Culture
Can We Empathize With Our Enemies? One Author Wants Us to Try.
The opposite 4 sections, “Curiosity,” “Individuals,” “Paths” and “Honesty,” mix interviews, examples, graphs and bulleted sections with key phrases to recollect, like “state your issues” and “pause and persist.” They element how and when to interact in discussions with these of various blocs (and, importantly, when to not). Guzmán’s prescription for what ails our society is to switch certainty with curiosity, to cease seeing folks as representatives of teams we are able to dismiss and to see them as a substitute as people whose backgrounds inform their beliefs. She writes, “If there’s one query I need to persuade you to ask extra usually, it’s ‘What am I lacking?’”
Then, Guzmán says, it turns into attainable to have what she calls INTOIT moments (for “I By no means Considered It That Approach”), wherein we see the individual behind the politics. Simply because the highway to raised well being is usually disappointingly low-tech — no silver bullet however the boring and tough mundanities of sleep hygiene and aware consuming — the treatment for polarization is the straightforward and underappreciated artwork of dialog. However, after all, easy doesn’t imply straightforward.
Guzmán writes of getting fortunately misplaced in interviews with folks she has little in frequent with, seeing their totally different opinions as invites to be taught as a substitute of direct threats to her beliefs. I’d have preferred extra cathartic tales of connection, extra direct examples of what that appears like; I didn’t have as many INTOIT moments studying it as I’d hoped. I used to be drawn to the title as a result of, as a frequent op-ed author, that’s the response I hope to elicit. Not “You’re proper,” a lot as “Attention-grabbing level.” However whereas I’m professionally sure to contemplate factors of view that depart from my very own, and love the emotional and psychological exercise this will present, interpersonally I’m usually intractable, demanding that shut pals see issues my method.
Guzmán’s lesson appears to be that I ought to hand over the must be proper and concentrate on the necessity to keep related. The guide’s best providing, I feel, is permission to reclaim folks we’d have dumped for ideological causes; such connections received’t sully us however might in reality enrich us. I can see this guide serving to estranged events who’re equally invested in bridging a niche — it might be assigned studying for fractured households aspiring to a harmonious Thanksgiving dinner.
Would these similar strategies work on a bigger scale, in a rustic the place 62 % of People really feel unsafe expressing their political beliefs, when the best and left are so excessive that extra folks declare political homelessness every day? Maybe partially as a result of I reside in such a politically segregated world, my disagreement is usually with members of my very own social gathering. Can a guide like Guzmán’s push us previous intraparty battles over race and gender? Nationwide shouting matches over infrastructure and abortion?
Culture
The kid from ‘nowhere’ setting records at Ole Miss
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — They called him “Nowhere.”
He was 11 years old when he showed up with little to no warning on the football field behind Doss High School. It was one of the few times that Tim Richardson, who ran the local youth football league, didn’t have the skinny on one of the players.
“No one knew who he was,” said Richardson. “We didn’t know what to do with him.”
The coaches were so caught off guard they played the kid on offensive and defensive lines as a seventh grader. Once Richardson got him as an eighth grader, he realized the quiet, mysterious outsider was outrunning everyone else on the team, much too fast and athletic to linger in the trenches. Richardson moved him to receiver, quarterback, running back — any position where he could put the ball in his hands — unlocking the best player on one of the top youth teams in the country.
“I had him touch it about every other play,” Richardson said. “He might have had 35 touchdowns that season.”
But even as a star player, with area high school coaches scouting his games, he remained the unknown kid who showed up out of the mist, a trace of something unsaid always trailing close behind him.
On the back of his jersey, instead of his name, they even put “NO-WHERE.”
Today, Jordan Watkins is a senior wide receiver for the Ole Miss Rebels, No. 16 in the College Football Playoff rankings. Last Saturday, Watkins set two Ole Miss single-game receiving marks with 254 yards and five touchdowns in a win at Arkansas. This Saturday, the Rebels and Lane Kiffin’s high-powered offense will take the field in Oxford, Miss., against the No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs in search of a victory to bolster their chances of making the 12-team Playoff.
But before he became a record-setting starter on a top-rated SEC offense, Watkins was that kid from nowhere.
When Watkins was 8 years old, he sobbed as he watched his mom was driven away in the back of a cop car. He can still hear the officer telling him, “Don’t worry, your mom will be back soon.”
He didn’t see her again for almost two years.
Paula Baker was a child of addiction. She started drinking at age 12, smoked weed as a teenager, used cocaine at 18 and got hooked on OxyContin at 21. She was a mother of two by then, having Jordan at 17 and his younger brother, Elijah, a few years later.
