- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Juliet Macur
Juliet Macur
Sports of the Times Columnist for The New York Times
Winter 2016 Pritzker Fellow
Seminar Series: “The Power & Politics of Sports: Why Games Aren’t Just Games Anymore”
Biography
Juliet Macur is an award-winning journalist at The New York Times and has been a Sports of the Times columnist since 2013. As a reporter at the Times, she focused on the Olympics, doping and legal issues, and is now considered one of the world's leading media experts on performance-enhancing drug use in sports. After years of breaking news about Lance Armstrong's doping, she wrote the best-selling book, “Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong.”
Her projects for the New York Times include a series called “Countdown to Beijing,” which examined the sports machine in China as that country geared up to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, and another called “In Two Arenas,” which looked at the Iraq war’s effect on athletes.
Before joining the Times, Macur worked as a project reporter for the Dallas Morning News, where she had the unenviable job of spending one entire season writing exclusively about then Dallas Cowboys coach Bill Parcells. Before that, she covered the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Olympics, and motorsports for the Orlando Sentinel.
Macur’s work has received honors from the National Press Club, the Associated Press Sports Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the New York Press Club. Her work has twice been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series.
Macur grew up in Bridgewater, N.J., and is the daughter of Catholic Polish immigrants who survived the Nazi forced labor camps in Germany. She was the captain of the Columbia University rowing team while at Barnard College and received her bachelor’s degree in 1992. After college, she was a competitive rower for the New York Athletic Club. In 1997, she graduated with honors from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Washington, with her husband, daughter, and Labrador retriever.
Seminars
“The Power & Politics of Sports: Why Games Aren’t Just Games Anymore”
Sports used to be simple. Go to games. Play games. Have fun. Be entertained. Now it’s so much more. Every level of sports - from your local youth leagues straight up to the pros - has become big business that generates big money and big influence. On Capitol Hill, that sports business blatantly wields its power to get what it wants, and often succeeds. In the justice system, sports figures are, perhaps more than ever, at the center of major criminal investigations because they once felt invincible but are no more. On the field, the sports world produces heroes that are discussed around the dinner table, in nearly every part of our country, with a searing fervor otherwise saved for debating politics or religion. In the Olympic world, sports help give nations credibility and also can spark international conflict. For good and bad, the sports world is bigger and more powerful than ever, with athletes wielding more and more influence over our culture and our politics.
When top athletes talk, why does the public listen so closely? Because, in many cases, they have more power than politicians. When the University of Missouri’s football team went on strike to protest the way the university handled racial tensions on campus, it led to the ouster of the university president. When several members of the St. Louis Rams made a “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture, to show their solidarity with people protesting the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, it was the talk of the internet. When LeBron James and his Miami Heat teammates wore black hoodies to show their support for slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, it spurred countless dinner time conversations about whether athletes should even involve themselves in serious issues. Should athletes keep their focus on the playing field, or do they have a duty to speak out on social issues because so many people look up to them? When Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spoke out about Donald Trump’s idea to ban all Muslims from entry into the United States, why did it make an impact? Or, when Russia enacted an anti-gay law before the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, why did so many Olympic athletes refuse to talk about the politics of it, saying sports and politics should remain separate? What, exactly, is the duty of the athlete in those situations?
Special Guest: Richard Lapchick, Sports Sociologist, Chair of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida, Director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport & Director of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports
One morning last May in Zurich, Swiss law enforcement raided a five-star lakeside hotel and arrested some of the world’s most powerful officials in worldwide soccer. Those arrests marked the beginning of perhaps the biggest takedown in the history of sports, with FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, at the center of it all and United States federal prosecutors leading the charge to clean up the sport. How did those FIFA officials reign without much, or any, impunity for so many years? How did the International Olympic Committee allow global soccer to get to this point of such widespread corruption that, by the end of 2015, more than 40 officials in the sport pleaded guilty or were arrested for crimes that included receiving bribes and kickbacks? Why was the United States government the one to finally step in to say, enough? Can leadership of international sports — where so much money is to be made in the face of so little oversight — ever be trusted?
Special Guest: George Vecsey, Author of "Eight World Cups: My Journey through the Beauty and Dark Side of Soccer" & Journalist, Sports of the Times Column
Fantasy-league betting has become a multibillion-dollar industry. But will it soon be extinct? Online daily fantasy sports sites, like DraftKings and FanDuel, are commanding attention now and it’s nearly impossible to watch sports on television - or go to a sporting event, for that matter - without seeing their ads. Yet those days might be coming to an end. Those sites and ones like them are at the center of an ongoing, sizzling public policy debate that pits whether internet fantasy league gambling is a game of chance or a game of skill. If it’s a game of chance, then the government would have to step in to regulate it or ban it outright. We discuss the future of fantasy leagues and whether they should be legal. Also, does that type of gambling dehumanize the athletes, who feel like disposable pawns in that money-making game? Should fans even care?
