By Mark Lassiter
In September, Forbes announced that Tiger Woods had become the first athlete to earn one billion dollars over the course of his career. Now, just two months later, and approximately forty years after the setting for Mad Men, real life advertising executives at Nike, EA Sports, Gillette, Gatorade and AT&T have been carefully monitoring the sagging ratings for the soap opera being played in the national media with their superstar pitchman, Tiger Woods, in the role of leading man.

By TaRessa Stovall
In a victory not only for a gifted athlete, but for humanity as a whole, Caster Semenya, the gifted South African teen track star who was mired in controversy over confusion about her gender, was found “innocent of any wrong” doing by the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and allowed to retain her 800m gold medal, title and prize money.

By Mark Lassiter
The National Football League (NFL) seems to be getting along quite well without recent almost-team-part-owner Rush Limbaugh. That blip came and went pretty quickly, but it’s still worth looking at, both as an example of how politics and race can play out on and off the field, and as an examination of sports as sanctuary.