY SON AND MY WIFE.
FOR AUDIO OF SAM ALIPOUR’S INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS PAUL AND KENDRICK LAMAR, GO TO ESPN.COM AND SEARCH: MUSIC ISSUE PODCAST
C H R I S P A U L
5 Listed height: six feet. Actual height: 5'11√". 6 In early 2001, Iverson, under his hip-hop name, Jewelz, planned to release his debut album, Non Fiction, which reportedly contained ofensive lyrics. Prior to the release, after meeting with NBA commissioner David Stern, Iverson agreed to alter some lyrics and changed the title to Misunderstood. By October 2001, the release was canceled.
©20
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70
N-WORD CONFIDENTIAL
We asked 100 black athletes from across sports and eras how much the N-word still divides locker rooms.
The answers from active and retired athletes (over age 60) showed a change in times, but one response stayed true: 90% of both groups say hip-hop music
has had a large impact on encouraging use of the N-word in sports. “Right or wrong, athletes and
musicians are role models,” says an NFL Hall of Famer. “When kids see athletes singing songs that
celebrate the N-word, it becomes okay.” BY MORTY AIN, AIMEE BERG, ANNA KATHERINE CLEMMONS,
DAN FRIEDELL, THERESA MANAHAN, MATTHEW MUENCH,
STACEY PRESSMAN AND MICHAEL WOODS
DO YOU BELIEVE THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SAYING N—A AND N—R?
IS IT EVER ACCEPTABLE FOR A WHITE TEAMMATE TO USE THE N-WORD?
IN YOUR EXPERIENCE, IS THE USE OF THE N-WORD GOING UP, GOING DOWN
OR STAYING THE SAME?
Percent of retired athletes who
say it is …
Percent of active athletes who say it is …
Percent of active athletes who say yes
Percent of retired athletes who say yes
36% of active athletes say yes20% of retired athletes say yes
GOING UP
GOING DOWN
STAYING THE SAME
Rumor is, Commissioner Stern wasn’t having it.
LAMAR: No, he defnitely wasn’t.
Anyway, today you still get the occasional athlete-
rapper hyphenate: Iman Shumpert, Stephen
Jackson—word is Durant is an aspiring MC. But
the numbers appear to be dwindling. Why?
PAUL: I don’t know, but I’ll give you my opinion
on this: If Kendrick really felt like he could play
my position, point guard for the Los Angeles
Clippers, I ain’t gonna lie—I’d have a problem
with it. This is what I do for a living, and I put
a lot of time and passion into it. I’m not gonna
say I can do what Kendrick does and sell out
Staples. You gotta stay in your lane.
Kendrick, when you hear that somebody like
Stephen Jackson or Iman Shumpert is putting out
a mixtape, what goes through your mind?
LAMAR: I don’t take it too serious if he don’t take
it too serious. [Laughs] No disrespect, but if he
feels he’s having fun rapping, I’m cool with it. But
the minute he says, “N—, I’m a rapper”—excuse
my language—now you’re competing, and you
better be ready, because I breathe this s—.
Kendrick, if you could take any job in sports, what
would you do?
LAMAR: I want to get into refereeing.
PAUL: [Laughs] Oh, no you don’t. I’m tellin’ you,
you do not want that job.
LAMAR: Nah, man, ’cause the referees get to be
on the court with those players for every game.
I wanna be on the court too. I can’t play ball, so
I’ll be a referee.
Well, the trend today is music titans taking roles
in sports—not as referees but guiding franchises
and careers. Drake is a brand ambassador for the
Raptors, Justin Timberlake is a minority owner of
the Grizzlies. Then you have the management
types: Master P led the way,7 Fitty has his boxing
promotion,8 Jay Z jumped from owner to agent.9
Why do music industry power brokers feel they’re
well positioned to succeed in sports?
LAMAR: First of all, with the cast you named,
this is the urban community. We’ve always been
fascinated by and knowledgeable about sports.
Now that you have people from this community
in positions of power, like Jay Z and Drake, it’s
only right that they spread their knowledge and
love of the game. It’s passion, not just business.
I mean, I’ve been to their houses—they’re
watching each and every game!
PAUL: And why is that any diferent than any
wealthy person who always wanted to buy a
team, so they go out and buy a team?
And some of these cats are succeeding. At frst,
we saw Jay Z as a novelty. Then he scores
Robinson Cano a $200 million deal.10
PAUL: Well, I have a real relationship with Jay.
I know him very well; we talk all the time.
I know how smart and how knowledgeable he
is. He educates me on various things. This is
bigger than him just being Jay Z, the music
artist. His mind is brilliant.
LAMAR: Yeah, man, it’s crazy—going back to
branding, Jay Z has that down. In 2004, when
we formed this label called TDE, we molded it
after him. Look how he branded himself and
Roc-A-Fella.11 Look at Master P and No Limit.
Look at Beats by Dre and how they use athletes.
When you see them, you see the brand. But
here’s the thing some brands forget—it all goes
back to whether people like what you do frst.
A lot of people forget about that part.
PAUL: What you’re saying, that’s huge. Like for
me, with the building of my brand, this is my
ninth year in the league and still, at the end of
the day, what I do is I play basketball. And I play
basketball to win a championship. That champi-
onship is everything to me. And that’s what gets
people to buy in to your brand—being a winner.
LAMAR: Look at Michael Jordan. Prime example.
He wouldn’t be Jordan without all those
championships.
PAUL: That’s right. Whether you’re an artist or an
athlete, you have to be a winner frst. That’s the
brand you want.
Five years ago, in this mixtape track, Lamar game-planned his future:
“… never listen to what the industry say / Don’t be a typical artist, be more like Jay /
Russell, Berry Gordy, Quincy Jones, Bob Johnson, Sean Combs, L.A. Reid /
Young black entrepreneurs did what it took to succeed, yeah / So I gotta see success, I gotta make it off them Rosecrans steps /
Rising to the top like a soda shook up / Bout to pop, and I’ll pop on
whoever’s in my way.”
LYRICS FROM
D E T E R M I N E DKendrick Lamar
2009
7 Percy Miller (aka Master P), who launched No Limit Records at age 20 and later No Limit Sports Management, is reportedly worth $350 million. 8 Curtis Jackson (aka 50 Cent) initially sought to become a promoter with Floyd Mayweather’s Money Team in 2012 before founding SMS Promotions. His reported net worth is $260 million. 9 In 2013 Shawn Carter (aka Jay Z)
launched Roc Nation Sports, whose clients are Robinson Cano, Victor Cruz, Skylar Diggins, Geno Smith and Kevin Durant. His net worth is a reported $500 million. 10 Cano signed a 10-year, $240 million deal in December. 11 Founded in 1996 by Jay Z, Damon Dash and Kareem Burke, Roc-A-Fella’s roster has included Kanye West, Jadakiss and Jay Z.
72 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
FANTASYACTSBACKSTAGE AT THE GREATEST
SUPER BOWL HALFTIME
SHOW THAT NEVER WAS ...
BECAUSE EVERY ATHLETE
DREAMS OF A BIGGER STAGE.
NICKI MINAJ, FEAT. KOBE BRYANT
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
MATTHIAS CLAMER
The Black Mamba’s choice for fantasy halftime-
show partner? A lady some call the Mamba of
Hip-Hop. “Nicki Minaj is the entire package,”
Bryant says. “I don’t care what profession you’re
in, it’s hard to have success year after year.
And that’s a testament to her work ethic.” Later
this year, his dream will come true: The two
will collaborate on The Muse, Bryant’s music
and sports integration project.
PRODUCED BY
STACEY PRESSMAN
TROMBONE SHORTY, FEAT. KENNY STILLS AND CAM JORDANWhen the Saints go marching in—
if wide receiver Stills (white shirt)
and defensive end Jordan (blue
shirt) have anything to say about
it—New Orleans jazz favorite
Trombone Shorty (sunglasses) and
the Grambling State marching band
will be leading the way.
ESPN The Magazine 75
YANDEL, FEAT. YONDER ALONSO AND MANNY MACHADO
Feeling the Caribbean connection:
Puerto Rican reggaeton star
Yandel (sunglasses) isn’t sweating
backstage warmups with Cuban-
born Padres frst baseman
Alonso (behind him, left) and
his soon-to-be brother-in-law,
Dominican-American Orioles
third baseman Machado (right).
76 ESPN The Magazine
78 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
EMINEM, FEAT. CALVIN JOHNSON
Marshall Mathers’ Detroit connections run deep—and so do Calvin Johnson’s since the wideout was drafted by the Lions
in 2007. Who better than Johnson to stand in as Slim Shady’s backup? Provided Megatron’s rhyming game is as swift as
his receiving game, it could be a match made in Motor City heaven.
