Author Archives: Ben Feit

In a classic NFL Films clip from the 1994 Super Bowl, an exultant Steve Young, his team assured of victory in the biggest game of his career, exhorts his teammates to remove the proverbial monkey from his back. Equipped with a championship ring of his own, Young had ensured that the “Yeah, but … Joe »

The two best men’s basketball teams in the country played for the national championship Monday night, a fact that would seem to confer a good amount of legitimacy on North Carolina’s title run. Ric Flair would tell you that to be the best (whooooo!) you gotta beat the best, and in toppling Illinois — a »

As I feel about as coherent as Mike Tyson and have no argument to forward this week, this column might or might not be a glorified reproduction of the notes I just scribbled down in section while trying to decide whether to hate it or love it that the underdog is apparently on top. I »

According to NCAA data released three weeks ago, Yale University achieved the country’s highest academic progress rate during the 2003-04 academic year. It’s a nice achievement, but somewhere Dana Carvey’s Church Lady smugly wonders, “Well, isn’t that special?” In an effort to hold universities more accountable for the academic achievements of their student-athletes, the NCAA »

Show of hands from all those who had Brown in the pool as the team that would piss on our parade and once again derail the men’s basketball team’s Ivy League season. Time to throw that in there with death and taxes. It doesn’t seem to matter these days where or when they play or »

Halfway through the Ivy League men’s basketball season, the University of Pennsylvania seems to be running away from the field by such a wide margin that the discrepancy resembles the kind of referendum once organized by Saddam Hussein’s disciples. Yes, Penn has now distanced itself from the pack like Paul McCartney from Michael Jackson, and »

The pointless debate over whether the dynasty label should now be affixed to this New England Patriots team cannot obscure the fact that the one-time Patsies now occupy elite territory as back-to-back champions. For more debate fodder, here’s my ranking of the Top 10 repeat champions since 1990 (roughly the span of our collective sports »

While it has become fashionable to harp on the recent futility of several prominent Yale sports teams, it is unfair to paint the whole program with that rancid brush. Saturday afternoon, another chapter in one of college sports’ premier individual rivalries played out on campus to minimal fanfare, and once again it provided world-class skill, »

Popular wisdom recently held that once Boston sports teams started winning titles, their fatalistic fans wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. They’d suffer from an acute identity crisis and pretty much lose their collective reason to live. That’s totally ignorant. I count two Super Bowls and a World Series in the past 36 months, »

Athletics have long played an important role in the collegiate experience of America’s students. Whether that role is central (as it is to varsity athletes and in movies like “Rudy” and “Blue Chips”) or peripheral (to fans and in movies like “Back to School,” “Animal House” and “Old School”) is largely irrelevant. For many — »

In the wake of the epic Chicago Bears’ “Super Bowl Shuffle,” the flamboyantly awful music video the juggernaut squad filmed en route to its 1985 title, both the team with the daunting task of matching up with Chicago in the championship game and a sketch comedy show attempted to send up Da Bears’ braggadocio. The »

For those of you who held your breath for two weeks now waiting for installment two of my eloquent indictment of the National Basketball Association, I appreciate your loyalty and ask you to keep waiting to exhale. The Pistons and Pacers rendered anything further on the topic moot for the time. I still have theories »