Bhutan is a small, rarely visited country on the eastern end of the Himalayas. North of India, south of Tibet, middle of nowhere. And it probably is neither unkind nor unfair to suggest that a couple of weeks ago, Bhutan was best known, globally, for being the country ranked 209th — and last — in […]

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  Journalists who work inside the office need to get out once in a while. To see anew how the other half lives. To get reacquainted with the realities of reporting. The untidy and inexact process of going onsite, piecing together what has happened, interviewing people who may not want to talk, making sense of […]

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I got an email the other day from the L.A. Galaxy media department. “Postgame notes: L.A. Galaxy 2, Chicago Fire 0 – March 6, 2015” The Galaxy season opener, and a victory for the defending Major League Soccer champions. And it was then that I realized …

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Jerry Tarkanian died today at the age of 84, and the volume of pieces written about him by sports journalists has been impressive. Nearly all of it, however, focuses on his time at UNLV, which certainly was interesting, and lasted 19 seasons. For me, however, he will always be the coach who put Long Beach […]

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A reader sent along this paragraph from a blogger who goes by Left Coast Sports Babe. “Big sports news across the pond in England. BBC calling it maybe the biggest FA Cup shocker ever – Bradford City comes back from 2-0 down to beat Chelsea 4-2. And in the U.S. people are going, “who’s Bradford, […]

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Various themes of progression have come forward in our five years in the Gulf. More people, more towers, more traffic, more sophistication … And more elite soccer players. The Arabian Gulf League, or Pro League, as it was known for four seasons, has seen a steady climb in the number of good players choosing to […]

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Some guys have trouble with change. Many of them are sports writers. Something I stumbled across while looking up something else: An 11-point rant by a professional journalist, in London-based Daily Telegraph, on “why the Super Bowl sucks”. We won’t address every point, because mostly this is about anti-Americanism, which flows wide and deep through […]

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Two ways generic soccer fans would know Diego Forlan. 1. He’s the Uruguayan forward who isn’t Luis Suarez. Forlan is the friendly one — the one who doesn’t bite. 2. Forlan seems to be considered one of the handsomest soccer players in the world. He also won the Golden Ball (best player) at the 2010 […]

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Taking a page out of Marshawn Lynch’s playbook … So, what are your thoughts on guys who refuse to talk at the Super Bowl? Read what I wrote last year. What? Read what I wrote last year.

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I am still ticked off at ESPN. They had a fairly significant presence in the Middle East and Europe, and they just quit on us. Gave up. Pulled the plug on July 31, 2013. And as SportsCenter went dark, we lost the most convenient access to baseball, the NFL, college basketball and, crucially, college football. […]

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