JEEP.COM/CHEROKEE
R I G H T H E R E , T H E N E W S T A N D A R D O F B E S T - I N - C L A S S 4 X 4 C A P A B I L I T Y E M E R G E S . W I T H S E L E C - T E R R A I N ® A N D J E E P A C T I V E
D R I V E L O C K D E L I V E R I N G T H E R E N O W N E D T R A C T I O N A N D T O R Q U E M A N A G E M E N T W O R T H Y O F T H E T R A I L R A T E D ® B A D G E ,
A C L A S S - E X C L U S I V E N I N E - S P E E D T R A N S M I S S I O N A N D A N I N T E R I O R F E A T U R I N G A V A I L A B L E L E A T H E R - T R I M M E D S E A T I N G A N D
8 . 4 " T O U C H S C R E E N C O M M A N D C E N T E R , T H E 2 0 1 4 J E E P C H E R O K E E T R A I L H A W K I S R E A D Y F O R A D V E N T U R E O N A N Y T E R R A I N .
E V E RYT HIN GY O U N E E D T O D O E V E R Y T H I N G Y O U WA N T
INTRODUC ING THE ALL-NE W 2014 C HEROKEE
J e e p “ M i d - S i z e S U V ” s u b - s e g m e n t a t i o n b a s e d o n 13 M Y c r o s s - s h o p a c t i v i t y. E x c l u d e s v e h i c l e s w i t h t h i r d - r o w s e a t i n g . J e e p i s a r e g i s t e r e d t r a d e m a r k o f C h r y s l e r G r o u p L L C .
80 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
Two-time Olympian Hope Solo
riding the bench? Only when
it means sitting alongside
singer-songwriter Skylar
Grey and swapping stories.
“Music is all subjective,”
Grey told Solo about what
she envies about athletes,
“but in sports it’s all about
the points—you’re either
killing it or you’re not.”
SKYLAR GREY, FEAT. HOPE SOLO
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T HE B L I T Z I S C O MIN G
82 ESPN The Magazine
CAPITAL CITIES, FEAT. DUSTIN PENNERAnaheim Ducks left winger
Penner (top center) skates by
with his dance moves during
rehearsals for “Safe and Sound,”
the hit single from indie band
Capital Cities (clockwise from
top left: Ryan Merchant,
Sebu Simonian, Channing
Holmes, Manny Quintero and
Spencer Ludwig).
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T HE B L I T Z I S C O MIN G
84 ESPN The Magazine
KENDRICK LAMAR, FEAT. CHRIS PAUL
NICKI MINAJ & KOBE BRYANT
SET DESIGN Sean Duggan
WARDROBE STYLING (Minaj)
McClairn + McKenzie/Opus
Beauty WARDROBE STYLING (Bryant) Derek Roche/The
Vanity Group/Cloak + Swagger
HAIR Oscar James/Ken
Barboza Associates Inc.
MAKEUP Joyce Bonelli
GROOMING Nicole Bushnell
PRODUCTION Brooke Ludi
Production
------
NICKI MINAJ, COVER
Milly body suit; John Galliano
skirt and shoes; Versace
belt; Chanel jewelry
PAGE 72 Balmain dress;
Versace boots; Chanel
accessories
KOBE BRYANT, COVER Paul
Smith jacket; BuddhistPunk
tee; Robin’s Jean denim;
Nike Masterpiece Kobe 9 Elite
sneakers; Dior sunglasses;
Lorraine Schwartz lapel pin;
Bryant’s own jewelry
PAGE 72 Versace jacket; Velvet
by Graham & Spencer T-shirt;
Robin’s Jean denim; Nike
Masterpiece Kobe 9 Elite
sneakers; Bryant’s own jewelry
TROMBONE SHORTY & CAM
JORDAN AND KENNY STILLS
WARDROBE STYLING Kano
Branon GROOMING Marcos
Gonzales PROP STYLING
Kami Laprade
------
TROMBONE SHORTY H&M tank;
Lip Service pants; Ray-Ban
sunglasses; Kano Branon scarf
and gloves; J. Lindeberg belt;
Wicked Clothes leather wallet
with chain; Via Spiga shoes;
stylist’s own necklace
CAM JORDAN UAL shirt; True
Religion denim; Kano Branon
gloves and suspenders; Gucci
belt; Balenciaga shoes; stylist’s
own necklace
KENNY STILLS Kano Branon
shirt; Diesel denim; vintage
Halston shoes; Kano Branon
cufs; J. Lindeberg belt; Wicked
Clothes ear cuf
YANDEL & MANNY MACHADO
AND YONDER ALONSO
SET DESIGN Sean Duggan
WARDROBE STYLING (Machado, Alonso and
dancers) Courtney Dion Mays
WARDROBE STYLING (Yandel)
Ed Coriano HAIR AND MAKEUP
Teresa Morgan and Obi Reyes
GROOMING Marcos Gonzales
PRODUCTION Kendra Silvera/
FatCat305
------
YANDEL Emporio Armani jacket;
Versace T-shirt; Hudson Jeans
denim; Giuseppe Zanotti belt
and sneakers; Dsquared2
beanie hat; Yandel’s own
sunglasses and jewelry
MANNY MACHADO J Brand
jacket; Valentino sweatshirt;
J Brand cargo pants; Givenchy
sneakers; Hublot 45mm
Limited Edition Ferrari Carbon
Fiber watch; Haimov Jewelers
Inc. jewelry
YONDER ALONSO 3x1 jacket;
Lanvin T-shirt and pants;
Bottega Veneta sneakers;
Hublot 48mm King Power Unico
Gold Carbon watch; Haimov
Jewelers Inc. necklace
EMINEM & CALVIN JOHNSON
SET DESIGN Jonathan Krueger
WARDROBE STYLING Dawn
Boonyachlito GROOMING
Michelle Willis McAuley
------
EMINEM James Perse T-shirt;
Detroit Deadstock & Vintage
Sportswear jacket; Levi’s pants;
Nike sneakers; Casio G-Shock
watch; Eminem’s own jewelry
CALVIN JOHNSON John Varvatos
T-shirt; Raleigh Workshop
denim; Wolverine boots; Rolex
watch; New Era hat
SKYLAR GREY & HOPE SOLO
SET DESIGN Sean Duggan
WARDROBE STYLING Britten
Park HAIR Bobby Eliot/
Tomlinson Management Group
MAKEUP Kathy Jeung/The
Magnet Agency PRODUCTION
Brooke Ludi Production
------
SKYLAR GREY Joyrich hat;
Hollywood Made sweater;
Skingraft pants; MIA shoes;
Chic Little Devil jewelry
HOPE SOLO Skingraft pants;
Steve Madden shoes; Skingraft
tank top; Bebe jacket; Chic
Little Devil jewelry
CAPITAL CITIES
& DUSTIN PENNER
SET DESIGN Sean Duggan
WARDROBE STYLING Courtney
Dion Mays GROOMING Hee Soo
Kwon/The Rex Agency and
Sienree/Celestine Agency
PRODUCTION Brooke Ludi
Production
------
DUSTIN PENNER Prada jacket;
Rag & Bone shirt; stylist’s own
tie; Five Four jeans; Ferragamo
shoes; Happy Socks socks
RYAN MERCHANT Topman
jacket and jeans; Dope T-shirt;
Ferragamo shoes; J. Crew pocket
square; Happy Socks socks
SEBU SIMONIAN Dope jacket;
Topman fannel shirt;
Simonian’s own T-shirt; Neil
Barrett denim; Bloomingdale’s
Men’s Store private label shoes
SPENCER LUDWIG Topman
jacket; BLK DNM shirt; Ludwig’s
own pants; Ralph Lauren
shoes; Happy Socks socks;
Miansai bracelets and necklace
MANNY QUINTERO Raf Simons
x Fred Perry jacket; Topman
T-shirt; Quintero’s own jeans;
Underground shoes
CHANNING HOLMES Bar III
jacket and shirt; Holmes’ own
denim; Hugo Boss shoes;
stylist’s own sunglasses
KENDRICK LAMAR
& CHRIS PAUL
SET DESIGN Sean Duggan
WARDROBE STYLING (Lamar)
Dianne Garcia WARDROBE
STYLING (Paul) Courtney Dion
Mays GROOMING William Long
Jr. and Christina Guerra/
Celestine Agency PRODUCTION
Brooke Ludi Production
------
CHRIS PAUL Burberry Brit
jacket; TACKMA T-shirt; Gant
by Michael Bastian cargo
pants; Paul Smith socks;
Jordan Brand sneakers; Paul’s
own necklaces; Rolex watch
KENDRICK LAMAR T by
Alexander Wang T-shirt; That’s
It! Folks jacket; Denim & Supply
by Ralph Lauren denim;
Timberland boots
FOR MORE,
GO TO ES.PN/
FANTASYACTS
LA native Kendrick Lamar is a big
fan of Clippers star Chris Paul,
but with one pesky caveat: He’s
a lifelong Lakers fan. “I respect
that,” Paul says. “He still comes
to our games, so I know he
supports me.” Says Lamar, “I love
Chris’ skill to look over the entire
court. It’s the same in rap—you
have to see everything.”
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JESS BAUMUNG 02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 87
HIP-HOP’S NEW GENERATION, LED BY DRAKE, REVEALS HOW ATHLETES AND ARTISTS PUSH
EACH OTHER TO COMMAND THEIR TRUE VALUE.
BY DANYEL SMITH
THE SOUL OF New Games has
emerged. Sports and music—
specifcally hip-hop—are as one.
