The Best of Professor Larry

By Larry Atkins

“The Best of Professor Larry” is a partial compilation of Op-Eds by Larry Atkins, who is a Journalist, author, university professor and a lawyer. His latest book "Skewed: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Media Bias" was released by Prometheus Books in 2016. He has written over 500 articles and Op-Eds for many publications, including Newsweek, The Hill, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Counterpunch.org, Dallas Morning News, Detroit News, Hartford Courant, Indianapolis Star, Jewish Exponent, Jewish Monthly, Kansas City Star, NCAA News, National Public Radio, Newark Star-Ledger, Newsday, New York Daily News, Online Journalism Review, Pennsylvania Magazine, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, Philadelphia Weekly, The Progressive Magazine, Quill Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, SuperLawyers Magazine, Tikkun Magazine, University Alumni Magazines, US Catholic Magazine, The Writer Magazine, and Z Magazine. This book is a sequel to “Larry the Liberal Lawyer Lashes Out.”
Larry Atkins is a frequent contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Commentary Page, as he has written over 80 Op-Eds since 1993. He is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Authors Guild. He wrote a Chapter on Op-Eds for The ASJA Guide to Freelance Writing (St. Martin's Press). Among the topics he writes about are Journalism, Media Issues, Politics, Education, Law, and Social and Ethical Issues in Sports.
He is an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and Arcadia University. He teaches Journalism and Social and Ethical Issues in Sports. He is a member of the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and District of Columbia bars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Atkins
• Release date: Jul 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005177096

Book preview

Title: The Best of Professor Larry

Author: Larry Atkins

Book Description and Bio:

The Best of Professor Larry is a partial compilation of Op-Eds by Larry Atkins, who is a Journalist, author, university professor and a lawyer. His latest book Skewed: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Media Bias was released by Prometheus Books in 2016.  He has written over 500 articles and Op-Eds for many publications, including Newsweek, The Hill, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Counterpunch, Dallas Morning News, Detroit News, Hartford Courant,  Indianapolis Star, Jewish Exponent, Jewish Monthly, Kansas City Star, Morning Consult, NCAA News, National Public Radio, Newark Star-Ledger, Newsday, New York Daily News, Online Journalism Review, Pennsylvania Magazine, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, Philadelphia Weekly, The Progressive Magazine, Quill Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Street & Smith Sports Business Daily, SuperLawyers Magazine, Tikkun Magazine, University Alumni Magazines, US Catholic Magazine, The Writer Magazine, and Z Magazine. This book is a sequel to Larry the Liberal Lawyer Lashes Out.

Larry Atkins is a frequent contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Commentary Page, as he has written over 80 Op-Eds since 1993. He is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Authors Guild. He wrote a Chapter on Op-Eds for The ASJA Guide to Freelance Writing (St. Martin's Press). Among the topics he writes about are Journalism, Media Issues, Politics, Education, Law, and Social and Ethical Issues in Sports.

He is an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and Arcadia University. He teaches Journalism and Social and Ethical Issues in Sports. He is a member of the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and District of Columbia bars.

By Larry Atkins:

Article 1.  Philadelphia Inquirer.   Fight Fake News By Making Media Literacy Part of Core Curricula, July 10, 2017

https://www.inquirer.com/philly/opinion/20170710_Fight_fake_news_by_making_media_literacy_part_of_core_curricula.html

In this era of fake news, covfefe, and biased advocacy journalism outlets like Fox News and MSNBC, how can news consumers surf through this wave of information that bombards us daily?

When I ask my students whether they've received training in media literacy, the response is often shrugs and blank stares. Freshmen frequently cite obscure websites as sources in their papers instead of government documents or respected news sources. Try MayoClinic.org CDC.gov on the legalization of medical marijuana, I tell them, not Joe's Weed page.

A 2016 Stanford University study showed that middle school, high school, and college students had difficulty judging the credibility of online information and are frequently duped by fake news, biased sources, and sponsored content.

Given this lack of understanding, educators are pushing to improve news, media, and bias literacy. The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), located in New Jersey, publishes a literacy education journal and sponsors a Media Literacy Week every November. The Center for Media Literacy, in California, offers guidance, information, and teaching methods, including a MediaLit Kit to promote critical thinking about media. Media Literacy Now empowers grassroots efforts by providing policy and advocacy information, expertise, and resources to develop state laws that implement media literacy education in schools.

