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Jane McManus
@janesports
Executive Director, Seton Hall's Center for Sports Media. Deadspin columnist. Also Roller Derby, ESPN, Marist, Columbia J School. Same username elsewhere.
New YorkJoined May 2008

Jane McManus’s posts

Obama wrote this letter to my daughter's friend when they were in 4th grade. It's about a US interstate system of waterslides.
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1. Bubba didn’t report the noose. 2. It was a noose. 3. Demanding that he should apologize for being victimized is classic racism. 4. Hammering divisions is all he’s got. 5. 130,000 dead in a pandemic.
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Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!
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Hotel room at the Cancun Ritz Carlton: $305. Rapid covid test: $50. Flights from Houston: $257 Knowing that someone in the Cruz friends chat group immediately dimed them out to the New York Times... Priceless.
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A year ago Naomi Osaka accepted the comfort of Serena Williams on Ashe, today she extended that same genuine warmth to Coco Gauff. Tennis is in good hands.
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When Kamala Harris looks at you and says, I'm glad you brought that up I have another question, you have about 3 seconds to run.
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Pence just casually announces the new projection for American dead as high as 240,000. This is the same man who once projected 60,000 tops by the fall.
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Breaking: Texas to file suit against Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Arizona seeking to overturn Cowboys losses in desperate bid to win NFL East.
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There are kids watching the Super Bowl tonight who just saw Serena Williams treated as the athletic equal of Peyton Manning after Billie Jean King did the coin toss. The visibility matters.
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Serena on Reid & Kaepernick: "I think every athlete, every human, and definitely every African-American should be completely grateful and honored how Colin and Eric are doing so much more for the greater good... They really use their platform in ways that is really unfathomable."
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For her birthday, my 16 yo asked for a sub to the NYT. Delivered. The actual paper. It started this week, I’m finding half-filled crosswords all over and this morning she said, the full weekend paper arrayed in front of her, “You are not going to believe how much is in this.”
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When Kaepernick was shown on the big screen in Ashe during the match, fans erupted in cheers.
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Took my niece to see @serenawilliams and @venuswilliams play tonight with @E_Reid35 at Arthur Ashe stadium. Lani lost it when Serena surprised her after the match!!! Thank you so much Serena!!!
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NBC NFL pregame coverage has a segment on why minority applicants aren't getting head coaching jobs, followed immediately by a segment about how SF coach Kyle Shanahan was a training camp ball boy each year when his dad Mike was an NFL coach.
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Maria Taylor is leaving ESPN, reportedly for NBC. And good. Networks should compete for her as an emerging Nantz, Costas, Buck or Tirico. We haven't often seen women be tapped to be the face of a sports network but Taylor has the talent to chart that path. And that paycheck.
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The WNBA players’ deliberate decision to support Raphael Warnock over Dream owner Kelly Loeffler and her divisive rhetoric was an important chapter in how we reached this runoff:
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Texas has been a fine host for Super Bowls and sporting events for decades, but All Star games and NCAA championship sites have been moved for far less than what is now happening.
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Sue Bird told me the players were angry when Loeffler denigrated BLM, but knew if they blasted her, it would up her name recognition. So they came up with a strategy. Warnock.
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The WNBA players’ deliberate decision to support Raphael Warnock over Dream owner Kelly Loeffler and her divisive rhetoric was an important chapter in how we reached this runoff: deadspin.com/the-wnba-s-act
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If pro athletes, who have representation, unions and paychecks, want to weigh the risk and rewards of playing sports now, fine. But for a university to determine that an amateur football player is an essential worker based on potential lost revenue? It’s unethical.
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Some people are asking why ESPN is still live, but this is a news story now. This is the hard part of the job but it’s still part of the job.
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Biden won a majority of electoral votes and by millions in the popular. That this fact isn’t recognized by the losing candidate and party is a repudiation of democracy. That’s the story. The will of the people is being ignored.
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Serena Williams' daughter is 10 months old. She faced life-threatening complications. Yet she has willed herself back into the #Wimbledon semifinals. It's really incredible what she has done to get back to perform like this.
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Those WNBA shirts are incredibly powerful. The women in this league make far less than the pro baseball and NBA players sitting out. It’s a larger sacrifice in many ways and there has been no reticence to make it.
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This account is a lesson in how to use social media to keep history alive, and how to bring the horror of this event to the current generation. Faces. Names. Stories. They are powerful in any medium.