This coalition is known already in
our bones, like a new song to which
everyone already knows the words.
This is true particularly in basketball
and football, and to a lesser degree in
soccer, baseball and hockey. Hip-hop
has given athletes a series of chal-
lenges—be real, do you, demand your
worth. Professional athletes have seen
the challenge—and, frankly, raised it.
Harbinger: Madcap Heisman
winner and potential No. 1 pick Johnny
“Football” Manziel is going pro—with
a record 80-plus other underclassmen.
Foreshadowing: It’s the business
partner/manager of LeBron James
(King James might as well have rapped
TAKE IT FROM
THE TOP
FRANK GUNN/THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP IMAGES88 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
a beat over “taking my talents to South Beach”),
Maverick Carter, who will lead the Manziel
charge in “of-the-feld projects.” Wink: Manziel
counts Toronto rapper/superstar/ofcial
Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment global
ambassador Drake as adviser and friend.
And while heirloom columnists suck
Lemonheads over Manziel’s attitudinal “antics”
(as they are always called), let’s also note the
state of O’Bannon v. National Collegiate Athletic
Association, a case that survived a motion to
be dismissed in federal district court, and as
Inside Higher Ed observes, places “athletes …
on a path to claim a share of television and
other revenue that now fows almost entirely
to colleges, coaches and the NCAA.” Perhaps.
Perhaps not. But folks are valuing their value.
“Your old road is rapidly agin’.” —Bob Dylan,
1964’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”
“I just think it’s funny how it goes.” —Drake,
2013’s “Started From the Bottom”
NINETEEN EIGHTY-SIX. The future Champagne-
papi was born into a world where the wild-ass
Mets actually won it all. The Toronto Raptors
were nine years away from existence—Vince
Carter was 9 years old. Everything in ’86 was
Run-DMC and Eric B. and Rakim. “The Bridge,”
the Beasties, Ice T’s “6’n the Mornin’ ” and
Salt-N-Pepa’s Hot, Cool & Vicious. The Cosby
Show was on Season 3. In the way that those
born into the Obama era will take for granted
the reality of a black president of the United
States, Drake is of a generation that has
no consciousness of hip-hop not existing.
For his cohorts, rap is like water—everywhere,
and likely free.
Eighteen years later, in an award-winning
2004 episode of Canada’s wild, popular
Degrassi: The Next Generation, Aubrey Drake
Graham portrays rich high school basketball
player Jimmy, and Jimmy is shot. This is a
thing that happens to black actors on television
and in the movies. A standout version of the
device is future Hall of Famer Jamaal Wilkes
as Nathaniel “Cornbread” Hamilton (shot and
killed) in Cornbread, Earl and Me. Lawrence
Hilton Jacobs as casual basketball player
Cochise (beaten to death) in Cooley High. Those
were 1975 releases. Morris Chestnut was the
USC football-bound Ricky Baker (shot and
killed) in 1991’s Boyz n the Hood. But Drake’s
Jimmy lives. He becomes “Wheelchair Jimmy.”
For Drake, Degrassi was means, not end.
Drake would not be weirded out by his roots —
teen dramatic, Jewish, Canadian—or by his
focus on singing as much as rapping. He knew
that potential was not protected; his own Jimmy
was a cautionary tale. And by 2008, Drake was
on the road with Lil Wayne, prepping So Far
Gone. The February 2009 free mixtape and the
September 2009 retail EP weren’t his frst
attempts at being what heirlooms sometimes
still call an MC, but they were his best yet. The
lucent, generation-defning “Successful”
(featuring Lil Wayne and Trey Songz) and the
indelible “Best I Ever Had” were a sign to the
cool kids to desert him for newer rappers more
thrillingly underground. These are the kind of
nerdy, infuential kids who pride themselves on
having seen Carmelo or LeBron as McDonald’s
All-Americans and are then bored with them as
their jerseys go to No. 1. They knew Drake was
well on the road to being Jay Z to Kendrick
Lamar’s Nas. As Drake supposed on
“Successful”—he wanted the money, the cars
and the clothes. Not to mention the acclaim,
the accolades and his own piece of the future.
By 2011, Drake received the Songwriters Hall
of Fame Hal David Starlight Award. In 2012 he
broke Sean “Diddy” Combs’ and Jay Z’s hip-hop
As Toronto’s resident
cool kid, Drake was crucial
to the Raptors’ eforts to
host the NBA All-Star Game.
singles sales records. Last year he sold almost
700,000 (in the frst week) of his Nothing Was
the Same, while his single “Hold On, We’re
Going Home” with Majid Jordan became his
33rd top-10 single and broke a radio airplay
record. Drake has 18 Grammy noms and one
win. All this while introducing the starting
Raptors as part of Drake Night at the Air
Canada Centre. All this while helping recruit
British striker Jermain Defoe to Toronto FC.
All this while having voice and text chats with
Manziel about “sacrifce” and hosting Johnny
Football in Toronto. Manziel, after all, has had
an OVO tat, the emblem that stands for Drake’s
label, October’s Very Own, on his right wrist
since before he even met Drake. “He was that
much of a supporter,” Drake has said, “and a fan.”
THE NEW GAMES do come complete with
naysayers. The heirlooms, after all, frst said
that Jay Z, working via his recently launched
(with Creative Artists Agency) Roc Nation
Sports, was not truly involved in the massive
Robinson Cano deal. Still pumped on alarm,
they then said that Jay Z was too involved.
Brodie Van Wagenen, CAA’s co-head of
the baseball division, doled brass tacks when
he responded: “[Jay] helped Robinson
understand what it means to be a free agent.”
When everyone in the offce started asking for tablets, no way did I think they were going to be a good deal. Turns out this Windows tablet runs Offce, has a USB port and a real keyboard. So it’s a tablet that actually works for work.
ASUS Transformer Book T100 $349
Windows.com
Estimated retail price shown. Retail prices may vary. Apps from Windows Store.
Honestly
I couldn’t fnd a reason not to buy it.
90 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
This as he reconfrmed Jay Z’s participation in
the prep, the approach, as well as ofers made
and countered. This as the fve-time All-Star
Cano—who also has a championship ring,
two Gold Gloves and a World Baseball Classic
MVP award—signed a deal with the Mariners
worth $240 million over 10 years. It is the
third-largest contract in baseball history. All
respect to Percy “Master P” Miller, whose
vision of No Limit Sports Management was
ahead of its time, but this was not the 1999
Saints/Ricky Williams saga.
Van Wagenen mentioned “free agent.” Even
if not compared with the terms “owner” or
“trade,” which of course remain thick with
history as they relate to colored men and labor,
“free agent” is a dangling totem fnally
snatched, a self-given name wrought in fat
platinum cursive and draped nonchalantly
around a neck of one’s own. As Drake raps:
“Just as a reminder to myself, I wear every
single chain, even when I’m in the house.”
Free. Agency. One who doesn’t have any
commitments to restrict his or her actions.
The capacity of a person to act in the world as
one wishes. Who better than the shark poet
born Shawn Carter to decode jargon taken for
granted? Who better than a reformed dope
dealer to demand value? It seems Jay Z sees in
“free agent” a tiny verse as glorious as Baldwin:
“Freedom is not something that anybody can be
given. Freedom is something people take, and
people are as free as they want to be.”
Drake’s precision selfness—his absolute
comfort with being both “biracial” and “black,”
pop and hip-hop, corny and cool—is made
possible by the hip-hop rights era, including the
shooting deaths of Tupac Shakur and the
Notorious B.I.G., of the 1980s and 1990s.
Spoonie Gee and Eazy-E and Chuck D and
Jay Z didn’t pave the way as much as create a
world for Drake and J. Cole and Nicki Minaj
and Wale. Allen Iverson came up through the
earthquakes of Tupac and Wu-Tang, Timbaland
and Clipse and in turn laid out for the likes of
Russell Westbrook and Blake Grifn and Dame
Lillard a freedom to not be him. Rap allows
Grifn his dryly sincere irony, Westbrook his
avant-garde game-day looks. James Harden’s
beard should send a quarterly thank-you note.
Combine all this with how endorsement
deals are now more of the matrix than they
used to be. People like Drake and Blake and
LeBron and Jay Z aren’t endorsing brands;
they’re helping brands exist via the stars’ stated
or assumed core beliefs and surrounding aura.
This is possible now because hip-hop’s infu-
ence is at last a true and not merely an ancillary
currency. It’s not just the Grammys, and it’s not
just the games—life itself is to be touchdowned
and home-runned, slam-dunked and Spotifed.
The game is always on. And it’s to be won.
“WE’RE INFLUENTIAL TO athletes,” USC Trojans
fan Snoop Dogg said last spring about himself
and his musical colleagues. “And we’re very
business-minded and savvy. So what better
way to do, than our way?”
His way is fst-bumping with Secretary of
State John Kerry at the Kennedy Center Honors.
