An Inside Look at Not Just a Game
“I grew up hyper-obsessed with sports,” says Nation magazine sports editor Dave Zirin, one of the most provocative sports bloggers in the country, and co-writer of MEF’s bestselling film Not Just a Game. “My room was like a shrine to the sports stars of the time. I loved sports, and I never really spent two seconds thinking about politics.”
In this video from theScore, Dave Zirin talks about how it was his love for sports that led him to take sports seriously as a political and social force.
“It’s precisely because Dave loves sports so much that he refuses to allow them to be ruined by bullies and bigots and commercial hucksters,” says MEF production director Jeremy Earp, who directed Not Just a Game. “First and foremost, he’s a sports fanatic. But what makes him unusual is how his encyclopedic knowledge extends beyond stats and trivia, and beyond what happens on the field, to where sports fit within the broad sweep of American history. And it’s not just any history: In keeping with the spirit of his friend and mentor, the late Howard Zinn, it’s history as viewed through the eyes of the underdog. What makes Dave’s performance in this film so powerful is exactly that mix of social consciousness and pure heart-felt fandom.”
