#sports

The ESPN Sports Meme Hall of Fame Inaugural ClassESPN has launched their own Hall of Fame, for memes. It's online, of course. There have been many memorable viral memes featuring sports stars, because, duh, they are photographed all the time. Some have been so successful, so long lasting, and so firmly embedded into our consciousnesses that they deserved to be enshrined. ESPN's very first pick for the Hall of Fame is Crying Jordan. Basketball star Michael Jordan was photographed with tears in his eyes while delivering his speech on the occasion of his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009. The image is useful to illustrate any situation that would make someone cry, and it shows no signs of fading away. For the rest of the inductees into the ESPN Sports Meme Hall of Fame, the company consulted experts, meaning the ESPN social media team and some other employees who use memes. They selected five more sports memes for induction into the Hall of Fame. Find out which ones they are and the story behind each, as well as examples of each meme's power, at ESPN.#sports #athlete #meme #ESPN

Bend It Like Beckham, Twenty Years LaterIn April of 2002, the film Bend It Like Beckham premiered in the UK, and was eventually shown around the world. The studio wasn't all that confident about the film. It was a sports movie starring two women, one of them South Asian, with all the men in subordinate roles. And it was written and directed by a South Asian woman, Gurinder Chadha. Yet BILB grossed more than $104 million on a $6 million budget. BILB was a very different movie for its time, and it filled a niche that filmmakers had neglected. Women, especially young women, made up half the movie audience, but rarely saw themselves as more than window dressing in movies. Bend It Like Beckham showed that women can care about sports more than they care about finding a man. Women's soccer wasn't much twenty years ago, but today's teams fill seats and bring glory to their nations. Many current stars of women's soccer were inspired to go all out by watching BILB when they were children. The movie was also the first, outside of Bollywood, to focus on a young South Asian woman, 18-year-old soccer player Jess Bhamra (Parminder Nagra). Millions of young girls were thrilled to see an actress in a leading role who looked like them, and who dealt with the same dismissal, bigotry, and culture clashes that were part of their lives. One part of BILB that doesn't hold up twenty years later is the romance with the coach, which wasn't part of the original story. It was shoehorned in at the studio's insistence. Otherwise, the heart of the movie focuses on the fierce and sometimes ambiguous friendship between Jess and Jules Paxton (Keira Knightley). BILB has no gunfire, no super powers, no crime, no car chase, very little bloodshed, and no male leads. It was a breath of fresh air to the millions of people who could relate to something in it. Read an oral history of how Bend It Like Beckham came about from the people who made it, and you might want to watch the movie once again. -via Metafilter

Cracker Jill is the Newest Ballpark SnackWith the new baseball season, we also get a new mascot for the classic Cracker Jack glazed popcorn and peanuts! Frito lay has announced that Cracker Jill will appear on snack packages to promote women in sports. The special-edition bags of Cracker Jill will be sold at ballparks this summer, or you can get one online by donating $5 or more to the Women's Sports Foundation through the Cracker Jill website.The bags of Cracker Jill have five different designs, created by artist Monica Ahanonu. To go along with the Cracker Jill campaign, singer Normani rewrote the lyrics to the classic "Take Me Out to the Ball game" with women players and spectators in mind.

Sports Teams, ESPN, NFL, and Others Comment on Ohio Heath Teacher's Tik Tok to Get His Students Out of an ExamJosh Chasteen, a health teacher at Lebanon Junior High, became TikTok-famous.In 2019, Josh Chasteen, a health education teacher, started a  TikTok account at his students' requests. Chasteen noted that he has found it hard to balance his teaching life and TikTok life. He suggested this was because it was challenging to create not cringe-worthy, yet fun content that his young audience would find relatable. In one of his videos, Chasteen told his audience that he would cancel a major exam for students if a pro sports team left a comment on his video. After a few hours, the Detroit Lions commented, "Roll out the TV cart." Obviously suggesting that Josh gives the students a free day instead of having them take the exam. Eventually, Arizona Cardinals and Dallas Mavericks also commented. Chasteen tried to brush off the attention. However, when ESPN, NFL, and the Olympics commented, even Chasteen himself started to geek out.In the end, the students got what they wanted. Instead of taking an exam on the muscular system, they played games together. Chasteen was later invited to appear on ESPN's Sports Center about this viral moment.#JoshChasteen #TikTok #LebanonJuiorHigh #ESPN #NFL #Olympics #DetroitLions #DallasMavericks #ArizonaCardinals #SportsImage credit: Josh Chasteen