It’s training his son, Cordell Broadus, a wide
receiver deciding among scholarship ofers
from Notre Dame, UCLA, USC, Washington
and more. Cordell himself dubs his highlight
recruiting video with self-spouted, original
lyrics. Snoop’s Youth Football League
(established 2005) counts the Denver Broncos’
Ronnie Hillman as an alum. “There’s a lot of
kids who come out of my league who are
venturing of into the NFL … ” Snoop said to
AOL’s Paul Cantor in April of last year. “They’re
going to need direction … so that may be a
feld that I want to venture in.”
UCLA carries a 5'7", 170-pound cornerback
named Justin Combs, son of Sean/Diddy.
Recently, Combs the elder said, “I will become
the frst African-American majority owner …
Not having a small stake but actually owning
an NFL team … it’s time for that. A majority
of players who are in the NFL are African-
American, but there are no African-American
owners.” Combs is of course the founder of
Bad Boy Worldwide and Sean John apparel,
co-owns cable channel Revolt TV and partners
with Diageo (Ciroc vodka) in a deal likely,
according to Forbes, to end up making the
Harlem native “hip-hop’s frst billionaire.”
There are, as Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill
spits: “levels to this s—.”
No matter how much some might act like
the music has changed for the worse or hasn’t
done enough (most everything falls short
when what is desired is fairness and equality),
hip-hop with all its faws has given Generation X
and Generation Y—black and white and
Asian and Latin and otherwise—a common
(if male-centered) language. It has given
them, in many ways—some superfcial, many
real—a comfort level around each other. And,
not least, it has given black athletes a
confdence in managing the value of their
bodies and intellects in a country that bought
and sold both as a matter of course.
“We just want the credit,” rhymes Drake in
his “Started From the Bottom,” a song that
might one day be understood for being the
monument to unheralded creative genius that
it is. “We just want the credit where it’s due.”
Danyel Smith, a John S. Knight Journalism
Fellow at Stanford, was the editor of Vibe and
Billboard. Her top-secret project is HRDCVR.
DRAKE’S PRECISION SELFNESS IS MADE POSSIBLE BY HIP-HOP.
Giving a whole new meaning to the term Road Trip.
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ScottSdale (Spring Training)
9 Kilometer - 3 MileMarch 8, 2014
San joSe (Minor Leagues)
5 Mile - 5 KilometerJune 28, 2014
San franciSco
(Big Leagues)Half Marathon - 10K - 5K
September 7, 2014
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92 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
HERE AT THE INTERSECTION
OF SPORTS AND MUSIC, WE’VE
GOT THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY
INSPIRED HOOKUPS OF 2014
ON SHUFFLE.
photograph by NANCY NEWBERRY
WHETHER HE’S SPLITTING
the uprights or singing arias,
Justin Tucker can go deep.
The Ravens placekicker and
bass-baritone was a standout
athlete growing up in Texas.
He also loved to sing and
perform. But during his
freshman year at Westlake
High, Tucker was told he’d
have to choose between
sports and music. It wasn’t
a hypercompetitive coach,
however, who pressured him
to fully commit to the
gridiron. It was the music
director. “We had a pretty
A KICKER WHO KNOWS THE SCORE
FIELD GOALS & CURTAIN CALLS
STEVE MARCUS/REUTERS/LANDOV94 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
competitive band,” he says.
Football has worked out
just fne. In two seasons
with the Ravens, Tucker,
24, has connected on
91.9% of his feld goal
attempts. But he didn’t
completely abandon
his inner band geek.
Tucker majored in
recording technology at
Texas and studied under
professor Nikita Storojev,
a renowned opera singer.
“He’s a former pro hockey
player, so it was more
like a player-coach
relationship,” Tucker says.
“He pushed me beyond
my comfort zone.”
Tucker learned to sing in
seven diferent languages,
which came in handy when,
as an NFL rookie, he sang
for Ravens veterans in
camp. Jaws dropped when
he responded with a
booming aria.
“It takes a level of
technicality to kick a
football, and the same
is true of music,” says
Tucker, who has been
invited to perform with
the Baltimore Symphony.
“There is a composure
that’s required and a
confdence that comes
with preparation.” As
his 61-yard game winner
to beat the Lions in
December showed, he can
nail an operatic ending.
—KEVIN VAN VALKENBURG
FROM PREVIOUS PAGE
Why Bieber? It’s the question everyone asks every time Justin Bieber flanks Floyd Mayweather on
the boxer’s ring walk. A brief exchange between the two before Mayweather’s Sept. 14 bout against
Canelo Alvarez provides a clue. About 90 minutes prior to the fght, Bieber made a clumsy entrance
into Mayweather’s dressing room, barging in with hand-slaps and bro-hugs. Mayweather nodded in
Bieber’s direction but otherwise ignored him. Thirty minutes later, though, came the crystallizing
moment: Mayweather wordlessly called Bieber over, put his arm around him and said, “Take a
photo and send it out to your followers.” For a moment, Bieber looked a part of Money’s posse.
And assuming even an infnitesimal portion of those 48,735,521 Beliebers persuaded their parents
to buy the fght, they juiced the fght’s record payday of nearly $150 million in pay-per-views.
Suddenly, the pairing that makes no sense at all made all the sense in the world. —TIM KEOWN
MONEY & THE BIEBS
AN EXCHANGE OF CRED FOR CASH
L I K E S , I N T H O U S A N D S ,
for Bieber’s prefght Instagram post: “Me and
@floydmayweather before the fght ... Order on
PPW now.”
FROM TOP: TAYLOR HILL/FILMMAGIC; FRANK MICELOTTA/INVISION/AP IMAGES96 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
88 78
VICTORIA &
DAVID BECKHAM
SHAKIRA &
GERARD PIQUE
92
JEWEL &
TY MURRAY
87 53
JESSIE JAMES &
ERIC DECKER
83 83
PINK &
CAREY HART
83
MONICA&
SHANNON BROWN
74 81
CARRIE UNDERWOOD
& MIKE FISHER
90
TWO-PART HARMONIESSinger-jock pairings strike a chord. But based on Klout scores, which measure influence over
social media, the headliner of each act isn’t always as clear-cut as you’d expect.
SINGER’S KLOUT JOCK’S KLOUT
For once, Shaun White is not the
star. The two-time defending
Olympic gold medalist is also
juggling a job as guitarist for
synth-rock band Bad Things.
“When people knew it was my
group, I think they expected me to be front and center,
but hopefully they were pleasantly surprised,” says White.
“I play guitar and sing some backup. That’s my role.” Many
action-sports athletes dabble in music, but few approach
it with the single-mindedness that White—who won his
frst guitar in 2004—has. In addition to trying to master
a triple cork 1440 in slopestyle, he’s learning to play
keyboard. “That’s what they need,” he says. “It’s making me
a better musician.” White has lugged his guitar and amp
to snowboarding events this winter and spent evenings
rehearsing for the band’s upcoming tour. Will it pay of?
Bad Things’ self-titled debut album dropped Jan. 21, and
they’ll play the Firefy Music Festival in June. So if he wins
gold again in Sochi, perhaps White will follow up with
platinum. —ALYSSA ROENIGK
HERO & GUITARBRIDGING THE HALFPIPE AND HALF NOTES
85 82 81
T I M E S F E N W A Y F A N S
sang along to World Series hero Shane Victorino’s walk-up song—Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”—after it became his
(and Boston’s) new anthem on July 4.
BRENDAN WALTER 02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 99
“LIGHT ’EM UP” & EVERY SPORTS EVENT FROM NOW UNTIL ETERNITY
ALL-STARS & AUTHENTICITYA gig at the NBA’s midseason showcase has become the most coveted means to reach the chart-moving 18-to-49 male demo.
THE POP-EMO BAND will have bookended
its comeback with performances at both
the 2013 NBA All-Star Game and the
halftime show of the 2014 Pro Bowl.
Lyricist and bassist Pete Wentz explains
how integrating its songs into sports—
especially during the Stanley Cup run of
the Blackhawks, the band’s hometown
team—helped transform “My Songs Know
What You Did in the Dark (Light ’Em Up)”
into the year’s biggest arena anthem.
—AS TOLD TO DAVID FLEMING
We had a sense that “Light ’Em Up”
could be a kind of sports song when we
were writing it. We’ve tried to do that
before, but those songs never even make
it on the album. It has to be way more
organic because people can smell a fake.
You’re always trying to write those big
songs regardless, and they just become
sports anthems on their own.
Ten years ago, genre in music was so
built up that people would say, “You can’t
do a remix with 2 Chainz at an NBA event.”
FALL OUT BOY PRODUCES A PRIMAL ANTHEM
FOR MORE ON THESE PAIRINGS OF MUSIC AND SPORTS, INCLUDING PLAYLISTS AND PHOTOS, GO TO ESPN.COM/MUSICISSUE
But sports is now unique in that music
genre matters less. The players and
crowds like rock, hip-hop, pop, a little bit of
everything. We knew we had something with
“Light ’Em Up” because our rock friends
said it sounded like hip-hop and our hip-hop
friends said it sounded real heavy.
Music is more present now than ever in
people’s lives. They associate moments of
their life with specifc songs. So integrating
your music into the texture of a larger
experience, like a sporting event, is
important. “Empire State of Mind” and
Jay Z and the Yankees are a thing. Forever.
