Below is a preview of select essays, interviews, and columns you’ll find in our winter 2025 sports-themed issue, now available to read on our website. Along with their print edition, subscribers will receive a professional-grade custom Believer swim cap, manufactured by S&R Sport (see bottom of this newsletter for a picture).
Meanwhile, in this week’s Advent Sale, the discounts continue apace: Take 5% off your total order for every $25 you spend, for a maximum discount of 45%. That means a Believer subscription, by itself, will net you a 10% discount. Add another single issue to your cart—such as last year’s dazzling art-themed edition—and you’ve got yourself a 15% markdown. Discount applies for McSweeney’s merch, books, and subscriptions!
An Interview with Mina Kimes
by Sarah Enni
For me, the social aspect of football was like a nice side effect—not only in terms of talking to my dad. It also allowed me to talk to strangers and make friends. I think that’s the reason a lot of us love the game so much—it brings us closer to other people. But that wasn’t what made me love it and re-devote all my time to it. It was the fact that I found it so exciting, intellectually. Having watched football all my life, I understood it on one level. But it was around that time that I started trying to understand it on even deeper levels. And as I spent more time doing that, I loved it even more. That’s how I still feel about it today.
Rule-Breakers
On-the-ground coverage from the Katie Taylor–Amanda Serrano fight, in which two of the world’s most decorated female boxers square off for one final, history-making bout
by Laura van den Berg
Tonight at the Garden, Taylor and Serrano again face off in the center of the ring and then retreat to their corners. The young man who has been shadowboxing in front of me sits down and leans forward, his flag pulled tight around his shoulders. I’ve brought my husband with me and we’re both packed tight into the middle of a row. The soft serve is long gone, the empty plastic cup wedged between my feet. All around us the singing and chanting—olé, olé, olé from the Irish fans—grow louder. The Jumbotron shows clips of women fighters—Laila Ali, Christy Martin—who have paved the way to this moment. Two guys with Eastern European accents arrive late and slide into the row in front of us. They ask some Serrano fans for a recap and are quickly taken in.
In the last two fights Serrano had applied relentless pressure in the opening rounds, driving Taylor back into the ropes. There’s no doubt that, after two losses to Taylor, after years of being overlooked and undervalued, Serrano is starving for a win.
We wait for the bell. We wait to see that furious hunger take shape.
The Worst Shot Ever Taken
The author and his closest basketball confidantes undertake a formal analysis of Steph Curry’s shot at the Paris Olympics as art object
by Kiese Laymon
I hadn’t thought about this painting in decades, until I rewatched the USA-versus-France gold-medal basketball game of the 2024 Olympics. I watched the last four minutes and thirty seconds of that game more times than I watched anything else in 2024, except Kendrick’s “Not Like Us” music video. During one of these viewings, I watched the game on my phone, and as Steph Curry set his feet—and sat in the chair—to launch that shot, I clicked two buttons on the side of my phone. Before I could see the shot go in for the 114th time, I opened the photo and shifted it to black and white, and I just sat there in my bed weeping.
I sent the photo to Ashley Battle, Damon Young, Al-Lateef Farmer, Prescott Saunders, David Dennis Jr., and Emma Carmichael, six people in my life I consider the most audacious lovers of miracles made possible through basketball. Without telling them anything about what the photo meant to me, I asked each person what they saw.
An Interview with Thomas McGuane
by Mattie C. Govan
Fishing has a way of expanding time. Once, my wife had the police look for me because I had lost track of time. Seeing a trooper on the riverbank at two in the morning is a real eye-opener. At my age, time goes by so rapidly. That’s a principle that everybody lives with. When you’re a child your summers last forever; now I hardly notice them. That doesn’t happen when I’m fishing.
Resurrector: Any Given Sunday
A rotating guest column in which writers reexamine critically unacclaimed works of art
by Beatrice Loayza
Sports fandom seizes upon our religious instincts, and demands a cocktail of faith and devotion. The typical Hollywood football movie—think Remember the Titans (2000) or Rudy (1993)—tends to bring out this spiritual dimension, lighting its underdog story with the soft glow of hope and eternal glory. Perhaps it’s the itchy, feel-good inspiration of those movies that pushed me into the arms of Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday (1999), a comparatively cynical football drama that makes explicit the sport’s religious parallels.
An Avoidable Incident
When India’s best cricketer was accused of ball tampering in a 2001 match against South Africa, a small rule violation became a referendum on the game’s colonial inheritance.
by Chris Almeida
This is a sport that is about nation in a way that American sports are not and can never be. Everything is coated in the Laws. Every match has the shadow of empire looming over it. Every cheating scandal is a story about whether or not a nation deserves to be respected. Do you deserve the benefit of the doubt? Well, that might depend on who you are.
Pick up a digital subscription to start reading today. Annual print subscriptions to The Believer include four issues, one of which might be themed and may come with a special bonus item, such as a giant poster, free radio series, annual calendar, or swim cap (pictured below). View our subscription deals here.
