BBCollective

On the season three premier of the Bill Bradley Collective, the hosts examine protest in sports within the broader context of the national movement. As the NBA, followed by the NHL and select MLB teams, withheld their professional services following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the panel discusses the actions of these athletes, how their response was covered by the sports and mainstream med...

For the best of season two of the Bill Bradley Collective, we highlight a pair of profiles in ignominy, as Zak rakes departed Trump NSA John Bolton for his self-serving swing for the Times’ best-seller list and Ed debuts his vitriol for disreputable GA Senator and Atlanta Dream owner Kelly Loeffler that underscores much of this season. Lastly for rants, Andrew fires from his wheel-house with a por...

On our third and final post-season two bonus episode, the Bill Bradley Collective draft whom we consider to be the worst of the worst amongst elected officials in American politics. *Elected* members of both houses of Congress, state Governors and mayors of major U.S. cities are all on the board. In the interest of bipartisanship, both parties are up for rightful condemnation, as no less than two...

For the second of our post-season two bonus episodes, the Bill Bradley Collective play Siskel & Ebert as we draft the best of the best from the sports movie canon. Six movies each, structured identical to last week’s draft of sport’s worst people, the panel revisit (and disparage) some classics, stump for some controversial and lesser known selections and consider just how much “sport” is requ...

For our first post-season 2 bonus episode, the members of the Bill Bradley Collective draft teams comprised of whom we deem to be the worst people in sports. Join us as we outline detailed cases for why 18 certain individuals (athletes, owners and broadcasters, among them) all in their own way represent the worst of our society. Be sure to join us on Facebook and weigh in with your vote for which...

On the season 2 finale of the Bill Bradley Collective, the hosts examine Donald Trump’s history of involvement in the sporting landscape. The starting point is his association with the USFL, where Trump was the majority owner of the New Jersey Generals franchise and due in large part to some of his signature rapacity and ineptitude was largely responsible for the league’s suspension after merely 3...

.On this week’s episode of the Bill Bradley Collective, the hosts tackle the Olympic Games. Originally scheduled for, in part, this current early August window, we are without the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In lieu of our medalist predictions for male tae-kwon-do, the panel assesses whether or not the games are really all that missed from the dual perspective...

On this week’s episode of the Bill Bradley Collective, the hosts tackle the “sportification” of news media. We examine how debate culture, expanded use of quantitative research, and intensified tribalism within sports and politics have rendered coverage of each virtually indistinguishable from the other. Where sports are “the playground of life,” political outcomes affect the livelihoods of each a...

On this week’s episode of the Bill Bradley Collective, the hosts discuss the state of professional sports in Saudi Arabia. We start by describing the financial incentives that resulted in the UFC and European Tour expanding their products to the Middle East to begin with, namely to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia is the focus, as we examine the entry of the WWE, prominent global golf professiona...

On this week’s episode of the Bill Bradley Collective, the hosts analyze the few pros and many cons in how each major North American sports league plans to return to action by month’s end and later this fall. Topics of player health, competitive integrity, scheduling ambition and geographical relocation are the backdrop to a conversation that considers the relative feasibility of each league’s pla...

On this week’s episode of the Bill Bradley Collective, the hosts examine the cultural evolution of NASCAR. Their 20th century footprint as a deeply Southern, union-suppressing institution is first summarized, giving way to a conversation about more recent attempts to expand the product to a broader audience. The backlash from the Southern base towards improvements to driver safety and race culture...

On this week’s episode, the panel dives into the recent surge in activism on the part of collegiate athletes. The conversation leads with a hat-tip to a pair of basketball legends and their public stance against the Vietnam War. Fast forward to 2013 for an examination of the attempted unionization of Northwestern football, spearheaded by QB Kain Colter. From there, the recent work of college athle...

On the season 2 premiere of the Bill Bradley Collective, the hosts discuss modern basketball great Maya Moore and her dedicated work towards criminal justice reform. Moore’s extensive basketball legacy and local collegiate ties to the panel are the backdrop to a conversation focused around her work specific to the case of wrongfully imprisoned Jonathan Irons, deep-rooted systemic problems within o...