The music and the experience become
interwoven. That’s powerful.
So when we reached out to the NBA for
our frst big televised appearance for “Light
’Em Up” and they agreed, it was a big deal.
The song hadn’t yet become something
that high school marching bands would
cover or people sang to me at 3 a.m. at
Walmart. And here I am looking out at the
crowd and seeing Drake and Kobe. I’m not
sure any of them knew who we were, but it
was cool and humbling to be a part of it.
After the All-Star Game, the song started
getting played in Chicago during the
playofs. There’s nothing like hearing your
song in a stadium, especially during a rally
moment. It’s diferent from hearing it on
the radio for the frst time. You get this
whole diferent kind of shiver. People are
singing the whoa-ohh part and it’s so
much more primal, more fanatical, so loud
and so big. You hold your head up high
when they put your song on the Jumbotron
and people in your hometown get behind it.
It all culminated for us at Riot Fest in
September. A hometown show with 40,000
people and the Stanley Cup shows up on
our stage? And we helped a little with this?
Insane. We’re in the middle of a new model
of mixing sports and music, and a lot of it
is still uncharted territory. When it works, it
takes both sides to a whole other plane.
2013 TV RATINGS IN MILLIONS
N B A A L L- S T A R G A M E
V M A S A M A S
THIS PAGE FROM LEFT: DOMINIC L IPINSKI/PA WIRE; TED SPIEGEL/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE; NEXT PAGE: RANDY JOHNSON100 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
FROM LYRICAL TO LAME, HIP-HOP WAS RIFE WITH
SPORTS SHOUTOUTS IN 2013:
PEYTON MANNING
MICHAEL JORDAN
Hollas to His Airness, including one from Wale’s song “88”:
This is no Space Jam, I’m out the globe stunting I’m a one man band, I prolly Jordan 1 em
And all my singles golden.
Lone mention of the four-time MVP, from Logic’s song “Prime”:
Strategically planned it like Peyton Mannin’ way before s— was even real.
18 KOBE BRYANT
15 LEBRON JAMES
10 SHAQUILLE O’NEAL
8 MANNY PACQUIAO
7 KEVIN DURANT
6 DERRICK ROSE
6 TIGER WOODS
5 USAIN BOLT
4 MICHAEL PHELPS
4 SERENA WILLIAMS
3 ALLEN IVERSON
3 DEREK JETER
2 CARMELO ANTHONY
2 TIM TEBOW
2 TOM BRADY
2 WAYNE GRETZKY
2 VENUS WILLIAMS
1 FLOYD MAYWEATHER
Other notable name-drop totals:
MAKE THAT 3,155. Twenty years after
George Brett retired from baseball with
3,154 career hits, he’s getting credit for
another one—“Royals,” the song by Lorde
that has been near the top of the Billboard
charts for months. In an interview with
VH1, the 17-year-old singer from New
Zealand revealed the inspiration for the
haunting tune about real life in a dream
world: “I had this image from Nat Geo of
this dude signing baseballs, a baseball
player, and his shirt said ‘Royals.’”
That “dude” was the Hall of Fame third
baseman. “It’s cool to think that some
magazine she found in a dentist’s ofce
grew into this enormous song,” says Brett.
“I love the song. My tastes run to Bob Dylan
and Frank Sinatra now, but I was young
LORDE & GEORGE BRETTTHE HITTER INSPIRES ANOTHER HIT
once. I listened to Cyndi Lauper on my
Walkman on the bus to the ballpark.”
The photo was taken by Ted Spiegel
for the July 1976 issue of National
Geographic, which celebrated America’s
bicentennial. At the time, Brett was 23.
“I remember the scene vividly,” he says.
“The Royals had autograph sessions in the
concourse of the stadium. The photo was
totally natural, nothing posed about it.”
When Lorde saw the photo, she
envisioned “Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on
your timepiece.” But Brett was a blue-
collar guy who was hard on himself. Once,
after making an out, he disappeared into
the tunnel and was found in a trash bin.
“I quit,” Brett said. “I can’t hit anymore.”
Luckily, he didn’t quit. He made the
Hall of Fame in 1999 and could also have
inspired Lorde’s next hit, “Team.” As it
happens, she’s playing Kansas City’s Arvest
Bank Theatre on March 21. “I’d love to go,”
says Brett. “But I’ll be in Arizona coaching.”
Turns out the Royals are on the road that
day. US Airways and Southwest have
nonstop fights from Phoenix to KC. Surely
there’s a way for the woman who wrote
“Royals” to meet the man who embodied
them. —STEVE WULF
See subway.com for nutritional information. ©2014 Doctor’s Associates Inc. SUBWAY® is a registered trademark of Doctor’s Associates Inc.
2014 is a big year for athletes everywhere, and world champions
Michael Phelps, Apolo Ohno and Justin Tuck know that greatness
takes hard work and eating right. Like the protein-packed Footlong
Oven Roasted Chicken on freshly baked bread.
THE BIG UNIT & THE BIG PICTURE
During his 22-year
MLB career, 6'10"
lefty Randy Johnson
intimidated both
opposing batters
and the occasional
photographer. Now
the fve-time Cy Young
winner fnds himself on the opposite end
of the camera as a rock photographer.
Johnson majored in photojournalism at
USC and shot concerts for the school
paper during the ofseason. He stayed
interested in the form as a pro. “On
the days I wasn’t pitching, I would be
at the end of the dugout talking to
photographers. I would pick their brains
and try to implement what I learned in
RANDY JOHNSON WINDS UP IN THE MOSH PIT
my own photography,” says Johnson, who
notes that each craft demands precision.
“When I was pitching, I had tunnel
vision, and I was looking at the little
glove that I was throwing my fastball to,”
he says. “When I shoot, I look through a
viewfnder, and it shows me what’s in that
little box.” While honing his digital skills
or adding postproduction to his quiver,
Johnson shoots events as varied as
NASCAR and the X Games. He’s also
joined three USO tours to Afghanistan
and gone on safari to Africa. But rock
stars remain his favorite subjects. During
his playing days in Seattle, the metalhead
forged friendships with baseball-obsessed
bands like Rush and Soundgarden, both
of which have since hired him as a tour
photographer. Check out rj51photos.com;
his portfolio of concert shots is as riveting
as a Gene Simmons lick. “It’s a labor of
love,” says Johnson. “I’m not saying I’m
Ansel Adams. I’m just saying it’s
something I enjoy doing.”
—STEFAN MAROLACHAKIS
THE BEAT & THE “BURN”
T H E P L A Y L I S T
British songstress and avid runner Ellie Goulding is Nike’s latest muse. She partnered with the shoe giant to produce
both a half-marathon-friendly album and a tricked-out training shoe. Here are her personal running songs.
PROGENY & PIGSKINHIP-HOP KIDS FLIP THE SCRIPT TO FOOTBALL
TRE MASON IS about to make history. When
he comes of the board in May, the junior
running back from Auburn, a Heisman fnalist
whose father is Vincent “DJ Maseo” Mason of
De La Soul, could become the frst child of a
hip-hop star to make it to the NFL. Looking
ahead a few years, if the prep ranks are any
indication, history will repeat itself.
Cordell Broadus, a 6'2" junior wide receiver
at Diamond Bar (Calif.) High, has already
received ofers from more than a dozen
blue-chip programs. His father, Calvin Broadus,
is more commonly known as Snoop Dogg.
Cornerback and fellow Californian Naijiel Hale
is an Arizona commit with 4.6 speed and the
same DNA as late West Coast rapper Nate
Dogg. Then there’s Jabrill Peppers. Besides
being the No. 2 recruit in the class of ’14, the
future Michigan cornerback is also the son of
Terry Peppers, a break-dancer who was an
unofcial member of the trio Naughty by Nature.
“A lot of us rappers are athletically inclined,”
says Snoop. “Our kids are athletic too, and sports
is a great way for them to get out of their parents’
shadow.” What’s surprising is that their track has
taken them to the turf rather than to the hardwood.
“Football is what the world is about right now,”
Snoop says. Ever since Kurtis Blow released the
1984 hit “Basketball,” hip-hop and hoops have
been joined at the hip. “Back then, basketball was
my favorite sport,” says Blow. “But football has
taken the reins.”
It doesn’t hurt football’s chances that the
FROM LEFT: ROBERT E . KLEIN/AP IMAGES; PARAS GRIFFIN/FILMMAGIC 02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 103
CHARTER & VERSEPITBULL SCHOOLS LITTLE HAVANA ON SPORTS
H E A R T B E AT SThe Knife
2003
G I V E I N
( F O R T H E F A M E )Kuhrye-oo
2012
B L U EJoni Mitchell
1971
G E N E S I SGrimes
2012
R U N A W AYKanye West featuring
Pusha T2010
R O L L U PFlosstradamus
2012
S N O W Y AT L A S
M O U N TA I N S Fionn Regan
2006
Armando Perez’s frst love was basketball,
not music. The artist better known as
Pitbull credits hoops with keeping him
in school and of the streets of Miami’s
Little Havana. So when he helped create
a charter school in his hometown earlier
this year, he lobbied to lend the curriculum
a sports bent. The Sports Leadership &
Management (SLAM!) Charter Middle/
High School opened its doors in August
to 800 students; 4,000 more are on the
waiting list. The curriculum’s elective
oferings focus on sports broadcasting,
marketing and sports medicine, and
athletics are infused into courses like
math, where students play fantasy
football to learn statistics and strategic
thinking. “My mom taught me that with
certain subjects, it may not be that you
don’t understand it, you’re just bored,”
Pitbull says. “Tap into what these kids
want to do and they won’t want to leave.”
