While concern for mental health and self-care are increasingly prevalent across US society, our extensive conversations with current and former players to support our new book, The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game, reveal that the world of big-time college football is a clear exception.

Even as the Canada Soccer drone spying scandal dominated news at the Olympics and apparently raised the most fundamental questions about ethics and harm, the Israeli national soccer team was still permitted by FIFA to compete in the Games. This, despite the fact that Israel was then (as it is now) conducting a genocidal assault against Palestinians in Gaza.

If we want to improve and ultimately dismantle the systems which enable the exploitation of migrant workers, our focus and solidarity must be extended across the globe. That begins by acknowledging that the reality in Qatar cannot be divorced from the Western-led globalized capitalist market economy that strips vulnerable people of their basic dignity while undermining workers rights everywhere.

In the polite world of golf, there’s a rule of etiquette to cover every contingency. Until now. This spring, a small group of professional golfers—led by former Big Name superstars Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson—decided to turn the game that has made them fabulously rich into an unsporting game of SleazeBall.

The following article originally appeared in the January/February 2013 edition of Canadian Dimension to commemorate the Hillsborough disaster, a fatal human crush that killed 97 Liverpool fans during an FA Cup semi-final match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on April 15, 1989. It remains the worst disaster in British sporting history.

But it’s because the World Cup, much like the Olympics, has become a profit-hungry corporate behemoth. Its crimes are not unique but those endemic to global neoliberal capitalism; a gangster capitalism of “free” markets, lax state regulations, and low taxes that enriches the global one percent and leaves the rest of us behind. Here’s a rundown of the World Cup’s crimes.

Athletic labour provides an important part, although not the only part, of the emotional sustenance fans need. There is a tremendous cost to the athlete who performs this social reproductive labour. The body becomes so damaged that it is unlikely to ever fully recover its former capacities. The toll is also mental/emotional, for the loss of the physical capabilities that once served as the foundation for the athlete’s identity is profoundly dispiriting.

An entire nexus of ruling-class power, the team owners, the league, the Canadian state, and the media has zeroed in on the NHL as a perfect site to promote the new militarism to Canadians who might otherwise insist that we drop fewer bombs and use that money to rebuild homeless shelters and mental health institutions and support our librarians, our teachers and our nurses.