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Out of 728 men deported on 14 June 1940 to #Auschwitz in the first transport of Poles, 325 survived, 292 perished & fate of 111 is unknown. 223 registration photographs of them are preserved in our Archives. Here, you can see all of them.
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The president doesn’t decide who the next president is. All that talk of “will of the people” is meaningless if politicians do not believe in it. Why isn’t this the biggest talking point? Instead one grown man’s upset is indulged.
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Replying to
Headline writers, please reconsider this. You are putting two different categories of athlete in this one headline in a way that could easily confuse readers. This is such a divisive issue, and clarity is important.
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Pretty sure our kids got the message that no one is going to protect them when we responded to school shootings with lock down drills instead of sensible gun legislation.
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Brian Kilmeade says schools must re-open in the fall in part because "life is full of risks, kids should learn that early that life is full of hurdles, you've got to find a way to overcome."
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Want Christian McCaffrey to put his college team in front of his career potential? Pay him a share of the millions a bowl system generates.
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That it is taken as a given that calling out NFL racism will keep one of the few Black NFL candidates from getting another job in the NFL, actually makes the point about the NFL and racism.
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That picture of Biden and his son are a reminder that this administration has been marked by little as much as distorted masculinity, and Trump’s men are far more comfortable with the harassment of women than a father’s loving embrace.
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Richard Sherman arrest news is delivered entirely by Michele Tafoya while Al Michaels and Chris Collingsworth completely ignore the information and continue calling the game. It was cognitive dissonance in audio form.
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Breaking: Texas to file suit against Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Arizona seeking to overturn Cowboys losses in desperate bid to win NFC East.
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Here's why policing women's athletic wear is an issue: clothing is about performance, not the male gaze. Criticism and penalties for outfits aren't about what make a woman play better, but about how the person looking at her feels.
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Meanwhile, the NY Times reports nearly 140,000 new cases in one day. I’m old enough to remember Fauci cautioning we could hit 100K and that seeming impossible.
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The NFL announced sweeping new measures on domestic violence in a letter to owners today; Six games for 1st offense, lifetime ban for 2nd.
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Jemele Hill has always been a role model to me. Her authenticity in the face of hostility is inspiring. Her professionalism is the standard.
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I know what it’s like to have your daughters want something because tonight my daughter asked if she could phone bank seniors in Texas with Beto’s group.
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One of many disturbing elements worth pointing out here is "only reporter in the courtroom." This was a huge national story, and only one reporter? The WSJ ran an opinion piece that made plenty of assertions but didn't have a reporter in the courtroom?
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I was the ONLY reporter in the courtroom this morning as the man accused of raping a 10-year-old girl, impregnating her, leading to an abortion in Indiana, was arraigned. This confirms that the case exists. dispatch.com/story/news/202
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When it comes to women’s sports, old assumptions about market forces mean less coverage. But the audience is there. Marist polling finds more sports fans now watch the WNBA than NASCAR. More trends:
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What does it say about the sports media that the NFL’s race-norming in the concussion settlement is not the biggest story right now?
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I really hate when people pile on and tell a woman they don't know anything about football. But I'm making a one-time exception here.
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Tim Tebow is getting signed because he knows how to throw a football. Colin Kaepernick isn’t getting signed because he doesn’t. It’s not about race.
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Replying to
I learned about it last summer watching Watchmen and thought it was a fictional narrative before being horrified to learn that it as not only true, but also erased from the American story.
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Just because older people and those with compromised immunity are more likely to get this disease is not a reason to take it less seriously. You may not be aware of how many people you know who fall into those categories. Their safety depends on the larger public health response.
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Kate Fagan's departure, along with Jemele Hill, Mike Wise and some other people who aren't as well known, marks a real end of an era for ESPN. They were iconoclasts who weren't just diverse in their roles, but who looked at sports in a smart and unique way.
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Sports are the result of a functioning society, not the precursor. If you like sports so much, you should be pushing for a better response to the virus, not the de facto ritual sacrifice of some number of pro athletes and their kin.
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Budweiser announces it will sponsor the National Women's Soccer League. Sustained sponsorship and broadcasting of women's leagues is what will ultimately up player paychecks.
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So much sports coverage is tailored to avoid upsetting white, male fans. Whether by capping the coverage of women's sports in a highlight show, or in the framing of issues like Kaepernick. Constantly tiptoeing.
