Tobias Peterson
Tobias Peterson served as PopMatters' Sport Editors and columnist (From the Cheap Seats). He holds an MA in English Literature (with a concentration in Cultural Studies) from George Mason University, where he studied representations of race in professional basketball.
He is not, however, an athlete. He's broken his ankle playing basketball, broken several fingers playing football, and donated a good deal of skin to a Portland, Oregon hillside will attempting to ride a bike. He once managed to score the winning goal during his youth soccer playoffs -- though it was accidentally against his own team.
Having lived in Germany, England, Florida, Virginia, Texas, and Oregon, his sporting allegiances are widespread and generally futile. When he's not analyzing sports culture, he writes poetry and teaches writing in Portland, Oregon.
Recent
Reviews
Poetic Orbit: 'London: A History in Verse'
The experience of reading this anthology is much like that of stepping out of King’s Cross station and strolling the city’s streets. Walk long enough, read deeply enough, and you’ll be immersed in impressions of beauty, grime, humor, violence – often simultaneously.
24 Sep 2012
Reviews
'The Poets Laureate Anthology': Another Salvo in the War Against Irrelevance
Anthologies such as this are a movement, or a moment, a force of expression that seeks to take up more space -- literally and figuratively -- than the book of one individual might.
25 Apr 2011
Sports
Play On: Get Off the Couch, Get On the Court
The true measure of a fan’s joy is in play. Without it, all sports would simply cease to be.
26 Jan 2011
Sports
Teams of Rivals: 'Tis the Season for Mayhem, Pranks and All Around Hating One Another
Rivalry games feature a special kind of hatred -- the kind only your closest neighbor can inspire.
06 Dec 2010
Sports
An Anti-Brett-Favre-Article Article
From the desk of Roger Goodell: It is with the goal of achieving 100 percent media saturation that I submit these notes.
16 Nov 2010
Sports
Redemption Songs: Rehabilitating Michael Vick
Michael Vick has arrived at the final stage of a well-known formula: transgression-outrage-apology-punishment-contrition-and, finally, forgiveness.
20 Oct 2010
Sports
Jay Mariotti and the Moral Role
In a world of 24-hour programming, Jay Mariotti's Around the Horn does for ESPN what Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly does for Fox News: fill in large gulfs of empty space between actual news or events by making a fetish of opinion.
08 Sep 2010
Sports
American Beauty?: 2010 World Cup Part II, The Knockout Stage
Soccer features improvisation and imagination far more than ferocity and force. One must wonder, then, is soccer simply too pretty for American sports fans?
10 Aug 2010
Sports
The Pitch Is Flat: 2010 World Cup Part I, The Group Stage
Can a “national” team truly represent a nation anymore, other than through the broadest criteria of citizenship?
08 Jul 2010
Sports
It's Rough, Being a Ref: Perhaps Only Parking Enforcement Garners Comparable Abuse
As ref, I began to pass my time on the court by rating the insults hurled in my direction. The predictable epithets earned one star. Some of the more unique combinations of verbs, idioms, and profanity, however, would earn higher marks.
08 Jun 2010
Sports
Con Artest?: Ron Artest's Imagery and Alchemy in the NBA
Ron Artest’s image must be fluid enough to navigate the tumultuous perils of our modern sports media. At heart, is Artest a true gangsta or a trite goofball? It’s likely a bit of both.
20 May 2010
Sports
The Virgin King in the Land of Strangelove
Tim Tebow, as much as he resembles Rocky, similarly embodies a deranged general bent on destroying the world via nuclear holocaust.
12 Apr 2010
Sports
Memorabiliaphilia: Nationalizing a Pastime
Baseball looms large, the way anything in a magnifying glass seems to gain size and importance.
02 Mar 2010
Sports
Loser!
There will come a time, inevitably, where nearly every fan will find themselves backing a loser.
10 Feb 2010
Sports
Fables for our Reconstruction: Sports Scandals for the Soul
Whatever their wrongdoing, sports figures should by now realize just how predisposed to public judgement they really are. Here, a decade of wrongdoings, lest they forget.
05 Jan 2010
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The Official World Series Film Collection
The Official World Series Film Collection - A&E Home Video [$229.95]
14 Dec 2009
Sports
Seeing Stars (Suffer Brain Injuries)
Imagine old Daffy Duck cartoons, with pastel songbirds circling as a cuckoo clock sounds in the background. The reality is a bit more serious.
07 Dec 2009
Sports
Let Him Pay: Rush Limbaugh as Corporate Mascot
If the furor surrounding Limbaugh's possible entrance into the league has to do with this political disposition, it's laughable to suggest that the rest of the owners don't share his views to a large extent.
26 Oct 2009
Technology
Twitterpated: New Media, Old Frenzies
The latest craze in mini-blogging has been embraced by a variety of pro athletes to voice their opinions on everything from coaching advice to domestic violence.
08 Oct 2009
Sports
Over the Line: On Sports' "Irritable Reaching"
As the controversy surrounding Semenya Caster demonstrates, the sports world -- filled with statistics, measurements, and results -- is by its very nature fundamentally at odds with the chaos that surrounds it.
13 Sep 2009
Sports
Fallen Warriors: Steve ‘Air’ McNair & Arturo ‘Thunder’ Gatti
With the rise of guns and Predator drones, the social emphasis on hand-to-hand combat has all but disappeared, leaving a cultural void that is filled, in part, by sports.
04 Aug 2009
Sports
Bird of a Feather: The Curious Case of Chris Andersen
How has Chris Andersen managed his public relations coup? The short answer is: he's white. But a longer explanation reveals that he's black, too.
07 Jul 2009
Sports
Clone Wars: Jim Rome's World Within a World
Most sports radio is the intellectual equivalent of listening to static -- it's as illuminating as it is predictable.
02 Jun 2009
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