She did her best to keep the substance abuse out of the house and away from the kids, but eventually started trafficking drugs to feed her habit. At age 25, she got kicked out of her apartment in central Ohio, so she packed up her two boys and called a friend back home in Ashland, Ky., asking if they could crash at her place. They arrived in the middle of the night, Watkins and his little brother asleep in the back seat. Paula got arrested the next day, busted for making a deal to scrounge up money for a new place to stay, violating parole in the process.
“That was the bottom for me,” Paula said.
She wound up at the Western Kentucky Correctional Facility, where she spent more than 18 months. The boys stayed with their aunt in Ashland, five hours away on the opposite side of the state. They didn’t see their mom for her entire incarceration. Watkins would tell his friends that she was on a business trip.
Paula was eventually paroled and granted a conditional release to The Healing Place, a recovery center in Louisville, where she was required to spend another 18 months. It was a couple of hours closer to Ashland, and her sister brought the boys to see her the week she arrived. They all sat together in the common room around a Christmas tree.
She had been sober for more than a year and a half by that point, but quickly realized she had no true understanding of addiction or recovery.
“I didn’t know addiction was a disease, or that I wasn’t a horrible person. But I heard these stories of recovery, and that’s what I wanted,” she said. “I didn’t want to live a chaotic life anymore.”
By May 2013, she had completed her recovery program and was working part-time at The Healing Place, saving up enough money to get a place with Austin Baker, her future husband, who had just gone through his own recovery program. She regained full custody of her boys and moved them from Ashland to Louisville.
Eleven-year-old Watkins struggled with the transition. Watkins’ father had never been a consistent figure in his life, and now he had to leave his friends in Ashland for a new city, to move in with his mom after more than three years apart, and with Austin suddenly in the picture.
“He was mad, and I understood why,” said Paula. “He didn’t know what was going to happen, if I was going to end up back in prison. It was all new for him too.”
The football field was Watkins’ haven.
“You could tell when he showed up, it was an outlet for him,” said Richardson.
For the next few years, Watkins lashed out at home and picked fights at school, following a timeworn recipe of rebellious behavior.
“It took me a very long time to forgive my mom for going away,” said Watkins. “I hate that in retrospect, because I love my mom to death, but I was clearly acting out to show how much resentment I had toward her.”
Richardson heard stories about Watkins causing trouble, but he never saw it on the field. Watkins would ask questions about route-running and schemes, but he mostly kept to himself, burying that anger.
Things started to turn during Watkins’ freshman year of high school. He was ineligible for the football team at his public school because of all the suspensions he racked up, so Paula and Austin enrolled him in a private school, barely able to afford his tuition.
“They had to sacrifice everything just so I could play football,” said Watkins. “I messed things up by being spiteful, but I saw what they were trying to do for me.”
He didn’t come to this realization immediately, or all on his own. There was a lot of therapy, as a family and individually. Watkins bucked against it at first, then was drawn to it, working with a therapist named David for a few years. The two of them would grab a bite to eat. Take walks. Visit the library to do homework.
“There are still a lot of people in today’s society that think therapy is for sissies, that as a man you have to be tough. I try to be open about the fact that therapy changed my life,” said Watkins. “David didn’t expect anything in return from me, didn’t need me to be someone I wasn’t. He was just trying to help me.”
Once Watkins accepted that his mom and Austin were trying to help, too, the scars began to heal.
By his senior year at Butler Traditional High School, he emerged as a three-star wide receiver and committed to play for Louisville in the 2020 class. He liked the idea of his family being a 10-minute drive from the stadium, but after two years with the hometown Cardinals, he entered the transfer portal. Watkins received plenty of interest, but Kiffin — who has been open about his own journey to sobriety — sold him on Ole Miss.
“Coach Kiffin told Jordan if he wanted to go to the NFL, he needed to come play for him,” said Austin.
Watkins has 118 catches for 1,739 yards and 12 touchdowns midway through his third season with the Rebels. Paula didn’t love her son moving more than six hours away, but she recognized what it could mean for his future, that he was ready for a new challenge. And she was ready, too.
Paula has been sober for more than 14 years. These days, Watkins is a self-described “mama’s boy” who talks to her every day. He’s grown close with Austin, too, the first person Watkins called when he got the new College Football 25 video game featuring his own likeness, and whom he immediately FaceTimed when he hit a hole-in-one this summer, out of breath from sprinting to the green. Watkins will regularly send pictures to the family group chat of what he cooked for dinner on his flat-top grill.
“I’ve always held onto that little bit of hope: If you wake up and keep doing it day by day, things get better,” said Paula. “And it’s true.”