This month, the Newseum in Washington is hosting a three-day seminar on media literacy for teachers. The News Literacy Project works with teachers and journalists to teach middle school and high school students to be better informed news consumers. In Philadelphia, the Mighty Writers program recently featured a Fake News Finders workshop.

A growing number of universities are dedicating themselves to the cause.

The State University of New York at Stony Brook created the Center for News Literacy in 2006. It developed curricula for high schools and the public, started a high school teacher training program, and organizes national conferences on news literacy. After summer training sessions at Stony Brook, the principal and staff at a Coney Island public middle school implemented a program to encourage students to become smarter readers and news analysts. Elements of Stony Brook's courses have spread to dozens of campuses in America and overseas.

According to NAMLE, other schools with media literacy programs include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Texas, University of California at Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, Temple University, University of Massachusetts, and New York University. Temple also has a Center for Media Literacy and Information.

State governments are also taking the issue seriously. A few months ago, media literacy legislation was introduced in California's state Senate. The bill would require the state superintendent of public instruction and the State Board of Education to convene a committee of educators, librarians, parents, students, and media experts to identify best practices and create guidelines and recommendations on how to teach students to be skeptical, informed news consumers and how to recognize fake news. Last March, Washington state passed a digital citizenship and media literacy law. Similar legislation is pending in several other states, and state Rep. Tim Briggs (D., Montgomery) has announced plans to introduce a requirement for media literacy in first through 12th grade in the commonwealth.

Media literacy provides skills essential for an educated society, and serves as a life raft to save us from drowning in a vast sea of competing ideas. Now people must become aware of the concept and demand that schools teach their children well on this topic. The media should also promote media literacy education and its importance so that people don't respond with shrugs and have blank stares when they hear the term.

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Article 2.  

Huffington Post:   Refuting Donald Trump's Media Bias Claims.   September 2, 2016

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/refuting-donald-trumps-media-bias-claims_b_57bb911ce4b029a9a4674212

Blame the liberal media.

It’s been a regular Republican talking point for over 40 years, ever since Vice President Spiro Agnew’s criticism of the media as the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism. Now it’s Donald Trump’s main message.

Trump has recently attacked the mainstream media as being unfair, dishonest, disgusting, corrupt and crooked in its coverage of him. He has referred to them as the lowest form of life, to the delight of his cheering crowds. Many people in the crowd now boo the members of the press during Trump’s events and chant Lock Them Up. In the past year, Trump has blacklisted and revoked press credentials for many media outlets, including the Washington Post, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Des Moines Register, Univision and Politico.

It’s ironic that Trump is bashing the media, in that it was the positive and ubiquitous media coverage that helped him dominate the Republican primary field. Trump is now biting the hand that fed him ever since he went down the Trump Tower escalator last year to announce his candidacy. During the primaries, most of the media coverage of Trump was positive. They pretty much ignored the other 16 Republican candidates and let Trump suck all of the oxygen out of the room. The provocative, entertaining and controversial Trump was great for TV ratings. How many Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, or Lindsay Graham campaign events and speeches were televised?

Now that the primaries are over, the media still gives Trump extensive coverage, but it has subjected him to intense scrutiny about his record that did not occur during the primaries.

As I note in my new book, Skewed: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Media Bias, the Republicans’ complaints about liberal media bias are overblown and over exaggerated. Reporters are trained to be fair and balanced (not the Fox News kind), impartial, neutral and detached. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics emphasizes that reporters should seek the truth, be accurate, and keep their independence. While there is no such thing as total objectivity, in that every reporter has their own values and opinions, most reporters do strive for objectivity, fairness, impartiality, and balance. The mainstream media acts as a watchdog for corruption and scandal regarding both Democrats and Republicans and for the most part they do a good job of it. Sure they make mistakes, but they serve a vital public service. Reporters see their work as a noble and important profession and take their jobs seriously as far as being fair and accurate.

Republicans often repeat the liberal bias mantra any time they are posed with tough questions or negative coverage. It’s a way of working the refs to try to get positive coverage.

