Welcome to the Edge of Sports podcast. I'm Dave Ziron. This week we have one of the great sports

writers of the last quarter century, John Worthon. You might know that name from Sports Illustrated.

And he is also the author of a new book called Glory Days, the summer of 1984 and the 90 days that changed sports

and culture forever. I want to talk to John Wertheon about the Olympics then. And perhaps we're

going to talk a little bit about the coming Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. Also, I've got some choice words about Antonio Brown, just stand up and just sit down awards.

But first, let's talk to John Worthon.

So, glory days, the summer of 1984 and the 90 days that changed sports and culture forever.

I've been in that situation, John, where you're in a room, maybe you have a whiteboard up,

you're trying to think of a book topic that really captures your passion and interest.

Is that how you came about this? Like,

what attracted you to this topic, of all topics you could choose? There was very much a whiteboard.

The backstory, the origin story, I had written a story for Sports Illustrated about the 1984

Olympic trials held in my hometown in Indiana when I was in middle school.

And someone said, we'll turn it into a book.

And I said, you know, Jack McCallel, my dear friend, had written that dream team book about the 92 Olympics.

I didn't think of a whole book about the 1984 Olympic team, but I kind of, as you say exactly,

you sort of get, I have a whiteboard in my office and you start sort of scripting out everything

else that happened that summer.

And I sort of realized I could use this Olympic team and Michael Jordan and Nike as the spine,

but talk about everything else that was going around that was also happening in that 90-day window.

I don't know if you can even distinguish the two anymore since you've done a whole book on it,

but as a middle schooler, what do you remember about the 1984 Olympics? I mean, to me, the big thing was the trials. So I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana. Bob Knight was the basketball coach in Indiana. He was sort of the king of the mountain. So everybody came to my town to try out. And I just remember, you know, on the sports crazed nerdy, whatever I

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