Ken Trogdon was giddy watching the highlights of Ole Miss’ win last week. The South Carolina alum and resident is a loyal Gamecocks supporter, but he’s become a fan of the Rebels through his connection to Watkins, whom he met earlier this year.
“Five touchdowns? I was so excited for Jordan,” said Trogdon. “He’s such a special young man.”
About 12 years ago, Trogdon, a healthcare administrator, founded HarborPath as a nonprofit organization that supplies medications to vulnerable populations nationwide. That mission soon intersected with the opioid and fentanyl crises, including efforts to distribute and inform people about naloxone — commonly known as Narcan — a drug that can reverse opioid and fentanyl overdoses. For the past few years, HarborPath has worked to get naloxone within arms reach of as many people as possible.
That’s what brought Trogdon to Ole Miss this past winter. HarborPath supplied Narcan to the William Magee Center, founded in 2019 in honor of a former Ole Miss track athlete who died of an accidental overdose. Anyone can stop by and pick up Narcan for free, no questions asked.
Trogdon approached The Grove Collective, an Ole Miss-affiliated name, image and likeness organization, about partnering with Ole Miss athletes in social media videos to spread awareness. Watkins, a prominent football player who was comfortable in front of the camera, was one of the athletes The Grove suggested.
Chatting with Trogdon and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch between filming sessions, Watkins shared details about his life before coming to Ole Miss in 2022. About his childhood and his mom’s struggles with addiction. About her time in prison and recovery centers, and how his stepfather, also in recovery, was twice revived with Narcan. About how his mom now works as a consultant in the recovery field with organizations just like HarborPath.
Trogdon was hoping for a charismatic football player to help message his cause. Instead, he got a player with “a personal connection to it like nobody else.”
Fake pills are not worth the risk.
Ole Miss wide receiver @jordantwatkins is partnering with HarborPath to help save lives from drug overdose and deadly fentanyl on college campuses.
🔗 https://t.co/vZE9w9Jy8j pic.twitter.com/zwN47gWSFk
— HarborPath (@HarborpathRx) March 8, 2024
When the Ole Miss videos were released in February, they generated 100,000 views on X on the first day. Trogdon said HarborPath is considering expanding the campaign to additional campuses, and that he could see Watkins being a national spokesperson for the organization.
More importantly, the Magee Center experienced an uptake of Narcan after the videos circulated, and Trogdon said the available medication was responsible for reversing an overdose on the Ole Miss campus.
It’s also become another outlet for Watkins, who has also worked with recovery groups back home in Louisville. And his mom will put him on the phone with kids who might be suffering those familiar pains of family addiction to offer perspective.
“It affects so many people, not just through personal use but because of those around them,” said Watkins. “I love being able to use my platform or experience to help.”
Recovery is not a beginning-and-end process. It’s a daily undertaking, a plant that needs watering. But after 14 years, the roots have taken hold. This weekend, Paula and the family will make their regular 400-plus-mile trek to watch Watkins and the Rebels take on Georgia. Cheering on the quiet kid from nowhere.
“We’re not perfect,” said Paula, “but we’ve come a long way.”
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: David Jensen / Getty Images; Courtesy of Paula Baker)
Culture
Lions Super Bowl? McCarthy’s seat the hottest? The Athletic NFL staff’s midseason picks
Back in September, The Athletic’s NFL staff made picks for MVP, Super Bowl champion and more. Two months later, the season’s (approximate) midseason point, is the perfect time to update those predictions. Some things remained the same (like the consensus Super Bowl LIX matchup), while others have changed (MVP and Super Bowl winner picks).
Forty-six staffers responded. Here are their predictions.
Voter fatigue might have been a factor in Lamar Jackson drawing zero MVP votes in our poll two months ago, but his performance to this point has been undeniable. Patrick Mahomes was the pick before the season started, but while he’s been better than his box-score statline would suggest he might have too steep a statistical hill to climb to overtake Jackson.
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Like his quarterback teammate who now leads the MVP race, Derrick Henry didn’t draw a single OPOY vote from our staff in the preseason, though Henry now seems to be a healthy second half of the season away from clinching the award for a second time in his career. The two top vote-getters in September have been done in by injuries — Tyreek Hill to his quarterback, and Christian McCaffrey to himself.
Watt finished third in the preseason vote, behind Micah Parsons and Myles Garrett. Parsons’ injury and Garrett’s (relatively) down season have swung the door open for Watt to win DPOY honors for a second time — which would put him one trophy away from catching big brother J.J., a three-time winner with the Houston Texans. Warner and Chris Jones also drew votes in September’s poll.