Reporters and debate moderators do not shy away from controversies involving Democratic and Liberal politicians. They cover Liberal scandals as well as Conservative scandals. For example, during this year’s Democratic debates, Hillary Clinton was asked whether she could be trusted, whether she lied to the Benghazi victims’ families, whether she would drop out of the race if she was indicted about the email scandal, and whether she would release the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches. Bernie Sanders was asked about his past praise of Fidel Castro and how any kind of socialist could win a general election in the United States. The New York Times and other major newspapers have subjected Hillary Clinton to tough scrutiny over the years. Most recently, the mainstream media has criticized her for not holding press conferences. As noted in my book, there are many other examples of tough media coverage of Liberal and Democrats, such as the coverage of President Clinton’s marital infidelity and President Obama’s connections to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

In order to demonstrate the concept of Advocacy Journalism, I have my Journalism students watch one Fox News Show, such as Sean Hannity, one MSNBC show, such as Rachel Maddow, and one episode of the Nightly News on NBC, ABC, and CBS. The students’ general consensus is that the Fox News shows have a conservative bias, the MSNBC shows have a liberal bias, and the network nightly news is primarily objective, fair, balanced, impartial and neutral. Unlike the cable news shows, the network nightly news presents both sides of the issues in an even handed manner and the host has a neutral, non-judgmental tone. In contrast, Advocacy Journalism outlets, both Liberal and Conservative, report the news in an opinionated and adversarial manner. This occurs on Fox News, MSNBC, talk radio, which is mostly Republican and Conservative, as well as various Liberal and Conservative websites, blogs, and You Tube and Internet Radio programs.

If you compare these Advocacy Journalism outlets to the mainstream media, you’ll see that the mainstream media is much more objective, fair, balanced and impartial than the reputation that Donald Trump and Republican Conservatives portray. There is no such thing as perfect objectivity, but most reporters do a good job of being fair and impartial. In this respect, their fairness trumps their negative reputation.

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Article 3.   Morning Consult, SAT Adversity Score Will Serve as Valuable Tool for College Administrators, 2019

OPINION

SAT Adversity Score Will Serve as Valuable Tool for College Administrators

https://morningconsult.com/opinions/sat-adversity-score-will-serve-as-valuable-tool-for-college-administrators/

BY LARRY ATKINS

July 29, 2019 at 5:00 am ET

Recently, the College Board announced that it would be creating a new SAT Adversity Score, or the Environmental Context Dashboard, which is designed to assess the amount of adversity that a student has had to overcome during their young lives — including poverty, family income, median income in the student’s neighborhood, crime rates in the neighborhood, parents’ education level, housing value, AP opportunity, and whether the student has a single parent. The adversity score was piloted at over 50 schools and will be implemented in over 150 schools soon. The adversity score will not affect test scores and will only be reported to college admissions officials.

Many people, especially conservatives, have criticized the adversity scores as political correctness, affirmative action or social engineering run rampant. They see this as an improper way for minority students to get ahead of white students by taking their spots at the schools.

However, as a university professor, I believe that these claims are misguided. In general, the SAT should be de-emphasized as the main factor of college admissions. Someone’s future should not be decided solely by performance in a one day exam.

Nationwide, colleges are beginning to question the concept of standardized tests as a measure of rating potential students.

In recent years, over 1,000 colleges and universities have made SAT scores an optional part of a student’s college admissions application. Some of these major schools include: the University of Chicago, Wake Forest, George Washington, Brandeis, Bowdoin, Kansas State, DePaul, the University of Arizona, Bryn Mawr and Temple, where I teach as an adjunct professor.

According to Temple University’s website: Temple University offers an admissions path for talented students whose potential for academic success is not accurately captured by standardized test scores … Students can continue to submit SAT or ACT scores as they have in the past, or they can choose the Temple Option and submit self-reflective short answers to a few specially designed, open-ended questions. The Temple Option gives them the opportunity to present their strengths in a different way. Typically, students admitted through the Temple Option have a 3.5 GPA or higher.

I’ve found that ever since Temple initiated its new SAT optional policy, the high quality of my journalism students has remained the same, if not even gotten better.