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This idea that it’s intrusive to ask employees to either be vaccinated or tested is laughable given that most of us had to literally pee in cups before we could accept the job offer.
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NFL fans booing the Moment of Unity, what do you expect after a decade of flyovers and enforced patriotism? Where owners cynically kneel once and then tell players not to kneel again? Giant flags on every field?
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Bob Costas is one of the most respected broadcasters in the business. Read this, and then ask what we lose when networks and leagues want a non-stop celebration of sports. Or else.
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.@OTLonESPN Exclusive: How broadcasting icon Bob Costas went from fronting America's most popular sport to being yanked from the Super Bowl -- for talking about football and brain damage. "Everyone walks on eggshells around the NFL." es.pn/2BvRPoL
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Thread on Carlos Ramos' history of reacting to angry players. Spoiler: He appears to have penalized Serena Williams more harshly.
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Djokovic Gets Into Argument With Same Umpire Carlos Ramos at French Open, multiple violations did not result in docked point or game. youtu.be/zRXD5E2pvU8
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Md. Governor Larry Hogan on MSNBC says the state has “moved on from testing” because for whatever reason the federal government won’t be able to ramp up testing fast enough. They’ve moved on to hospital capacity. Stunning.
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If the CDC had said this in March then everybody would be masked and we’d have 6 cases in the US right now.
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Well, this is a bit awkward. COVID-19 may cause long-term erectile dysfunction in men. Yet another reason to heed public health advice as the coronavirus continues to spread. on.nbc10.com/KkxOXBL
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There will not be sports until we have testing, because we can’t function as a society until then. Sports are a sign of a highly functioning society. Instead of worrying about when sports return, we need to get things right for all of us.
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Too often, marginalized people are only allowed to rise if they tacitly agree not to call out the bias in the systems they have been granted access to.
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That it is taken as a given that calling out NFL racism will keep one of the few Black NFL candidates from getting another job in the NFL, actually makes the point about the NFL and racism.
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Fox missed a huge opportunity to include a member of the USWNT in its broadcast team. Those women have actually won the World Cup, and could pull more American fans to the men’s game. Treating men’s and women’s soccer as different sports is ridiculous in the US.
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Over the years, men have approached me and asked what they can do to be a better ally to women. Your moment is now. Not to believe all women, but to create a society where women aren't dismissed and automatically disbelieved. Silence reinforces that tradition.
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Bob Woodward using his platform on CNN to say media shouldn’t be too nosy about president’s health right now as he prepares to go to Walter Reed with Covid. Journalists should never argue against access and information in a situation like this.
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Exposing truths people want hidden is a big part of journalism. If you ever want to talk about that as a career path, I’d be happy to have that conversation.
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Can we just retire the notion that you have to be a genius to coach football.
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Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, misidentified the three branches of the federal government and claimed erroneously that World War II was a battle against socialism, in his first big interview as a senator-elect. nyti.ms/3eXgDZb
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Not sure what advantage it is to air live interviews with sources from whom you do not expect the truth. You yield a credible platform.
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Andreescu asked if it was hard growing up in Canada as an immigrant. "No. Canada is such an amazing country. It's so multi-cultural. I had no trouble growing up having Romanian parents whatsoever. That's why I love my country so, so much."
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Dan Snyder gets no applause for retiring a racist slur at least a decade beyond decency. Let the Washington name be a reminder of the inertia of the NFL, and the indulgence of rich white men.
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Replying to and
Worth noting this civility enforcement is a byproduct of a corporate media that is on the same team as those in power, see political donations, and of journalists who relate more to politicians than to those who oppose disenfranchisement.
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This wasn't a mistake. The NCAA unintentionally revealed institutional priorities. It wasn't prepared for the backlash.
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“We fell short,” NCAA VP of women’s basketball Lynn Holzman says about the facilities in San Antonio. There was a call last night with coaches and team administrators, and the facilities will be upgraded by tomorrow morning, claims the NCAA.
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Replying to
Or a credit report. Or what your cell phone knows about you. Or that some jobs require drug testing to get a job. Or a test to drive a car. Society sets gating criteria all the time. So what’s the protest *really* about here?
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Five congresspeople decided to sit this one out. If you can’t deign to cast a vote on this one, you need to find another line of work.
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