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Jayden Daniels finished second to the draft’s top pick, Caleb Williams, in the preseason vote. Though while Williams’ play has improved as the season has gone on, Daniels has been spectacular and is primarily responsible for the staggering turnaround of the Commanders’ on-field fortunes. (Also, while we didn’t split the rookie vote into Offensive and Defensive awards like the NFL does, one voter did highlight Rams edge rusher Jared Verse as the top defensive rookie.)
The Chiefs drew 28 of 42 votes (67 percent) to win the AFC in September, and now get a similar share (63 percent) at midseason. They have run into some injury issues (specifically top receiver Rashee Rice) coming off a 21-game season a year ago, but with a perfect record things are set up to run through Kansas City in the AFC playoffs. There’s not much reason to move off the two-time defending champs.
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While the Lions were the preseason pick with less than half the vote (16 of 42, 38 percent), their performance in the first half of the season, specifically of late, has made them heavy favorites in the NFC (87 percent of the vote). The Packers, 49ers and Eagles were second, third, and fourth, respectively, in September as well.
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While the two conference champion picks held from the summer, the Lions have won over the staff’s confidence when it comes to potentially lifting the Lombardi Trophy after Super Bowl LIX. While the Chiefs got more than half the vote (23 of 42) in September, Detroit drew only two votes to win the Super Bowl before the season started, tied for fifth (behind the Chiefs, 49ers, Texans and Bengals) at that time.
What they said
“The Dolphins are flawed on defense and can’t afford more than two more losses, but they’ve got a supercharged offense and the conducive schedule (Rams, Raiders, Patriots, Browns, Jets twice) to go on a run and steal the AFC’s seventh playoff spot.” — Joe Buscaglia, Bills beat writer
“It’s the 49ers if they get Christian McCaffrey back and he’s able to stay on the field. Otherwise, I’d go with the Bengals.” — Mike Sando, NFL senior writer
“I almost picked the 49ers to win the NFC despite their 4-4 start. They have played shorthanded all season, and while they’re not getting Brandon Aiyuk or Javon Hargrave back I think they have enough elsewhere to win it all if things break right. Brock Purdy has taken another step, and the offensive line has more upside than in previous years. If Christian McCaffrey gets right, San Francisco could be a juggernaut again.” — David DeChant, senior editor
“The Rams are in a vulnerable division, and the offense is getting healthy.” — R.J. Kraft, staff editor
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What they said
“Doug Pederson is under the most pressure; Jaguars ownership publicly set expectations so high entering the season.” — Mike Sando, NFL senior writer
“It might already be unsalvageable in Dallas, but there’s no way Jerry Jones can turn back to Mike McCarthy if this thing goes further off the rails.” — Jim Ayello, senior editor
“You just don’t bench a 22-year-old quarterback who was the fourth overall pick for his 39-year-old backup if you aren’t all-in on this year.” — Joe Buscaglia, Bills beat writer
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Sam Hodde / Getty Images, Patrick McDermott / Getty Images, Cooper Neill / Getty Images)
Culture
Women’s basketball isn’t having a moment. This is our new reality
I was in the seventh grade the first time sports writing gave me a visceral feeling. UConn capped a 39-0 season to win its third national title in eight years, and I anxiously awaited the delivery of Sports Illustrated.
When it arrived, Maryland’s Juan Dixon graced the cover, but across the April 8, 2002, edition of the magazine’s top, it read: “UConn’s AMAZING WOMEN, Pg. 44.”
I immediately flipped past “Faces in the Crowd,” where you could reliably see female athletes in the magazine in 2002, and tore through the feature that detailed the lives of UConn’s close-knit seniors: Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams. How they lived together off campus. Cooked weekly family dinners. Fought over card games and bet about who would be the first to cry on senior night. … I ate it up.
These details stayed with me years later, because as a women’s college basketball fan in the 1990s and 2000s, there wasn’t much out there to consume about the most exciting teams and players. You rarely forgot anything. Facts just existed in your brain (sometimes for the next 20 years).
After rereading the UConn story, I turned to the back page to check out the column I always read — “Life of Reilly.”
The headline? “Out of Touch with My Feminine Side.”
“You think it’s hard coaching in the Final Four? You think it’s tough handling 280-pound seniors, freshmen with agents, athletic directors with pockets full of pink slips?” columnist Rick Reilly began. “Please. Try coaching seventh-grade girls. After working with boys for 11 years, I helped coach my daughter Rae’s school basketball team this winter. I learned something about seventh-grade girls: They’re usually in the bathroom.”
Those few pages about UConn’s intense, elite women were sandwiched by a three-word headline on the cover and 800 words better suited for bad movies or lazy literature on the back page. It was disappointing and frustrating. Worst of all, even to my seventh-grade self, it was expected.
