BBCollective

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where we have reached season’s end and you know what that means. That’s right, it is time to look back to our July draft of the worst people in sports and grade the picks! Each of your hosts drafted *five* sports figures: players, owners, executives, pundits alike, anyone with a presence in the sporting realm is fair game and draft eligible. Basically t...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week we proudly present our bi-annual tradition unlike any other: Rantapalooza. That’s right, it is the Collective’s late season spectacular where in lieu of a main topic it is all the rants fit to record. Nine rants to be specific, a veritable pu pu platter of sports takes and political musings. Among the topics addressed on this installment...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week your hosts examine the ongoing labor dispute between freight railroads and workers. A tentative deal was struck between the rail companies and unions only to be voted down by the unions' rank-and-file during attempted ratification. President Biden became actively involved dating back to this summer, and on December 2 Biden signed the rej...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week we present the final episode in our season-long examination of sportswashing. All season we’ve examined sportswashing as government manipulation of sports as a means to enhance disreputable standing and to cover-up abuses. But governments are not the only guilty parties. Look no further than the men in control of the NFL: individuals (no...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week your hosts wrap (for now) their coverage of the 2022 Midterm elections. What happened with the results, what to expect over the next 24 months, and where we’ll be when the 2024 Presidential election arrives are the entrees for this buffet of political discourse. Trump’s seemingly anti-Midas touch, the makeup of the impending Trump/DeSant...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where it is a bonus week here as Ed continues on his Parisian honeymoon excursion. Today Andrew recounts the story of the Dallas Mavericks of the early 1990’s and the A-list recording artist who may (or may not) have played a hand in their demise and dissolution. So-called big 3’s have been a dominant narrative in NBA team building for much of modern hi...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where wedding weekend has come and gone and our resident newly-wed is Paris-bound as a honeymooner. But not before, and by before we mean RIGHT before our patriarch Ed officially tied the knot, we carved out some time to discuss our favorite, least favorite, and most fascinating marriages, past and present, across political and sporting landscapes. Whet...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where Election Day 2022 has arrived. To preview today’s enormously consequential midterms, your hosts have each been given $1,000 in fake money with which to wager on the biggest races across this election. Those races and outcomes include: the makeup of the U.S. Senate and whether Democrats can take back a majority; the Georgia senate race between incu...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where it is a seasonal focus week. That’s right, join us for a conversation show examining the relationship between World Wrestling Entertainment, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and sportswashing. WWE has been the world’s dominant professional wrestling company for the greater part of the last half century. A publicly traded entity boasting gross revenues...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where we are a mere two days away from first pitch of the 2022 World Series, the very topic of week’s conversation. The baseball postseason has been noteworthy for some true parody on the National League side, as the two surviving teams began seeded 5th and 6th, and the top four teams bombed out in the wild card and division series rounds. We start with...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where with both Halloween and Election Day fast approaching, what better time for a conversation about the scariest possible outcomes and scenarios come November 9th. With so many Republican candidates hostilely banging election-denying, anti-choice, anti-semitic, homo-, trans- and xenophobic drums, it is fair to say the stakes in these midterm election...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where in light of the situation enveloping the Miami Dolphins and QB Tua Tagovailoa, this week your hosts examine the NFL’s ongoing struggle with concussion protocols and head injuries. Long swept under the rug, the shield has in recent years become it’s lone grandest advocate for the fastidiousness of said concussion-related protocols. The optics of a...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week it is the latest installment in our season-wide focus on sportswashing, with the spotlight focused on boxing. Perhaps the sport’s preeminent power-broker, promoter Eddie Hearn has staged two heavyweight championship fights: a 2019 tilt featuring Andy Ruiz and Anthony Joshua and a 2022 bout between the aforementioned Joshua and Oleksandr...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week your hosts dive into election season with a preview of four of this November’s most consequential gubernatorial races. Tune in for analysis, predictions, big-picture ramifications and much more on the Pennsylvania race between moderate Dem Josh Shapiro and far-right Trumpophant Doug Mastriano; the Arizona contest pitting Katie Hobbs agai...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week your hosts deep dive the history of the Major League Baseball Players Association and the recent inclusion of minor league players into the union. The union under Marvin Miller made considerable gains during his tenure as leader from 1966-83, including negotiation of a maiden collective bargaining agreement with owners, birth of the mode...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week we are sports-centric, with a main topic focused on the potential future for international expansion of Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NFL. Will a league with a heavy Latin, Spanish-speaking makeup like MLB consider expansion into Mexico, the Dominican Republic or perhaps even Cuba? Would the NBA, with their extensive investment...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week we continue our season-long focus on sportswashing with a conversation centered on NBA business interests in China. Basketball exploded in the PRC upon native son Yao Ming’s arrival to the league as the first overall pick in the 2002 draft. Since then, the NBA has grown into China’s most popular sports brand and in return the league over...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week college football is back and with it a conversation about the current state of compensating collegiate athletes. In this brave new world where student athletes are finally able to obtain NIL (name, image, likeness) deals for their own profit, the landscape remains controversial and complicated. Join us as we examine the unprecedented tel...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where it is a special bonus week documenting the intersection of Rafael Trujillo’s rise to power in the Dominican Republic and the legendary career of baseball legend Satchel Paige. Trujillo rules the Dominican for north of thirty years, both officially as President and an unelected military warlord. Trujillo rises up the ranks of the Dominican military...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week the road to the November midterms continues as your hosts examine the primary landscape after a busy week of elections. The Collective’s native Connecticut held primaries this week, not without some interesting results with regard to the Donald Trump shadow that seems to loom large over so many elections nationwide. The Trump effect is r...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week we focus on the ongoing plight of American basketball star Brittney Griner. Unjustly detained in Russia for months under suspect charges of drug possession, Griner’s “trial” has now come and gone, and the result is a conviction and sentence of nine years. Your hosts cover this troubling situation from an assortment of angles: the trial a...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week your hosts unveil the second installment of our season-long concentration on sportswashing with an examination of global soccer’s role. Two organizations drive the conversation, the Premier League of England and the sport’s global governing body FIFA, or the International Federation of Association Football. Considered by European audienc...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where in late July we are in the proverbial dog days of both summer and sports. Unless you’re an MLB trade deadline follower, an NFL training camp devotee or fan of European club soccer friendlies abroad, there’s not much on the docket. But there is an event of great prestige; just concluded, on the global sport landscape, the Tour de France that is the...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week your hosts set course on a journey in search of answering a simple, yet nuanced question: do “third” (political) parties matter? Historical and contemporary electoral landscapes are littered with candidates and movements from outside the two-headed Democratic/Republican stranglehold: Whig, Reform, Libertarian, Green, Working Families and...

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where we are back on the grounds of the Leavy-berg Compound, returned from a one-week road trip to the tremendous Social Bar & Kitchen. We are back to get season seven off the ground and running, with a conversation show considering whether or not the NBA’s so-called era of player empowerment has made like Arthur Fonzarelli and jumped-the-shark. Whe...