The recent college admissions scandal exposed what many people have suspected over the years: that the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy and privileged. In addition, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that many more affluent students attending high schools successfully apply to get extra time and other special accommodations to take the SAT than those in poorer neighborhoods. The overemphasis on SAT scores as the main tool to admit college students has also had the effect of favoring students from more privileged backgrounds who live in neighborhoods with great public schools or can afford to go to expensive private schools. A recent Georgetown University study concluded that if colleges used an SAT-only admissions policy, it would replace 53 percent of incoming students and make college student bodies less diverse and more affluent.

I believe that any attempt to de-emphasize the importance of the SAT scores in college admissions is a worthy goal. SAT scores should not be eliminated, but they merely should be one factor in college admissions. Despite criticism, diversity should be a desired goal of a university campus. This should include diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, socio-economic, sexual orientation, urban/rural, liberal or conservative, as well as foreign students. As a university professor, I like having classes that have a diverse range of students with different types of backgrounds. This is often helpful during class discussions of controversial and social issues where getting perspectives from different types of people is valuable. For instance, I have found it valuable to have the input of both white and minority students when discussing issues such as police brutality and Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem protest.

There are some valid and constructive uses of the SAT as reflecting a current benchmark of a college applicant’s academic abilities, and it can be one indicator of how someone might eventually perform as a college student. It gives some indication as to a student’s current ability in English and Math, but it does not measure their capacity to learn in the future in college and beyond. There are many students who don’t get excellent SAT scores and end up excelling academically in college.

The SAT does not measure many important traits such as intelligence, aptitude, creativity, motivation, speaking skills, interpersonal skills, perseverance, and work ethic. Some students simply don’t test well, but they work extremely hard to get great grades. That work ethic would most likely carry on to college. Past studies consistently have shown that high school grades are better predictors than the SAT of how an applicant will do in college. For instance, a May 2018 report by Matthew Chingos published by the American Enterprise Institute demonstrated that high school students’ grade point averages are much better predictors of college graduation rates. Schools should be encouraged to continue to look at the whole picture of a college applicant’s background, including high school grades, class rank, types of courses taken, application essays, recommendations, leadership, extracurricular activities, volunteerism and community service, and campus interviews..

The new SAT Adversity Score will act as another valuable tool for college administrators to judge applicants — the extent that they had to overcome obstacles or a disadvantaged background.

According to WTVD-TV in Raleigh, Duke University and the University of North Carolina will be implementing the Adversity Score. No student can be defined fully by a single attribute, whether that attribute is a test score, a GPA or an activity outside the classroom, said Steve Farmer, vice provost for enrollment and undergraduate admissions, UNC-Chapel Hill, in a statement. For that reason, we will continue to evaluate each student individually, comprehensively, and holistically, with the information provided by the [Adversity Score] dashboard.

Colleges should be about opening doors and providing opportunities to many people. Despite assertions by critics that the SAT Adversity score represents affirmative action, the new measure is likely to help poor white kids in rural areas just as much as it will help poor minority kids in urban areas. It will help disadvantaged students of all types of race, neighborhood, parental situation, and ethnicity. It’s a good step to de-emphasize reliance on the SAT, which is often used to close doors and opportunities to college applicants, and to consider other relevant factors as to why someone should be admitted to college. The SAT Adversity Score is an effective way to crack the door to college admission a little wider.

Larry Atkins is the author of Skewed: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Media Bias and teaches journalism at Temple University and Arcadia University.

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Article 4.  The Progressive Magazine:  Join the Fight Against Fake News

https://progressive.org/op-eds/join-the-fight-against-fake-news-180712/

As news consumers, we’re swamped with information. Whether we read newspapers, watch cable news, or get stories from Aunt Judy on Facebook, we must decide which information is trustworthy.

Advocacy journalism outlets including Fox News and MSNBC, ideological talk radio, and conspiracy websites like InfoWars make this difficult. Was Trump snookered by North Korea? Will his tariff war hurt the economy? How we answer those sort of questions may depend on where we get our news.

As the midterm elections approach, we must be prepared for another misinformation onslaught from Russia, without love. Media organizations are taking steps to push back.