For so much of sports history, women athletes (and their fans) have had to accept the highs with the lows and move forward, understanding that too often the lows were intentional — a lack of investment, institutional support or attention. Later, those lows were artificial reasons to continue holding down and holding back the sport. It’s the women’s sports Catch-22.
The “Caitlin Clark Effect” poured over into the WNBA this summer, and teams across the league — not just the Fever — drew record crowds and massive TV ratings. As the women’s college season began this week, even without the stars that pushed women’s college hoops to new levels, interest remains.
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Defending champion South Carolina sold out its season ticket packages for the first time in program history. UConn sold out its season tickets for the first time since 2004. LSU and Iowa, without Angel Reese and Clark, respectively, sold out. Texas, Notre Dame and Tennessee are also reporting huge increases.
Five months before the national title game, tickets are sold out for the Final Four, and the resale market is buzzing. Nosebleeds for the national championship game are nearly $200, while a courtside seat will run close to $3,000.
For the first time since 2004-05, our Gampel Pavilion season tickets are SOLD OUT!
Limited season tickets remain for XL Center games ➡️ https://t.co/SLhPATBr4S pic.twitter.com/QGyhYGh81F
— UConn Women’s Basketball (@UConnWBB) October 2, 2024
Nobody in women’s hoops has won like Dawn Staley — Final Fours as a player, national titles as a coach, Olympic golds as a player, Olympic gold as a coach. Her South Carolina office drips with memorabilia. Yet, among all of her special accomplishments, this particular moment in women’s college basketball feels uniquely different to her. “It feels like we’re free to just explore where this game can go,” she said. “There’s no boundaries on us, and because of that, you’re seeing talent, you’re seeing coaching, you’re seeing fan support, you’re seeing viewership — you’re seeing all of those things.”
Staley speaks often and openly about how the women’s game was intentionally held back by so many for so long. First, by the exclusion of women in sports before Title IX. Then, by the NCAA, which prioritized men’s college basketball. Also, by television media partners, which refused to put the game in front of as many as possible (and then used that lack of audience as a reason to not air it on major networks), and in print media coverage, which refused to write about women’s sports (and then often claimed no one read about it).
Then came last season. A year in which the women’s national title game pulled in nearly 4 million more viewers than the men’s title game, just three years after the Kaplan Report exposed the NCAA’s intentional undervaluing of the game and allowing its media partners to underpay.
“This,” Staley said, with a pause, motioning with her hands to indicate everything over the past year. “I never thought it would come during a time when I could be a part of it.”
Anyone who has been around women’s basketball will share guarded optimism as well as excitement for this season. Will this finally be the tipping point? Will the forces that held back the game permanently move out of the way?
Tara VanDerveer has seen it all, including what she thought was the turning point. Twenty-two thousand people showed up for Iowa vs. Ohio State in 1985, her first season in Columbus. But it turned out to be an outlier. Throughout her career, which began with her driving the team bus and doing the laundry as an assistant coach and ended last season at Stanford with three title rings and 1,216 career wins, she experienced those starts and stops, times when a moment could’ve turned into momentum if it had investment, support and excitement.
“We needed to build on that, not have it be a one-off,” VanDerveer said. “Keeping our eye on the ball, keeping having the game grow. More young girls playing. Great high school tournaments, enthusiasm for the college game. People being excited about the WNBA.”
VanDerveer says today feels like that.
Clark pushed the game to new heights last season. This year, USC’s JuJu Watkins, UConn’s Paige Bueckers and the Gamecocks — on a 39-game winning streak — are poised to continue the momentum. NIL has completely changed how women’s basketball players are marketed (and given them power), bringing in new fans. The transfer portal opened player movement and democratized the game’s increasing parity. Look around and you’ll see as many as 10 teams that look capable of heading to the Final Four. Gone are the days when a UConn or Tennessee could win so much they were blamed as being bad for the sport.
Less than a week into the season, we’ve already seen top-five teams pushed to the brink. The talented stars in women’s hoops? They draw. But the parity, which has never been better, and true belief that on any given night, anything could happen? That’s riveting.
What we’re seeing is long overdue, and it still feels like it’s just getting started.
For decades, women’s college hoops deserved better than playing second fiddle in the NCAA’s orbit. It needed to be untethered so that the moments could fit together into something bigger and better. It was worthy of more than three words on the front cover and a patronizing column on the back page. It deserved the full spread. So please, decision-makers and stakeholders, don’t mess this up.
There’s a new generation of seventh-graders watching.
(Photo of Dawn Staley: Sean Rayford / Getty Images)
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