—ANNA KATHERINE CLEMMONS
average musician, and therefore the average
musician’s child, isn’t gifted with baller height.
Hale, 5'11", stands a better chance of making a
living wearing a helmet than wearing high-tops.
The 6'4" Snoop may have been an exception, but
he played QB in youth leagues and always loved the
sport. Eventually, he used his own money to start a
league aimed at giving inner-city kids the chance
to play. Soon after, while visiting Nate Dogg in
the recording studio, Snoop pitched the idea of
Cordell and Naijiel, then 9, playing together. At frst
Hale’s mother balked, fearing that her son would
get hurt. But when Snoop pressed the issue, she
relented. The rest is history. “Once I started playing
football and understood it,” says Hale, “I started
liking it more.” —EDDIE MATZ
IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS A NIPPLE …TEN YEARS AGO, 90 MILLION PEOPLE WATCHING SUPER BOWL XXXVIII SAW JANET JACKSON’S BREAST FOR 9/16 OF A SECOND. OUR CULTURE WOULD NEVER BE THE SAME. BY MARIN COGAN ILLUSTRATION BY NATHAN FOX
106 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
Talk to me boy …
No disrespect I don’t mean no harm
Talk to me boy …
I can’t wait to have you in my arms
Talk to me boy …
They’re marching up the steps, to a platform
in the middle of the stage.
Hurry up ’cause you’re taking too long
Talk to me boy …
Better have you naked by the end of this song.
You know what happens next. Justin reaches
over, grabs a corner of Janet’s right breast cup
and gives it a hard tug. Her breast spills out.
It’s way more than a handful, but a hand is the
only thing Janet has available to cover it, so she
clutches it with her left palm. The breast is on
television for 9/16 of a second. The camera cuts
wide. Fireworks explode from the stage. Cue the
end of halftime. Cue the beginning of one of the
worst cases of mass hysteria in America since
the Salem witch trials.
THE WOMAN WHO planned the show wasn’t on
the feld to see her months of work go up in
fames. Salli Frattini, an executive producer at
MTV, which was contracted by the NFL to
produce the halftime concert, was supervising
from the production truck outside the stadium.
She and her crew were riding high on the
adrenaline of pulling of a 12-minute spectacu-
lar of music and choreography and pyrotech-
nics. When it ended, the truck erupted with
cheering and high-fving and hugging. The
euphoria lasted just a few seconds before the
phone rang. The ofciating booth was calling,
wanting to know whether they’d really just
seen Janet Jackson’s boob.
The man on the phone was Jim Steeg, who
had been head of special events for the NFL
since the late 1970s, overseeing the evolution
of the halftime show from a small-scale
IF OUR CHILDREN or our children’s children ever
dig up a time capsule from the beginning of the
new millennium, they will fnd that in February
2004, America collectively lost its damn mind.
Here’s what they’ll see: Janet Jackson on a stage
in the middle of Houston’s Reliant Stadium,
wearing a leather kilt and bustier, surrounded
by dancers in corsets and bikini tops and
bowler hats and helmets, looking like a ragtag
steampunk army of cabaret chorus girls and
Highlander extras and BDSM enthusiasts.
They’re grinding their hips, Janet is caressing
her corseted torso and 71,000 Super Bowl
spectators are screaming themselves hoarse for
the beatboxing of a 23-year-old white boy. Justin
Timberlake emerges from an elevated platform
beneath the stage in too-big khakis and a too-big
jacket—pff-ti-pf-ti-chk! pff-ti-pf-ti-chk!
pff-ti-pf-ti-chk! pff-ti-pf-ti-chk!—and a brass
band blasts him into “Rock Your Body,” a song
from his frst solo album. He and Janet are
romping across the stage, pausing their cat-and-
mouse game every so often to work her booty
into his hips. They’re singing call and response:
Before 2004, the FCC received only a handful
of indecency complaints a year. It received
540,000 about Jackson’s breast.
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production featuring marching bands and
dancing snowfakes and local heritage celebra-
tions to full-scale rock extravaganzas starring
the likes of Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and
Aerosmith. When Nipplegate happened, Steeg
was sitting next to the league’s head of ofciat-
ing, who was TiVo-ing the event. “He rewound
it for me, and then I immediately called Salli,”
he says. “You could hear everyone screaming
and hollering because what they pulled of
and accomplished was over. I said to Salli, ‘Did
you see what just happened?’ ”
“We were like, ‘Uh, we’re playing that back
right now,’” Frattini says. “There was lots of
chaos in the truck, and we played it back and we
were like, ‘Oh, s—. What just happened?’ ”
Frattini stepped out of the truck and immedi-
ately ran into then-CBS Sports president Sean
McManus. He looked her in the eye and asked
gravely, “Did you guys know?” Frattini promised
she had no idea that Jackson was going to be
exposed. “Okay. That’s what I needed to know,”
she remembers him saying.
Whether Frattini or the higher-ups at MTV,
CBS and/or the NFL knew what was coming
remains one of the enduring mysteries of the
event—at least that’s the generous explanation
for why millions of people watched the clip with
the same intensity as that of JFK conspiracy
theorists poring over the Zapruder footage.
To this day it remains the most watched video
in the history of TiVo, becoming such a touch-
stone that “wardrobe malfunction” soon earned
a dictionary defnition and Nipplegate became a
household word. (For the record, not much
areola was even visible underneath Jackson’s
large starburst nipple shield.)
The common assumption by the media and by
the public was that the fash of nudity was an
DAVID PHILLIP/AP IMAGES (4)108 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
attention-grabbing publicity ploy; the question
was by whom. Some signs seemed to point to
MTV. Before the show, a few of the producers
had entertained themselves by mock-ripping
their clothes of at Timberlake’s fnal line.
And in rehearsals, they had tried a move
where Timberlake tore of Jackson’s kilt.
Then there was an article on MTV’s website
beforehand in which Jackson’s choreographer
promised “shocking moments.”
To this day, everyone involved maintains the
conspiracists have it wrong. The mock-ripping?
That was their natural response to Timberlake’s
closing lyric—“better have you naked by the
make sure she was okay,” he says. “Her entire
camp stopped answering the phones. I fnally
got to her tour manager, and they were already
at the airport.” At frst, Coletti assumed the
singer was so mortifed that she fed immedi-
ately. Then a new thought dawned on him.
“No, she set us up and she’s out of here,” he
says. “That was the last time I’ve seen or heard
from Janet Jackson.”
Ultimately, it didn’t matter to the NFL
whether the producers knew: The league
decided that MTV would never again be
involved in a halftime show. Says NFL corpo-
rate communications VP Brian McCarthy:
Jackson backed up the producers, insisting
she decided on the big reveal after the fnal
rehearsal, without the knowledge of anyone at
MTV. Timberlake was meant to pull of a piece
of the costume, she later explained, but it was
supposed to reveal only a lacy red undergar-
ment; unfortunately, as it played out, that
undergarment came of in Timberlake’s hand
too. Timberlake also apologized but never
ofered his own version of events other than to
coin the term “wardrobe malfunction.”
After the show, MTV producer Alex Coletti
tried to fnd Jackson. “I tried to get in touch to
end of this song”—not in anticipation of
anything he might do. The tearing of of the
kilt? It didn’t look good, so members of the
production team say they killed it and never
discussed another option. The article? The site
was later updated with an editor’s note: “At
the time of this report, MTV thought that the
‘shock’ was going to be the as-yet-unannounced
appearance of Justin Timberlake as part of
Janet’s performance. Janet Jackson’s subsequent
performance was not what had been rehearsed,
discussed or agreed to with MTV.”
In an on-camera apology after the event,
“We turned over the keys to MTV, and they
crashed the car.”
MICHAEL POWELL, THEN the chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission, was
watching the game at a friend’s house in
northern Virginia. He’s a football fan and was
excited to relax and watch the game after a
rough couple of weeks. “I started thinking,
Wow, this is kind of a racy routine for the Super
Bowl!” he says, his voice pitching up in bemuse-
ment. “He was chasing her kind of with this
aggressive thing—not that I personally minded
Talk to me boy …No disrespect I don’t mean no harm
Talk to me boy …I can’t wait to have you in my arms
Talk to me boy …Hurry up ’cause you’re taking too long
Talk to me boy …Better have you naked by the end of this song.
LYRICS FROM
R O C K Y O U R B O D Y
Justin Timberlake featuring Janet Jackson2004
Timberlake never fully explained his role in exposing Jackson, and Jackson said later she was upset that he remained mostly silent when people blamed her for Nipplegate.
it; I just hadn’t seen something that edgy at
the Super Bowl.”