Special Guest: Bill Bogot, Gaming Law Lawyer, Partner at Fox Rothschild & former Legal Adviser to the Illinois Gaming Board
The United States women’s national soccer team sued FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association last year, claiming discrimination because the 2015 Women’s World Cup had only artificial turf fields, instead of grass ones, which is the preferred surface for the game. The team asked: The men’s World Cup is played on grass and will be for the foreseeable future, so why do the women have to play on an inferior surface? The women’s team backed down from its case, as FIFA basically ran out the clock. Now do these women, whose World Cup-winning final game was the most watched soccer game in United States history, have the power to demand better fields? Or will women in sports always find themselves stuck behind men? For example, why are there only 37 female athletic directors in Division I sports, while 276 are men? Why do women’s pro leagues still struggle? If Title IX can’t fix this inequality, is there anything else Congress — or anyone or any institution, for that matter — can do to bridge this gap?
Special Guest: Julie Foudy, former Captain of the United States Women’s National Soccer Team, former President of the Women’s Sports Foundation, Reporter & Analyst for ESPN, ABC & espnW
Despite what you see in the movies, being a sportswriter is much more than just covering games and traveling to cool places. Sure, there are assignments like covering the World Cup in Brazil, writing about a NASCAR race in Japan and reporting about Olympics held in far-off places like China, Australia and Russia. These days, though, the job requirement stretches far beyond those event-related assignments and delves much deeper than the X’s and O’s. Sportswriters at news organizations like The New York Times must have investigative reporting skills and knowledge of global politics. They must be comfortable writing about domestic violence, gender equality, brain injuries and doping, and be able to report in Iraq during a war or report from a Manhattan firehouse in the aftermath of 9/11. We discuss journalism, how it has changed, and what it’s like to be a woman covering sports.
This August, the Olympics will be held in Rio de Janeiro, where protesters in Brazil questioned why the country would spend money on a sporting event when that cash was needed elsewhere (such as education, medical facilities, the poor). Yet the International Olympic Committee chose Rio as a host anyway: The I.O.C. insisted, with blinders on, on bringing the Olympics to South America for the first time. We discuss how and why that happened. Why do countries want to host the Olympics, when it often leaves behind white elephant stadiums and huge debt, and fosters corruption? Why did Russian President Vladimir Putin push so hard to host the Sochi Games, then invade Ukraine just a few days later? Why did a country like Brazil want the Summer Games, when it has so many other, seemingly more important things to worry about — and what will it do now as the Games approach, and it is in such political turmoil? When China hosted the 2008 Beijing Games, winning gold medals became a national obsession, as their athletes were tasked to win, win, win — sometimes at any cost. China wanted to prove the strength of its country on a global stage. Why do sports offer such an enticing venue for countries to show off?
Special Guest: Philip Hersh, World-Renowned Expert on the Olympics, International Sports, and the Politics of Global Sports & former Olympics Reporter for the Chicago Tribune
Twenty years and more than 100 pounds ago, Ryan Hoffman was a standout lineman for the University of North Carolina football team, then one of the top teams in the country. In early 2015, though, he was homeless, struggling with mental illness and substance abuse and alcoholism. He blamed his troubles on football - that the repetitive hits to the head he sustained playing the sport had damaged his brain. In late 2015, Hoffman was dead, killed when he rode his bike into oncoming traffic on an unlit highway, with only $13 to his name. In this session, we ask, who failed Ryan Hoffman? What responsibility do universities and governments have in protecting athletes, both adults and children, from harm on the playing field, especially when it comes to concussions? Who really has the power in this struggle between the sport of football and the safety of its players?
Special Guest: Chris Nowinski, Co-Founder, Concussion Legacy Institute & former WWE Wrestler
In Lance Armstrong’s final days as a nearly universally beloved sports icon, he and his lobbyists tried their best to topple the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which was the quasi-governmental organization that would eventually make public his lifetime of lies and doping. We discuss how Armstrong wielded his political power and why politicians were eager to support him. We also look at the merits of a federal whistleblower case in Washington, of which Armstrong and his former team managers are defendants. The gist of the case: The United States Postal Service, which sponsored his cycling team, had an antidoping clause in its team contract, so it wants Armstrong to give that money back. Stepping back, we look at how Lance Armstrong became so powerful when he started out as just a bike rider.
Special Guest: Betsy Andreu, Whistleblower & Wife of Frankie Andreu, Armstrong's Teammate