The Narrative

Sports Illustration has been around as long as organized sports have. From Olympians on Grecian urns to our modern digital drawings, illustration expresses something no camera can capture: the entirety of sport in a single frame.

Who is the greatest college football team of all time? They hail from Tennessee, but it's not the Vols. Rather it's the 1899 Sewanee Tigers, who after beating 5 teams in 6 days by a collective score of 91-0 were known simply as the “Iron Men.” Here's their story.

The Alliance of American Football is not the first to try and set up a second football league. In the past half century, the Alliance is the 5th challenger to the NFL's throne. That means roughly every 10 years an upstart takes a shot at winning its piece of the football pie. This February 9th the AAF will add its name to the list of gridiron upstarts, learning from the mistakes of those that came before to try and do something so much harder than it sounds and give America what it wants. Football.

Bare Knuckle boxing isn't a street fight. It's one of the oldest organized sports around. It's strategic. It's fast paced. It's skillful. And it's making a comeback. On June 2nd 2018 Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship will hold what they're billing as the first legal, sanctioned and regulated fight since 1889. To once again reach the pinnacle of combat sports in America Bare Knuckle Boxing will have to overcome a stigma of brutality and years of being forced underground.

Sports love their hometown heroes, but for every LeBron James there is an Anton Tinnerholm. Tinnerholm left his native Sweden in January to come and play soccer for NYCFC. Being a professional athlete is tough. Being a professional athlete in a foreign land is downright daunting.

When the Karate Kid came out in 1984, Ralph Macchio as his on-screen counterpart Daniel LaRusso became an American martial arts icon and kicked off a karate craze that swept America. 34 Years later, he reprises his role as a good-hearted karate practitioner from New Jersey in the YouTube Red series Cobra Kai. Harry Swartout sits down with the Karate Kid himself to learn about the original film, new series and the Miyagi-like balance between the two.

In 1998 MLB imagined baseball's future with their Turn Ahead the Clock promotion. It's not quite 2027 yet, but Major League Baseball whiffed on their predictions of wonky jerseys and the Mets relocating to Mercury. Instead baseball's future hinges on juiced balls, fantasy stats and the Latinx infusion.

Color is iconic. From the first row, to the cheap seats, all the way through the television hundreds of miles away fans can find their players with ease and identify compatriots rooting just like them. Color can give a team the mental edge, sell jerseys and even change the outcome of the game.

Our lives are busy and since the last Winter Olympics I'm sure you haven't been closely following your favorite speed skaters or checking in on the luge circuit. That's why this episode of the Narrative is dedicated to reminding you what the winter games has to offer and more importantly to give you an appreciation of the events. Learn the history and strategy of Nordic combined, figure skating, free skiing, curling and skeleton from the experts and watch the games like a seasoned veteran.

In 1969, the Continental Football league welcomed the Golden Aztecs, or Aztecas Dorados into the league as the first professional American Football team in Mexico. The team only played 8 games and the Continental Football league folded at the end of the season, but in the wild west of professional football during the infancy of the Modern NFL, the Golden Aztecs stood as a shining example of what football could be at its best and at its worst.

Who owns your favorite sports team? There are still the Jerry Joneses and MarK Cubans of the world that drive their team with cult of personality, but more and more family owned teams are being replaced by corporate ownership for financial stability. The owners of the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils, and Crystal Palace of the English Premier League created a new organization called Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment (or HBSE)with the goal of acquiring and growing sports franchises and venues. Owning one franchise is difficult but owning several across different sports and in different countries all over the world presents it own set of problems and opportunities. I sat down and spoke with Scott O'Neil and Hugh Weber of HBSE to find out what it's like combining sports and business.

Sports generates and endless amount stories. Game recaps, profiles, investigations, features, economics, statistics, culture; there's countless angles to attack. But what really goes into the magazine in your mailbox or recap you read online?

In the Golden Age of Baseball New York had three championship caliber teams. Then, suddenly, the city had only one. In 1957, the Giants joined the Dodgers in announcing a move to the West Coast, making MLB a truly national pastime. 60 years and 3,000 miles later the fans, the city, and baseball itself still feel the ripples from the Giants leaving New York.

25 years ago, producer/director Mike Tollin filmed 5 high schoolers as they tried to repeat as California State Basketball Champions. He revisited their lives more than two decades after their senior campaign and found profoundly different men than he watched take the court in the 90s. In the meantime, Tollin has produced hit 30 for 30 documentaries and major motion pictures like Coach Carter, and something just keeps pulling him back to the stories of sports.

Historically, sports have been a boys-only club. Even modern women sports superstars like Serena Williams and the USWNT continually have to battle for equal pay and respect. But women refuse to lose, even if a win gets them less than it should.

Sports are weird. Athletics are a collection of idiosyncratic rules, customs, traditions, and superstitions. Here we delve into the backstories for four of the strangest things in sports: baseball stirrups, the forward pass, basketball shoes, and the hat-trick.

