Joel Northrup

During the first centuries of Christianity, Christians were thrown to lions in arenas to be jeered by mocking crowds. Today, Christian athletes face the taunts of a media strongly opposed to their faith. No Christian athlete draws more media catcalls than New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow. CBSChicago.com writer Dan Bernstein dismissed Tebow as “little more than an affable simpleton” and…

A frotteur is someone — usually male — who takes aberrant pleasure in rubbing his fully clothed groin area against someone else — usually female — generally in a public place, say, a subway, perhaps a funeral parlor. The frotteur is a pretty weird duck. The word is obviously French in derivation, and it unsurprisingly has an arty origin. Frottage is "the technique or process of taking a rubbing…

It's so easy to look at teenagers in general today and sigh. They’re more than a bit lazy, a bit spoiled, and more than a bit morally compromised. Two teenagers made national news. One showed common decency and sportsmanship, two virtues seemingly uncommon in that generation. Hope is restored. Fifteen-year-old wrestler Joel Northrup faced a dilemma when he was scheduled to wrestle Cassy…

On Tuesday I wrote about how ESPN.com's Rick Reilly slammed 16-year-old Iowa wrestler Joel Northrup for his decision to forfeit a state tournament wrestling match against 14-year-old freshman Cassy Herkelman, citing his religious convictions about the impropriety of wrestling a girl. Reilly mocked Northrup's beliefs as "wrong-headed," oddly comparing his refusal to wrestle Herkelman with…

Don't 52-year-old sports writers have anything better to do than devote a whole column to deriding a teenage athlete's faith? If you're Rick Reilly, apparently the answer is no. Reilly wrote a February 19 piece at ESPN.com trashing the religious convictions of 16-year-old Iowa wrestler Joel Northrup, who forfeited a state tournament match rather than wrestle 14-year-old Cassy Herkelman,…