Lost in Sports Religion of Sports | PRX

In Religion of Sports' latest podcast series, Host Iggy Monda takes listeners inside America’s locker rooms and field houses to explore hazing in high school sports today. Through deeply personal stories of kids who have hazed, parents who have fought for accountability, coaches who are scared of what their players do when they’re not looking, and people who have hazed others, he ultimately asks why hazing is so ingrained in American culture – and what it says about us.

Follow ROS Presents: Roughhousing for the full series.

In 1999, a comedy about the ABA -- the upstart 70s basketball league -- was supposed to be released. The movie starred Orlando Jones, Kelsey Grammer and Jason Segel, and featured cameos by Jim Brown, Roy Jones Jr, and Julius Erving. Everyone involved thought the movie was going to be a classic. But it never came out. Most of the actors never even got to see it. Ben investigates the untold story of New Jersey Turnpikes to find out what actually happened.

The Hartford Whalers logo is everywhere, worn by celebrities from Snoop Dogg to Adam Sandler….even though the team no longer exists. But the small state capital was once home to hockey greats like Gordie Howe and Ron Francis, before the team was uprooted to North Carolina. Ben returns to his home state to find out how Hartford once had a NHL team, why the team moved and ripped the heart out of the city, and how it’s seemingly more popular now than when it existed.

In 1997, Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield squared off in arguably the most notorious and strange fight in boxing history. It is remembered in infamy as The Bite Fight. Lesser known is that the piece of Evander Holyfield's ear that Mike Tyson bit off and spit out went missing. Ben ventures to find out what happened to that chunk of human flesh and why Tyson bit the ear in the first place.

For years, EA Sports produced an extremely popular, and extremely accurate, college football video game— with all the NCAA teams, stadiums, mascots, traditions, and, yes, the actual players. And then it was gone, leaving its cult fanbase enraged and fighting to keep the game alive. Ben explores the NCAA Football video game series, how it was made, why it went away, and how its loss exposed what it really means to be a college athlete.

In 1999, a small apparel company named AND1 released a VHS tape of streetball highlights set to a hip hop soundtrack that quickly became a worldwide craze. AND1 was soon hosting games all over the world, and the players were international celebrities. But then, just as quickly as it rose, it all disappeared. Twenty years later, Ben untangles the complicated origins, unlikely rise and untimely demise of the basketball phenomenon he fell in love with as a kid.

To learn more about streetball and where it's played, check out our AND1 Guide on Apple Maps here.