“This is a story about the most magical, mystical sport on earth, and the Detroit lifer who improbably became its king. Also, it’s about an art heist.”

Joe Namath believes hyperbaric oxygen treatment can reverse the brain damage he and others suffered playing football, so much so that a treatment center carries his name. The science, however, doesn’t support his claims.

Twelve columns about the boxer’s descent, originally published in the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times.

A profile of Jimmy Connors on the eve of the 1978 U.S. Open. His legendary confidence, honed by his mother since childhood, was in free-fall. (He would go on to win the final in straight sets.)

Guz Dominguez says he was trying to help baseball players from Cuba; the U.S. government says he was smuggling athletes. The truth is more complicated.

All aboard the maiden voyage Rob Gronkowski’s party cruise.

The last vestiges of a sporting powerhouse.

The intricate dance between highly organized ultras fan organizations, the teams they support, and the mafia for control of the center of curva and the lucrative ticket-touting opportunities that come with it.

Suspecting he had CTE and that it would eventually kill him, a former high school football player kept a diary of what was has happening to his brain.

“The sex abuse is a symptom of a culture that does not allow the athletes to have their voice.”

His father was a notorious figure in Providence organized crime. Boxing offered a different path for Jarrod Tillinghast—but it didn’t stop him from slipping into his old ways and robbing drug dealers with his neighborhood friends.

Aleksander Doba has spent a great deal of time alone, naked and blistered, aboard a very small boat in the middle of the ocean. It is his favorite thing to do.

How the children of African immigrants came to control the destiny of teams in France and Belgium and what it says about European identity.

I’m a 36-year-old grown-ass man, and I’m about to start crying on the plane coming back from Game 4. That’s how bad I want it.

Jared Lorenzen was a star quarterback in college. He won a Super Bowl. And just like the author, he has spent his entire life fighting, and losing, a battle with his weight.

Why is the actor wrestling—and nearly dying in the ring—at the age of 48? For pride, acceptance, and to undo the mistakes of his past.

One cyclist rides west, another rides east. They meet on an empty stretch of road in a Kazakh desert.

It starts with something small, and you ignore it. I remember when Jrue and I first started dating, right after college, and one of the women on my club team made a passing comment about him. “Jrue is the whitest black guy I know.”

On the lost pickup basketball games in D.C. between Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor, then both still in college, during the summer of 1957.

On October 17, 1973, John McClamrock was paralyzed playing high school football. Doctors doubted he would make it through the night. But he and his mother refused to give up—for more than three decades.

On the early NBA days of the league’s newest champion.

An 11-month investigation ends with a booster, now in prison for a Ponzi scheme, going public with details of how he spent millions on college athletes from 2002 to 2010.

[Shapiro] said his benefits to athletes included but were not limited to cash, prostitutes, entertainment in his multimillion-dollar homes and yacht, paid trips to high-end restaurants and nightclubs, jewelry, bounties for on-field play including bounties for injuring opposing players, travel and, on one occasion, an abortion.

Rafael Palmeiro was a surefire Hall of Famer before a positive steroids test derailed everything. He retired a few months later, quietly sent home early by the team that had been planning to celebrate him. Next came depression and a $53 million business deal gone bust.

On lucha libre’s exóticos, “wrestlers who dress in drag and kiss their rivals, never quite revealing whether the joke is on their opponents, themselves or conservative Mexican society at large.”

How to get Americans to “pay $45 to $75 to run for their lives from 1,500-pound, bad-tempered beasts.”