For the best of season 1 of the Bill Bradley Collective, we feature Zak’s conflicted takeaways from the NFL Draft, Ed’s dive into Trump press secretaries and how each mirrors a different member of the Cleveland Browns quarterbacking fraternity, and Andrew’s thoughts on a controversial heavyweight champion that never was. Our chosen main topic, a conversation about the NCAA and most notably the nee...

For the third and final of our post-season 1 bonus episodes, Andrew submits the 1993 heavyweight title rematch between Riddick Bowe and Evander Holyfield for discussion, a fight best remembered as the night the world was introduced to parachutist James Miller, aka the “Fan Man.” Miller’s mid-fight descent into Caesar’s Palace steals the night and the laughs, but the conversation extends to cover t...

For the BBCollective’s second post-season bonus episode, Zak presents the story of Michael Edwards, AKA “Eddie the Eagle,” the English Olympic ski-jumper par not quite excellence who most famously captured the world’s attention with his “performance” in the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. Zak charts Edwards’ rise from humble every-man craftsman to international Olympic celebrity/influencer, and his...

In our first post-season 1 bonus episode, the Collective experiments with a Dollop-inspired main topic, as Ed discusses the formation, brief existence and enduring legacy of the Players’ League. The league’s founder, John Montgomery Ward, it’s place in the baseball landscape of the 19th century, and the possibility of whether a fully labor-operated league could exist in today’s sporting world prov...

For our season finale, the BBCollective tackles “The Last Dance,” the acclaimed 10-part ESPN documentary of the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls dynasty of the 1990’s. While Jordan rules as the fulcrum of the conversation, the complicated legacies of Jerry Krause, Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson, among others are also all examined in depth. But first, Andrew addresses the NFL’s latest sorry attemp...

On this week’s episode, the Collective discuss the myth of amateurism and the NCAA, with a deep-dive on an exploitative culture where coaches, administrators and sneaker executives reap seemingly endless dollars in salary at the expense of the uninsured, uncompensated “student athletes” that generate the revenue. But first, Ed leads off with an assessment of the inglorious post-career exploits of...

On this week’s episode, the Collective tackles the cultural legacy and social context of the Kentucky Derby, originally slated for this past weekend in it’s traditional first Saturday of May slot but postponed to the fall in the wake of COVID-19. In lieu of picks for the race, we instead pick some very serious nits with regard to the event’s deeply troubled history with issues of race and class, a...

On this week’s episode, the panel examines the effectivity, or lack there of, of the NFL’s Rooney Rule in insuring minority candidates a fair shake in the league’s coaching hire process. The policy’s history, shortcomings and potential improvements are all highlighted. But first, Zak describes the conflicting emotions surrounding the optics of last week’s NFL Draft, Ed considers the NBA’s broader...

This week, the Bill Bradley Collective discuss the highly troubled discriminatory history of the Augusta National Golf Club and Masters Tournament. Both the club’s racial and gender issues are examined, with a focus examining the club’s inception, the esteemed first African American competitor, the sexist mores that still permeate and finally whether there is any hope for a progressive transition...

This week, the Collective presents a “resurrection”-themed discussion in observation of Easter Sunday. In a wide-ranging conversation, the hosts first reflect on the Boston Red Sox, in pre- and post-2004 context. Golf’s two foremost legends and their respective last(?) Masters triumphs are next examined, followed by an evaluation of the talented neophytes occupying NBA backcourts, who we’d rather...

For this week’s episode, the hosts dive into the athletic and political lives of their very namesake, Bill Bradley. We discuss the superlative collegiate career at Princeton and ten-year NBA run that follows. His second act as U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential nominee is also examined. Also this week, Zak rebukes the myth of cancel culture vis-a-vis John Rocker, Ed considers the charitable...

On this week’s episode Andrew talks about his COVID-19 movie choices (including our first guest as Zak’s wife Laura talks about The Cutting Edge), Ed talks about Bill Simmons and Simmons’ claims about cancel culture, and Zak talks about the NBA holding a tournament championship. The main topic discusses the new collective bargaining agreement in the NFL and its impact on players and the season