David A. F. Sweet

Making History in the NBA Finals

NEW YORK -- Before Bob Bowman explains why he took the top job at Major League Baseball's new-media arm, the sound of a toilet flushing seeps through the cinder-block wall in his tiny office.

It's a long way from corporate behemoth ITT, where Mr. Bowman served as president -- and even enjoyed a private bathroom -- until the company's 1998 acquisition by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.

As the kickoff to the season approaches, they pick out their running lanes. Having researched the competitors and concocted their strategies, they go over their plan of attack one more time. Unflinching in their desire to be first, they are willing to be bloodied to get what they want.
Players during National Football League games on Thanksgiving Day? Far from it. Rather, they’re shoppers on Black Friday.

By David A. F. Sweet

Back in 2013, Art Muir was nearing the end of a 35-year career as a transactional attorney at McGuireWoods, LLP in Chicago. At 68, he was ready for a retirement full of golf, platform tennis and grandchildren.

Then, a longtime friend of his named Jim Daverman called and invited him to climb some volcanoes in Ecuador.

It's amazing how an ABA team who didn't make it into the NBA still gets money from the league.

In front of Northwestern University professor Tim Calkins sit two dozen students, armed with three-ring binders and surrounded by bottled waters. Calkins eyes the class and asks them to describe a negative brand. The answers come quickly.
“Britney Spears!”
“Pit bulls!”

This excerpt was adapted from Three Seconds in Munich: The Controversial 1972 Olympic Basketball Final by David A.F. Sweet by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. © 2019 by David A.F. Sweet.

For the past few years, it's been hard to turn on the television during the NFL season without seeing Peyton Manning — in a commercial. Whether encouraging a poor-throwing paper boy in a MasterCard spot or getting decked out as a mustachioed Peyton Manning fan for Sprint, the Indianapolis quarterback, on any given Sunday, has often pitched more products than touchdown passes.

After Robert Israel played the organ for five silent movie comedies at a UCLA film class this spring, a sophomore confided her initial surprise to him. “I was expecting an old man to be sitting there,” she said. “I was shocked to see how young you are.”

A prolific author whose forte is legal thrillers, Scott Turow is asked how his most recent novel, The Last Trial, stands apart from his previous works.

He laughs before answering.

“It stands apart because of the reverential reviews,” said Turow who, like most writers, have been stung by the negative ones.

In 2019, the idea that a worker could leave a major city where his or her job existed, decamp to a bucolic spot and still be able to be employed in the same role was almost laughable. Not only did companies rarely allow such a move, believing in-office interaction was crucial to success; often they were not technologically equipped to support it.
But once the pandemic hit the United States in 2020, the whole concept of working in an office was upended.