telander
Rick Telander biography
Rick Telander has been the lead sports columnist at the Sun-Times since April, 1995. He previously was a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and ESPN, …
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Sympathy for Lance Armstrong? Not here
Lance Armstrong is nothing if not ferociously dedicated, goal-oriented, hard-working and desirous of success — for himself. So his ceremonial emergence from his deep rat hole of lying and deceit was, you can be sure, well-thought-out and planned with his handlers and the myriad sycophants …Read More
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TELANDER: Notre Dame ahead of Alabama? Gimme a break
Funny things can happen when you’re looking for a simple answer. Like, who finished No. 1 in college football? Easy, you say. Alabama hammered Notre Dame 42-14 in the BCS title game, so the Crimson Tide has to be No. 1. But where was the …Read More
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TELANDER: Against the green and yellow, Bears are red-faced and blue
I’m sure it has come to your attention that while other NFL cities have teams playing this postseason weekend, Chicago does not. The Bears, and all their fans, are entranced, instead, by a search for a coach. Pretend it’s fun, Chicago. Pretend it’s sport. It’s …Read More
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TELANDER: Now is perfect time for Bears to pursue hosting Super Bowl
The Bears never have applied for the Super Bowl. No, not to play in it. To host it. Crazy, you say. Why would Chicago want or need a Super Bowl? I’ll tell you why: Because the Super Bowl is big-time. Because the mammoth, over-the-top, advertising-saturated, …
TELANDER: Wringing out the Stew year
As this will be the final ‘‘Stew’’ for 2012, let us clear the dreck — excuse me, deck. ◆ Will I vote for Sammy, Roger, Mark, Barry for the Baseball Hall of Fame? Never. ◆ Vote for anybody I feel was a drug cheat and/or …
TELANDER: Bears’ season has been impossible to figure out
Could this season be any more confusing? The Bears started 7-1, Jay Cutler-to-Brandon Marshall was Peyton Manning-to-Reggie Wayne, the defense was a ticking bomb, the Super Bowl beckoned, then . . . Well, here is linebacker Lance Briggs before us Thursday at Halas Hall, saying that if …
TELANDER: Suzy Favor Hamilton not alone, it seems, in going off track
I met Suzy Favor back in the early 1990s when she was finishing her college running career at the University of Wisconsin. I was writing a book called From Red Ink to Roses: The Turbulent Transformation of a Big Ten Program, about UW’s nearly bankrupt …
TELANDER: Bears coach Lovie Smith doesn’t know ‘O’
But what, besides the losses, is it that is soiling Smith’s legacy in this town? Besides the losses, what is it about him that infuriates us the most (and this one time we won’t count the drained-of-all-plasma sideline stare)? It is this: Smith doesn’t know offense.
TELANDER: Bears, Packers could learn thing or two about trash-talking
Folks got pretty worked up about the trash-talking between a few Bears and Green Bay Packers, words of scorn leading into the game Sunday at Soldier Field. Packers tight end Jermichael Finley started it with some stuff about Brian Urlacher, hinting the Bears might be …
Bears fans losing that Lovie feeling
RICK TELANDER: Bears fans are angry and uncertain and want to see fireworks. They’ve had about enough of Lovie Smith standing on the sideline during taut games, slack-jawed, speechless, emotion-free, apparently embalmed. What once could be read as calm, now screams brain-dead.
TELANDER: Reporting on the lousiest joints — our knees
Thirty-two years ago, I wrote a piece for Esquire titled ‘‘The Knee.’’ You can guess what it was about. For the lengthy article, I interviewed a lot of sports people, including former Kansas City Chiefs center E.J. Holub (with a then-NFL-record 13 knee operations), Miami …
TELANDER: Like it or not, Notre Dame giving us greatness
LOS ANGELES — When Notre Dame is the highest-ranked team in the nation, it sure gets people’s attention. As the Fighting Irish took the field here at the Coliseum, they were booed like ants at a picnic. This USC-Notre Dame rivalry is a hot one …
TELANDER: Trojans could spoil it all for Irish
There are two college football games everybody is going to watch, and they both involve Notre Dame. The first one is this Saturday, in Los Angeles, at the Coliseum, against Southern Cal. Naturally, all USC and Notre Dame fans will be watching. But everybody else …
TELANDER: Mike Ditka handling ‘mini-stroke’ with all the iron we’d expect
Try to imagine Chicago without deep-dish pizza or Wrigley Field or indicted aldermen. Hard to do, right? Now try to think of our toddlin’ town without Mike Ditka. Impossible. Thus, our equilibrium got shaken a bit when we heard Da Coach had suffered a minor …
TELANDER: Lake Forest football season truly inspiring
The Metra commuter train runs through Lake Forest, connecting the suburb and its residents to downtown Chicago. Lawyers, managers and captains of industry ride into the big city every morning to do their work. The train is a vital conduit for the affluent town, but …
TELANDER: A full-court prez on Election Night
NBA hoops on Election Night is a pretty weird thing. Bad blocking calls seem irrelevant when the leader of the free world is, pardon the cliché, going one-on-one with a fellow nicknamed ‘‘The Governor.’’ The lefty-righty matchup (we’re talking about handles here, folks — please!) …
TELANDER: NHL has no fears about leaving fans on ice
Because of the lockout, the NHL has canceled the important Winter Classic, the annual hoopla-laden, viewer-intense game on New Year’s Day that almost had become a tradition. (Alas, a tradition can’t be born when the thing is canceled after five years.) The Detroit Red Wings …
TELANDER: Brian Urlacher still centerpiece of great Bears defense
Urlacher the linebacker. The words rhyme, folks. It’s not ‘‘Ur-locker’’; it’s ‘‘Ur-lacker.’’ At least that’s what Brian told us way back in 2000, when he was a rookie with the Bears. And it’s too late to change now. It’s too late for a lot of …
TELANDER: Whether it’s Bulls 1 or Bulls 2, expect them to be competitive
Remember in that Dr. Seuss book when the Cat in the Hat introduces Thing 1 and Thing 2? That’s what I think of while watching the final minutes of the Bulls’ practice Tuesday at the Berto Center. The team here before us is Bulls 1. …
Telander: Northwestern’s Kain Colter is just a ball of fun
In college ball, with 120 FBS teams and about a million smaller outfits, you always like to see somebody who’s worth the price of admission. If you’re in the Chicago area, folks, Kain Colter’s your guy. The Northwestern quarterback/tailback/wide receiver/whatever finished the Wildcats’ 28-17 victory …
