Contents

Foreword / by John A. Walsh, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of ESPN.com

Author’s Note

PART ONE

Chapter 1: The New Dumb

Chapter 2: The Fix Is In

Chapter 3: Welcome to Generation

Chapter 4: The White House Disease

Chapter 5: Get Ready for Sainthood

Chapter 6: The Xmas Vice

Chapter 7: The Curse of Musburger

Chapter 8: Cruel Twist in the Coaching Business

Chapter 9: The NFL Sucks…Another League Bites the Dust … Rich Kids with Weapons

Chapter 10: Slow Week for Sports, in Politics

Chapter 11: Lynching in Denver

Chapter 12: Mad Cow Disease Comes to the NBA

Chapter 13: Death in the Afternoon

Chapter 14: XFL, R.I.P.

Chapter 15: The Most Horrible Curse in Sports

Chapter 16: Urgent Warning to Gamblers: Beware the Ides of March

Chapter 17: I Told You It Was Wrong

Chapter 18: Where Were You When the Fun Stopped?

Chapter 19: Running Away with the Circus

Chapter 20: NBA and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness

Chapter 21: Bad Craziness at Owl Farm

Chapter 22: Can the Three Stooges Save the NBA?

Chapter 23: Kentucky Derby and Other Gambling Disasters

Chapter 24: Quitting the Gambling Business While I’m Ahead

Chapter 25: The Most Dangerous Sport of All

Chapter 26: Patrick Roy and Warren Zevon—Two Champions at the Top of Their Game

Chapter 27: Wild Days at the Sports Desk

Chapter 28: Eerie Lull Rattles the Sports World

Chapter 29: Olympic Disaster in Utah

Chapter 30: The Wisdom of Nashville and the Violence of Jack Nicholson—A Football Story

PART TWO

Chapter 31: Fear and Loathing in America: Beginning of the End

Chapter 32: When War Drums Roll

Chapter 33: Will Sports Survive Bin Laden?

Chapter 34: Stadium Living in the New Age

Chapter 35: Football in the Kingdom of Fear

Chapter 36: Foul Balls and Rash Predictions

Chapter 37: Getting Weird for Devil’s Day

Chapter 38: The Yankees Are Dead: Long Live the Yankees

Chapter 39: The Man Who Loved Sport Too Much

Chapter 40: The Shame of Indianapolis

Chapter 41: Failure, Football, & Violence on the Strip

Chapter 42: Madness in Honolulu

Chapter 43: Break Up the Ravens

Chapter 44: Pay Up or Get Whipped

Chapter 45: Getting Braced for the Last Football Game

Chapter 46: Sodomized at the Airport: Are Terrorists Seizing Control of the NFL? And Who Let It Happen?

Chapter 47: Slow Dance in Rap Town

Chapter 48: Dr. Thompson in Beirut

Chapter 49: Dr. Thompson Is Back from Beirut

Chapter 50: The NFL: We Will March on a Road of Bones

PART THREE

Chapter 51: A Wild & Woolly Tale of Sporting Excess

Chapter 52: My 49er Habit

Chapter 53: Don’t Let This Happen to You

Chapter 54: Grantland Rice Haunts the Honolulu Marathon

Chapter 55: Honolulu Marathon Is Decadent and Depraved

Chapter 56: Public Shame and Private Victory

Chapter 57: Shooting the Moon with the Raiders

Chapter 58: The Last Super Bowl

Chapter 59: Extreme Behavior in Aspen

Chapter 60: Billionaire Swine and Kiwi Catastrophe

Chapter 61: Fleeced by Ed Bradley

Chapter 62: Love Blooms in the Rockies

Chapter 63: Love in a Time of War

Chapter 64: A Sad Week in America

Chapter 65: The Doomed Prefer Oakland

Chapter 66: The Tragedy of Naked Bowling

Chapter 67: West Coast Offense

Chapter 68: Great Fleecing in Woody Creek: Lakers Staggered in Series Opener

Chapter 69: The Sport of Kings

Chapter 70: The Good, the Bad, and the Vicious

Chapter 71: Rewarding the Ugly

Chapter 72: Killed by a Speeding Hummer

Chapter 73: When in Doubt, Bet the Dark Side

Chapter 74: Welcome to the Big Darkness

Chapter 75: The Nation’s Capital

Chapter 76: Speed Kills and Other Football Wisdom

Chapter 77: Nightmare in Hollywood

Chapter 78: Speed Will Rule the NFL This Year

Chapter 79: The Bush League

Chapter 80: Boxing Sucks

Chapter 81: George Plimpton

Chapter 82: Victory

Chapter 83: Wisdom

Honor Roll