Throwbacks: A Newsletter About Sports History and Culture

Throwbacks: A Newsletter About Sports History and Culture

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Olympic Fame Used To Be Optional. Now It's an Obligation (1980)
Eric Heiden won five gold medals and chose anonymity. Today's Olympians are performing under a weight that didn't exist then.
 • Michael Weinreb
The Beautiful Face of Socialism (1988)
Katarina Witt had to perform loyalty for East Germany or lose her freedom. Is America still the counterbalance?
 • Michael Weinreb
Special Edition: Throwbacks Goes To the Super Bowl
I watched the least interesting Super Bowl in years from inside a fishbowl. Then Bad Bunny happened.
 • Michael Weinreb
Does Football Need Violence to be Football?
The rest of the world is co-opting our most essential sport...and leaving behind the one thing that might destroy it.
 • Michael Weinreb
The Super Bowl Is Too Big To Escape Reality (1989)
The Miami riots, Bad Bunny, and how America’s biggest sporting event encompasses everything everywhere all at once.
 • Michael Weinreb
Worst. Super Bowl Uniforms. Ever?
How NFL uniforms got objectively worse, and why no one will admit it.
 • Michael Weinreb
The Orangeburg Massacre and the Fight Against Forgetting (1968)
Fifty-eight years before Minneapolis, a group of Black students, led by the football team, were gunned down in cold blood while protesting segregation…
 • Michael Weinreb
The Loneliness of the Backup Quarterback
On Earl Morrall, Jarrett Stidham, and the lost art of patience.
 • Michael Weinreb
The Artist and The Scoreboard
Caleb Williams made the throw of the year. His team lost. How much does it matter?
 • Michael Weinreb
A Throwbacks Conversation: Chuck Klosterman on the Cotton Bowl...and Many Other Football Things...
...including defunct rock festivals, Roger Staubach, his oddly conservative video-game strategy, and football's future (or lack thereof).
 • Michael Weinreb
The Rams Are a Remake of a Remake of a Remake
Warren Beatty, Vince Ferragamo, and the strange history of the NFL’s most illusory franchise.
 • Michael Weinreb
Have The Jaguars Finally Emerged From The Void?
At a moment when everything feels hopeless, the NFL's most invisible franchise has become an unlikely reason to believe in something.
 • Michael Weinreb
The Chris Weinke Prophecy: How Indiana Proved Age Beats Stars
A quarter-century ago, a 28-year-old quarterback proved maturity could win the Heisman. Now Indiana's old-man roster is changing college football.
 • Michael Weinreb
From the Archives: A "Meaningless" Bowl Game That Meant Everything (1962)
Why Bowls Matter, Even When They Don't.
 • Michael Weinreb
Throwbacks: A Newsletter About Sports History and Culture
Throwbacks: A Newsletter About Sports History and Culture
An Off the Beaten Path Exploration of Sports History, Culture, and Politics (and Assorted Minutiae)
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Letters from an American
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The Bird Tapes
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John Eisenberg

Throwbacks: A Newsletter About Sports History and Culture

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