On July 6, the Washington Post reported that Twitter has purged 70 million fake and suspicious accounts since May to alleviate misinformation spread on its platform. Three days later, YouTube announced that it was launching an initiative to fight fake news by giving $25 million to support legitimate news organizations, flag misinformation, and highlight authoritative news sources.

These actions reflect the emerging movement to help people become savvy news consumers. Media literacy organizations—such as the National Association for Media Literacy Education, the Center for Media Literacy, and the News Literacy Project—work to promote informed news consumption.

Dozens of fact-checking organizations call out falsehoods by politicians and others. These include such well-known outlets as FactCheck.org , the Washington Post’s FactChecker, Snopes and PolitiFact. A report from Duke Reporters’ Lab earlier this year counted 149 fact-checking projects in 53 countries. Recently in Rome, more than 200 fact checkers from 56 countries participated in the world’s largest fact-checking conference.

The fake news fiasco of 2016 spurred public outrage and led to government action. According to Media Literacy Now, several states introduced or continued consideration of media literacy legislation in 2017 and 2018. In 2017, Washington, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Mexico passed media literacy education laws. All states should enact similar measures.

Many universities now have media literacy majors and programs. The State University of New York at Stony Brook created the Center for News Literacy in 2007, which teaches undergraduate students to use critical thinking skills to judge the credibility of news reports.

The website AllSides provides differing perspectives on major issues, sorting news stories from the left, right, and center. By fall, NewsGuard will launch to fight fake news by providing users with reliability ratings and nutrition labels for 7,500 news and information websites.

In May, Facebook announced plans to start a news literacy campaign by offering tips on how to detect fake news and by recruiting researchers to search out misinformation on its website. In early July, Poynter reported that the WikiProject will create news information boxes to help Google users weigh the veracity of local news organizations.

Many measures have been taken against fake news, but without individual responsibility, they won’t amount to much.

All of these measures are important, but without individual responsibility, they won’t amount to much. We still have a president who has turned a blind eye to the misinformation issue. We still have countries and groups determined to shape U.S. public opinion through sophisticated lies.

Ultimately, the burden falls on all of us to be savvy news consumers and confirm the information in the messages that bombard us constantly. Don’t believe everything Aunt Judy sends you on Facebook; verify it by checking several news sources. When you see misinformation, warn others.

Russian bots and trolls wanting to destabilize the United States, Macedonian teens seeking profits, and misleading memes will be in full force for the 2018 midterms. They will set out to dupe you. Will you be able to sort out the truth from misinformation?

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Article 5.  Newsweek: Stop Kicking Soccer Around. World Cup 2018 Proves Soccer Has Finally Arrived.  2018

https://www.newsweek.com/stop-kicking-soccer-around-world-cup-2018-proves-soccer-has-finally-arrived-1025960

Last month, I heard one of the Philadelphia Sports Talk radio personalities complain that he hated this time of the year because nothing significant was going on in sports. He noted that the NBA and NHL playoffs had just ended and that the NFL pre-season was over a month away. Fine enough, but I hated to hear him say that he was channel surfing and could find nothing in sports to watch and that he settled on watching the Cornhole League. What about the World Cup?! I yelled at my car radio.

  That week was the kickoff of the soccer World Cup in Russia. If you didn't watch it because the United States wasn't in the tournament, you missed a great show.

    This was a very exciting, unpredictable World Cup. Germany didn't make it past the opening round for the first time since 1938. Two of the sport's greatest stars, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, were knocked out in the Round of 16. Belgium made a terrific comeback against Japan, rallying from a 2-0 second half deficit to winning the game in the last minute of stoppage time. England finally won a penalty shootout. There was only one 0-0 tie in the group stage first round. Several games were decided by goals that were scored in stoppage time. The use of VAR video replay has been beneficial in getting calls correct. In the group stage, 17 reviews led to seven penalties and two goals, while two penalty calls were reversed. France's 4-2 win over Croatia, led by soccer's new superstar Kylian Mbappe, had the most goals in a World Cup final since 1966. As usual, the chants and colorful costumes of the games' fans were a huge part of the show.

   Like any sport, soccer has its flaws, such as diva players flopping like mackerels and writhing in pain in fake agony to try to draw a foul, as well as trying to figure out when the referee will blow the whistle in stoppage time.