Then it happened. Powell and his friend gave
each other quizzical looks. “I looked and I went,
‘What was that?’ And my friend looks at me and
he’s just like, ‘Dude, did you just see what I did?
Do you think she … ?’ And I kept saying, ‘My
day is going to suck tomorrow.’ ” Powell went
home and watched the moment again on TiVo.
The same thought kept running through his
mind: Tomorrow is going to really suck, he
remembers thinking. “And it did.”
Typically, the FCC’s work is of little interest to
people outside of the community of businesses,
lawyers, lobbyists and Hill stafers involved in
telecommunications policy. But L. Brent Bozell
had been on a mission to make on-air indecency
a cause for national outrage, and Jackson’s
breast was his biggest opportunity yet.
Nine years earlier, Bozell had founded the
Parents Television Council, an advocacy group
dedicated to forcing advertisers, networks and
the FCC to keep sleaze out of family-friendly TV
programming. Just a year before Super Bowl
XXXVIII, Bono, accepting a Golden Globe for
best original song, called the moment “really,
really f—ing brilliant” on a live NBC broadcast.
PTC members fled a complaint, triggering an
FCC investigation. Nine months later, Powell’s
group determined that Bono’s feeting F-word
didn’t warrant a network fne. The PTC vehe-
mently disagreed, and with its encouragement,
members of Congress took to the House foor
to call for action against indecency on TV. Two
months before the Super Bowl, the Senate
unanimously passed a resolution calling on the
commission to reconsider the Bono decision
(the FCC reversed its judgment in 2004 but still
did not issue a fne) and to more strictly police
indecency standards generally.
“We realized we’d really hit a nerve out there,
and we weren’t alone in this thinking,” Bozell
says. “That was all before Janet Jackson. Jackson
was what lanced the boil.”
Previously, Powell says the FCC received only
a handful of indecency complaints a year. It
received 540,000 about Janet Jackson’s breast.
as Republican-driven. For one of the only
moments in recent memory, Congress was
united, passing a bipartisan bill increasing the
maximum fne for incidents of indecency from
$32,500 to $325,000. In a Texas congressional
race several months after the Super Bowl,
a Democrat circulated newspaper clips about
his Republican opponent—who’d written an
op-ed decrying Jackson’s behavior—streaking
as a college student.
Michael Powell himself immediately decried
the show in no uncertain terms. “Like millions
of Americans, my family and I gathered around
The PTC launched a campaign to punish
everyone involved. “An outraged public needs to
make this backlash long and commercially
painful,” Bozell wrote in an article. “The NFL
needs to back of its trend of treating its fans
with the lowest common denominator of sleaze.
CBS afliates need to worry about license
revocations if these ofenses keep repeating
themselves. And MTV ... ought to just be thrown
out with the rest of the rusty garbage.”
Powell, a Republican whose father is Colin
Powell, the then-secretary of state, hates when
people remember the Nipplegate controversy
110 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014
TOMORROW IS GOING TO REALLY SUCK. AND IT DID.
M I C H A E L P O W E L L
02/03/2014 ESPN The Magazine 111
the television for a celebration,” he said in a
public statement. “Instead, that celebration was
tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable
stunt.” He announced an investigation of the
show, promising it would be “thorough and
swift.” He made the rounds in the
media to underscore his point.
Today, Powell runs the National
Cable and Telecommunications
Association, the major trade
association for the cable-TV
industry. He loves reading about
the latest developments in
behavioral economics, neurosci-
ence and mindfulness. He’s 50, but
he looks no older than 35, dressed
in gem-toned pants and glasses
that look like they came from
Warby Parker. Sitting in his ofce
at the NCTA’s sleek modern
building in DC, he does not look
like a man who wants to spend his
time policing boobs on TV. He
does not sound like a man who
wants to spend his time policing
boobs on TV. Since leaving the
FCC in 2005, he has declined
almost every interview request
to talk about boobs on TV. But
10 years later, Powell is fnally
ready to admit that he never
wanted to police boobs on TV.
“I think we’ve been removed
from this long enough for me to
tell you that I had to put my best
version of outrage on that I could
put on,” he says, shrugging his
shoulders and rolling his eyes.
“Part of it was surreal, right? Look,
I think it was dumb to happen, and
they knew the rules and were
firting with them, and my job is to
enforce the rules, but, you know,
really? This is what we’re gonna do?”
Powell was driven in part by fear: The
indecency statute is part of the criminal code, so
someone convicted of broadcasting indecency
could be imprisoned—as could an artist, at least
theoretically. “As a leader, I thought that was
really wrong,” Powell says. “I didn’t want this
moment and settled on a combined $550,000
fne for the 20 Viacom-owned stations—then
the largest against a broadcaster in the commis-
sion’s history. Powell ended up testifying on the
wardrobe malfunction more than anything else
in his entire career, including his
confrmation hearings. “I ended up
testifying for nine hours on just
this,” he says. “On 9/16 of a second.”
OF COURSE, OUR children and our
children’s children will never
need to dig up an actual time
capsule to fnd out about the
wardrobe malfunction. As soon
as they hear about the time
Janet Jackson’s breast was
exposed on live TV, they’ll watch
it online. And the reason they’ll
watch it online is that in 2004,
Jawed Karim, then a 25-year-old
Silicon Valley whiz kid, decided
he wanted to make it easier to
fnd the Jackson clip and other
in-demand videos. A year later, he
and a couple of friends founded
YouTube, the largest video-sharing
site of all time.
Across the web, the moment
went viral, back when that
phenomenon was still somewhat
novel. (Facebook was launched
three days after the halftime show.)
“Janet Jackson” became the
most searched term and image in
Internet history. And “we put TiVo
on the map,” says MTV producer
Coletti—TiVo enrolled 35,000
new customers in the aftermath of
Nipplegate. When Coletti was
having trouble with his service, he
let slip to a customer service rep
that he was the guy who produced
the Super Bowl halftime show. TiVo gave him
lifetime service and a special number to call in
case he had any trouble.
The moment created other seismic cultural
changes as well. Howard Stern—already a shock
jock goliath with an audience of millions he
built, in part, on testing the boundaries of the
ground to stand on when members of Congress
started asking why he wasn’t going after
Jackson. Frattini and her team had to hand over
their laptops; the government wanted access to
every document and every bit of communication
among the show’s creators. The FCC found
nothing to suggest they had planned the
CRISP LIKE AN APPLE . BREWED LIKE AN ALE .
snowball, this juggernaut, to turn into pressure
to go after Janet and Justin Timberlake.
I thought we were getting into dangerous
territory.” Launching an investigation into the
halftime production quickly gave him some
FCC—was dropped from Clear Channel two
months following the Super Bowl, after the FCC
fned the company $495,000 for a broadcast in
which Stern discussed “sexual” and “excretory
activity.” “Janet Jackson’s breast got me in a lot
of trouble,” Stern told his listeners. Six months
later, he signed a contract with fedgling satellite
radio, framing the decision as an opportunity
to break free from broadcast’s conservative
constraints. As of early 2014, SiriusXM had
24.4 million subscribers, and Stern is credited as
the media fgure most responsible for introduc-
ing a new era in radio.
While Timberlake’s career as a solo artist took
of after the Super Bowl, Jackson’s sufered.
When her album Damita Jo debuted the month
following the halftime show, low play counts led
to online rumors that she’d been blacklisted by
Viacom, the parent company of MTV and VH1.
The record was her lowest-selling album since
1984. She withdrew from the Grammys under
pressure, while Timberlake performed and
accepted two awards. Throughout the contro-
versy, the bodice-ripped Jackson sufered much
more than the bodice-ripping Timberlake. “I
personally thought that was really unfair,” Powell
says. “It all turned into being about her. In
reality, if you slow the thing down, it’s Justin
ripping of her breastplate.”
Some critics saw gender and race at play and
thought Timberlake ducked the heat. In a 2004
remix of the Jadakiss song “Why?” rapper
Common asks, “Why did Justin sell Janet out
and go to the Grammys?” Timberlake himself
said he believed Jackson had taken a dispropor-
tionate amount of the backlash. “I probably got
10% of the blame,” he told MTV. “I think
America’s probably harsher on women, and
I think America is, you know, unfairly harsh
on ethnic people.” After initially apologizing for
the incident, Jackson told Oprah in 2006 she
regretted taking the blame for an unplanned
accident. Informed of Timberlake’s comments,
Jackson smiled uncomfortably and confrmed
that she felt her co-star hadn’t done enough to
defend her. “Certain things you just don’t do
to friends,” she said.
Clearly, it remains a sore subject for both
artists. Jackson told Oprah she would never
comment on the controversy again. When
recently asked by The Mag about what he had
taken away from the incident, Timberlake
laughed nervously as his representative signaled
to end the interview. “I take that I chose not to
comment on it still, after 10 years,” he said.
“I’m not touching that thing with a 10-foot
pole,” he quickly added.
Meanwhile, for the people behind the media
spectacle, the controversy never really went
away. After the incident, Frattini and Coletti
both left MTV to start their own production
companies. “That was the last year I did the
[MTV Video Music Awards],” Coletti says.
