Jacques Plante is best known in sports lore for his pioneering the face mask for ice hockey goalies. Though this 7-time Vezina Trophy winner (awarded to the top NHL goalkeeper) may be immortalized more so for his commentary on “The…
The recent punishment meted out by the NFL to the New England Patriots[1] has forced us to revisit January’s DeflateGate scandal. Amidst countless articles, blogs, and discussion boards, this has all provided a platform to learn about ourselves and our…
Talk about using sport as a vehicle for getting at life’s bigger issues… Wednesday night at Santa Clara University, The Institute of Sports Law and Ethics (ISLE) hosted the third annual ETHOS Award honoring initiative in the ethics of sport.…
While having lunch last week with our school’s Academic Director, John Schafer, he related an endearing and telling story from his childhood. It involved what he recalls as his first discussion with his father about ethics. As they sat together…
Jack Bowen is guest blogging this week at sportsfeelgoodstories.com. He reflects on his own journey as a goalie at Stanford with his once-nemesis—the starting goalie at UC Berkeley—and now friend as they both pursued a spot on the 2000 Olympic…
This past weekend I got a glimpse of something I could not have anticipated. After fifteen years of coaching national-caliber water polo, I had my first day on the job in a new arena: Assistant Coach of my 4-year-old son’s…
This weekend’s Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled, “America’s Most Profound Comic Strip,” referring to the loveable eighties cartoon Calvin and Hobbes. The article made brief mention of Calvin’s pseudo-sport, “Calvinball.” For those not familiar, a primary facet of…
The past few years the NCAA has endured a great deal of criticism for treating student-athletes as professional athletes without fair compensation. In their defense, advocates point out that many of these athletes receive an education in exchange for their…
There’s an interesting and not totally obvious truism about sports, coaching, and life: the minor details are, in fact, major. John Wooden knew this. Van Halen knew it. Good teachers know it. Everyone, it seems, can intuit this, and yet…
Balls were allegedly deflated. And despite the seeming triviality of it all—or, really, because of it—if we look, we can discover profound kernels nestled in the depths of our humanity. An awesome tension exists in the sporting world. On the…