   At first the television ratings for the World Cup were very low for the first few games, initially down 44 percent from 2014, although the ratings did bounce back in subsequent games. One of the reasons why ratings were off at first this year was that the U.S. Men's Team failed to qualify for the tournament for the first time since 1990. In addition, the time difference between Russia and the United States led to games being played in the early morning on the east coast. FOX Sports' coverage faced competition from Telemundo, and many people now watch games on digital streams online as opposed to seeing it on television. However, ratings recovered significantly in the knockout rounds when the starting times were later, as Uruguay vs. Portugal and Croatia v. Denmark both drew 5.9 million viewers on FOX. according to Deadline Hollywood, while Croatia's dramatic quarterfinal win over Russia drew 5.7 million viewers, according to Sporting News. It's encouraging that many people did watch the World Cup, especially one that lacked a U.S. presence.

   In comparison to the World Cup's television ratings, this year's Stanley Cup Finals on NBC and NBCSN averaged 4.79 million viewers, according to AdAge.

    As a Journalism professor, I've long lamented the fact that the American media focuses almost entirely on the United States and pretty much ignores the rest of the world when covering the news. I feel the same way when it comes to sports coverage.

   As a long time soccer fan, I've been disappointed in the media coverage of soccer over the years, both nationally and locally. I played varsity soccer in high school and went to four World Cup games in Boston and Washington, D.C. as a fan in 1994. I couldn't sleep for days when the U.S. National Team failed to qualify for this year's World Cup.

   Despite the lack of media attention and respect, the State of The Union for American soccer is still strong. Many more kids play youth soccer than they do youth football. A recent Gallup poll showed that 7% of Americans said that soccer was their favorite sport, while 4% said that hockey was their favorite sport. The MLS has emerged as a credible fifth major sport in the United States, despite the ongoing media narrative that relegates it to being a minor sport like lacrosse, bowling, and cornnhole.

   Things are looking up for U.S. soccer. Right before the World Cup started, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico were awarded the 2026 World Cup. In Atlanta, over 71,000 people attended an MLS game a few weeks ago to watch Atlanta United; the team averages over 50,000 fans per game. According to CNBC, the average attendance per game of the 23 MLS teams surpasses that of the NBA and NHL. Wayne Rooney became the latest foreign superstar to sign with an MLS team, D.C. United. Although the U.S. National Team failed to qualify for this year's World Cup, there is a talented cadre of emerging young American players, including Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, John Brooks, Tim Weah, DeAndre Yedlin, and Tyler Adams, who hopefully should get the U.S. back in the tournament in 2022 in Qatar. Interest in soccer in America has grown by leaps and bounds since 1990, and this interest is likely to expand as soccer is headed in the right direction.

   Critics should stop kicking soccer around. Soccer probably won't ever surpass major sports like baseball, football, and basketball in popularity in the United States. However, its popularity can compare to ice hockey. If the NHL can be considered one of the four major sports in America, then soccer should be treated that way as well. There needs to be a media narrative that there are five major sports in this country, not four.

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Article 6.  Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/17/this-79-year-old-basketball-player-could-school-you-in-a-pick-up-game/

PostEverything

The best 79-year-old basketball player you’ll ever see

June 17, 2014 at 11:19 a.m. CDT

Guys, let’s win this one for Norty, one of his teammates shouts before the game. Who knows if this is his last shot at a championship?

A crowd of 30 fans buzz with anticipation at the finals of the JCC Klein Branch over-55 league in northeast Philadelphia. They worry it’s the end of an era.

Then again, they’ve been wondering that for 25 years.

Most NBA players are over the hill by 35 (At age 38, Tim Duncan is viewed as Methuselah). Recreational players tend to hang it up around 50 or so.

Not Norty. Norty Levine is one of the best 79-year-old basketball players in America. The former University of Miami athlete (on the squad years before Rick Barry) plays both full-court pick-up games and over-50 leagues several days a week. He won several medals at the National Senior Olympics.

He doesn’t shuffle slowly along the court; at 6-foot-2, Levine trades elbows, snags rebounds, and makes hook shots over defenders. When he sets bone-jarring picks for his teammates, the