Everyone knows the MLB war heroes, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, but for every all-star that went abroad, scores of Minor Leaguers served on the front lines, as they deferred their fight to make the big leagues to fight for their country. This is the story of one of them, Harry Alvin Swartout, who went from High School to the minors to the Pacific in just a year, but kept baseball with him the whole way.

Baseball cards are as American as well ... cigarettes and chewing gum. Cards have captured the imaginations of the young and the young at heart for over a century as a portal into memories of the game they love.

In 1987, the Islanders and the Capitals battled for 4 overtimes in game 7 of the division semifinals to determine a winner. In suburban Massachusetts, a young boy watched the two hopeless teams fight to the end and learned a bit about life from a game of hockey.

Superheroes may be the comic book industry's bread and butter, but the weeklies have had their fare share of flannel-clad heroes too. From horse racing comics at the turn of the century, to Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, comics have shown that sport can be stranger than fiction.

In 1939, Northwestern University hosted the first NCAA Tournament. In the 77 years since NU has never made the tournament, but looks like it may be on the cusp of the big dance after borrowing a guaranteed 3-step slump stopper plan from their neighbors the Chicago Cubs.

The Negro Leagues allowed black men play professional baseball in a segregated America. 80 years later the MLB is desperately trying to increase black involvement in their game. Baseball's biggest diamonds have not always been open to people of color, but when given the opportunity black baseball players shone.

From a tiny league of 6 teams in the Northeast of North America to a global sport phenomenon, the NHL has grown a lot. From Denis Brodeur's groundbreaking photography to the '72 Summit Series to Peter Puck to Ice Hockey in the Himalayas the NHL has proved robust. All it need was time. A century to be precise.

With two friends, a basement, and a love for street basketball, Seth Berger built AND1 athletic company to take on Nike. He now works for the 76ers Innovation Lab, but still is driven by a love for hoops.

They say the name on the front of the jersey is more important than the name on the back, but what happens when there's two names on the front? Soon the Philadelphia 76ers will be the first big 4 sports team with an advertisement on their jersey. Is this the first step to ads alongside your teams logo?

Andre Rene Roussimoff was larger than life. His immense size earned him the stage name Andre the Giant as he helped take pro wrestling from community center gyms to Madison Square Garden, but balancing family, health, and a fledgling sport was too big a task even for a Giant.

In 1984, Donald Trump became owner of the USFL football team, the New Jersey Generals. By 1986 the league had collapsed. Before America votes on whether Trump should be Commander in Chief, it should understand his time as a football General.

Since the early 1900s, the universities of Texas and Oklahoma have played an annual game of football that has become one of the most heated rivalries in the world of sports. From the Texas State Fair, Lindsay Schnell speaks to several key figures in this historic rivalry, hoping to discover how these similar schools became bitter rivals. -- Produced by Alexander Abnos, with help from Ryan Fish. Reported by Lindsay Schnell.

A live soundtrack has always heightened game play. From military marching bands during civil war baseball games, to the huge production of the super bowl half time show, sports fans have become accustomed to a score to compliment the scoring.

The first Super Bowl of the new millenium also turned out to be one of the most memorable editions of the NFL's championship game. To celebrate the beginning of football season, Don Banks visits with the characters involved in "The Tackle," which gave the Rams a Super Bowl title. -- Produced by Alexander Abnos. -- Contains music by Circus Marcus [freemusicarchive.org/music/CIRCUSMARCUS/], Jon Luc Hefferman [freemusicarchive.org/music/Jon_Luc_Hefferman/], The Losers [freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Losers/], Todd Walck [Todd-walck – 16-lets-go-ship-percussion], Kai Engel [freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Engel/], and Chris Zabriskie [freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/].

Sports have a drug problem. Athletes have been doping for the better part of a century in order to gain an edge on the field and leagues have continued to look the other way. How do you cure sport's doping addiction when nobody will admit there's a problem?

The Steeplechase is a bizarre sideshow in the world of track, a 3,000-meter obstacle course, involving several jumps into pools of water, was originally meant to be ridden on horseback. In modern times, the Olympic event has been dominated by Kenyans and those from other African countries. So why, then, is American Evan Jager determined to medal at the steeplechase in Rio? Because his journey makes him the most prepared American to do so in a generation. == Produced and edited by Alexander Abnos, reported by Lindsay Schnell with help from Chris Chavez and Beth Maiman. This episode features the song "Steeplechase Bound" by Al Duvall (alduvall.bandcamp.com/album/coroner-knives)

Rio's Olympic Village has big problems, continuing a legacy of 'sub-par' athlete housing at the games.

You'll see American Olympians in Rio this summer, but how do these athletes make ends meet while spending time, money, and energy preparing for one of the biggest events of their lives?