“I’d produced six VMAs, all the highest-rated
THE HALFTIME SHOW’S
PRODUCER REVEALS EVEN
MORE DETAILS OF THE NIGHT.
GO TO ESPN.COM AND SEARCH:
JANET JACKSON MAG VIDEO
LUKE FRAZZA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
ones at the time. And all of a sudden, I wasn’t
that guy anymore.”
The incident transformed how they work too:
Frattini says she’s warier of talent, insists on
knowing everything about their wardrobe
before they perform and is careful to note every
step of her production work in writing, cogni-
zant that if anything goes wrong, government
investigators may be reviewing her notes.
The wardrobe malfunction changed live
television production too. Before then, most
broadcasters employed audio delays only,
but many began delaying video as well. The
Grammys broadcast the Sunday after the Super
Bowl used a fve-minute delay, which Frattini
says was an extreme example of a larger trend.
Longer delays are more expensive and require
more efort, but they became part of the cost of
putting on live television.
Meanwhile, the NFL created contracts with
more specifc language about appropriate
conduct, including wardrobe, and set stif
penalties for breaking them. The next six
Super Bowl halftime performers were middle-
aged men. One year after the league broke that
streak with the Black Eyed Peas at Super Bowl
XLV, M.I.A. raised her middle fnger during
Madonna’s 2012 performance and was sued by
the NFL for $1.5 million.
THE MOST LASTING impact of the wardrobe
malfunction was the way it highlighted the
government’s inability to regulate indecency in
our new digital democracy. The FCC has never
had major control over regulating the media—
the First Amendment prevents the commission
from having a say over what appears in the
newspaper, on cable networks or online. But in
1978, the Supreme Court ruled that because
broadcasting was “uniquely intrusive,” the FCC
had an obligation to regulate indecent content
during the hours when children might be
watching. The idea, Powell says, was that “you
never know what’s going to come on, and so
rooms—the Supreme Court’s original thesis
that you can have this sanctity of your home
and nothing should be able to invade you in that
way,” Powell says. “I just think that’s probably
a bygone era.”
As society has reached a consensus that
there’s no way to control everything children
see, the number of indecency complaints has
decreased signifcantly. When Miley Cyrus
twerked at the Video Music Awards last
summer, the FCC received only 161 complaints
(of course, as a cable channel, MTV doesn’t
answer to the commission anyway). The
moment became fodder for celebrity bloggers
and morning show chatterboxes but was never
treated as a problem that needed to be legis-
lated away. The PTC dutifully issued a state-
ment denouncing MTV for “sexually exploiting
young women,” but no national outcry resulted.
Perhaps not coincidentally, CBS never actually
paid a fne in connection with Nipplegate—an
appeals court ruled in 2008 and again in 2011
that CBS could not be held liable for the actions
of contracted performing artists and that the
FCC had acted arbitrarily in enforcing inde-
cency policies. The Supreme Court declined to
hear the case in 2012.
So for Powell, the halftime show represents
“the last great moment” of a TV broadcast
becoming a national controversy—the last
primal scream of a public marching inexorably
toward a new digital existence: “It might have
been essentially the last gasp. Maybe that was
why there was so much energy around it. The
Internet was coming into being, it was intensi-
fying. People wanted one last stand at the wall.
It was going to break anyway. I think it broke.
“Is that all good? Probably not, but it’s not
changeable either. We live in a new world, and
that’s the way it is.
“They said the same thing when books
became printed, right? They said it was the
end of the world.
“But it wasn’t.”
your kid can be in the audience, and then boom!
By the time they get hit with it, the harm is done
and your kid is blind.”
That gives broadcasters an amorphous
obligation to act “in the public interest” and puts
the FCC in the awkward position of judging
indecency. It’s hard to imagine a legal theory less
well-suited to the modern era, when TV guides
are as anachronistic as rotary phones because
everyone watches on demand, online and on
their phones. “The Internet and YouTube have
exploded the notion of balkanized living
A L L F O R Y O U
Janet Jackson
H O T I N H E R R E
Nelly
R H Y T H M N AT I O N
Janet Jackson
B A W I T D A B A
Kid Rock
B A D B O Y F O R L I F E
P. Diddy
M O M O N E Y
M O P R O B L E M S
P. Diddy
R O C K Y O U R B O D Y
Justin Timberlake featuring
Janet Jackson
C O W B O Y
Kid Rock
SUPER BOWL XXXVIII
T H E P L A Y L I S T
The duet between Jackson and Timberlake capped an eight-song set of late-’90s and early-2000s classics.
On Capitol Hill, Powell
called the halftime show
“a new low for prime-time
television.” Now he says the
outrage was overblown.
ESPN (ISSN # 1097-1998) (USPS # 016-356). Volume 17, No. 2, February 3, 2014. ESPN is published biweekly, except monthly in January and July, by ESPN, 77 West 66th St., New York, NY, 10023-6201. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offces. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ESPN, P.O. Box 37325, Boone, IA 50037-0325. For subscription queries, call customer service at 1-888-267-3684. To change your address, log on to www.accountinfo.espnmag.com.
116 ESPN The Magazine 02/03/2014 i l lustrat ion by MARK MATCHO
by CHRIS JONESTHE FIX
[O]
[ BIGGEST LUGERS ] Inspired by the 2002 Olympics, Brett West and son Tucker built a luge track in their backyard.
Twelve years later, Tucker is on his way to Sochi.
Luge Run was ready for human trials. Tucker insisted on the honor.
Brett took a position in the middle of the run, “ready to perform CPR if
needed,” he says, mostly joking. (He had also stacked hay bales, just in
case.) But the track, and Tucker, performed beautifully. “It was quite the
experience,” he says. “I went straight down, and I’m still alive to this day.”
The backyard luge track fast became a local legend, attracting kids and
adults alike, a frozen Field of Dreams. Brett continued to tinker: PA and
irrigation systems, banners and electronic timing completed the home-
grown Olympic experience. Tucker diligently practiced his form, even
riding a wheeled sled down the chute during summers. Within a couple
of years, word had spread farther afeld of the family and their unlikely
obsession. “I heard about this nutjob in Connecticut who’d built a luge
track in his backyard and decided to pay a visit,” says Gordy Sheer, a
silver medalist and today the marketing director for USA Luge.
Sheer brought his medal to Ridgefeld, and backyard dreams suddenly
became something more real. He invited the Wests to Lake Placid to try
out the Olympic run. “It was so fast and smooth,” Tucker says. “I just
loved it.” The Wests joined the Adirondack Luge Club and began making
frequent trips to Lake Placid, plywood having been replaced with
concrete, lunacy with possibility. Together they made run after run down
the mountain, the son soon overtaking his father, each chasing his love.
In December in Park City, Utah, Tucker raced his way onto the
Olympic luge team, the youngest American man ever to make it. Brett
West was there. “Like Noah, I felt somewhat vindicated,” he says with a
laugh. “I can’t really describe the moment. Your kid making the Olympic …”
and he trails of. He’s thought about tearing down the old track, which
doesn’t get used much anymore, but Tucker has asked him to keep it up.
It still stirs something inside him, even just seeing it, banking crooked
through the trees. “I’m just so thankful my dad did that and we got to
share that experience together,” he says. Lugers know better than most
the importance of starts.
lympic dreams require some level of delusion, a built-in
resistance to statistics and physical sanity. The odds are so long and the
demands so great. But when Brett West and his son Tucker, then just
6 years old, sat in their Ridgefeld, Conn., living room and watched the
luge events from Salt Lake City in 2002, the familial defance of reason
would soon surface in ways that set them apart from even the most
weightless of fathers and sons.
“We just thought, Boy, doesn’t that look like fun?” Brett remembers
today. Almost immediately, he disappeared into the backyard and started
building a run out of snow and ice. There are pictures of Tucker, smiling
brightly, making his frst slides on plastic toboggans. “I was just super
stoked that we had this awesome sledding hill,” the 18-year-old says today.
The problem with snow, of course, is that it melts, and most dads might
have let their passion evaporate with it. “I came up with the dumb idea of
building a wooden luge track,” Brett says. Nearly every word of that
sentence is an understatement. Brett is not a carpenter; he owns a media
company. Without any of the requisite experience, he spent the next
spring, summer and fall designing and building a run, complete with
banks and drops and chicanes. Every Friday night, he would head to
Home Depot and bring home another load of pressure-treated lumber
and plywood, and every weekend, he and Tucker would measure and cut
and bolt another section of track that, at its peak, extended 780 feet.
“It was a bit like Noah’s Ark,” Brett says. “The neighbors would come
over and say, ‘Whatcha building?’” The following winter, an expectant
Brett iced down the chute with a garden hose and prepared to launch its
frst test subject: a bowling ball. The ball clattered and caromed down the
track—until it reached what the Wests were already calling Devil’s Curve.
That’s where the ball went airborne, rocketing over the side and crashing
into the trees. Father and son shared an uneasy moment of silence.
Brett broke down the curve and rebuilt it, and after sleds loaded with
sand had found their way safely to the bottom, the West Mountain