If you would like advice for a long-term relationship, I offer this: Find someone who loves you a similar way news outlets love year-end content.

The New Yorker I wrote an article 11 years ago about why our brain loves lists, and it still holds up today. Among other things: It organizes information spatially and guarantees a finite story.

The NFL story will in fact proceed in 2025 and beyond, but in the next section we provide eight NFL media stories that piqued our interest in 2024.

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1. Tom Brady begins his NFL broadcasting profession

Fox has broadcast rights to the Super Bowl this yr, meaning Brady might be broadcasting the league's biggest game in his rookie season as a TV analyst. He is 15 games right into a 10-year, $375 million contract with Fox, a journey that has led to quite a few comments on his performance, including several posts by this creator.

Brady's broadcast work has improved over the course of the season – not a lot that he’s an elite TV analyst, however the progress is noticeable. Still, the long-term prognosis here is that Brady's juggling as owner and TV analyst for the Las Vegas Raiders, and the restrictions that include it, appears untenable for Fox and Brady.

2. Netflix is ​​getting an NFL games package

Netflix and the NFL announced a three-season deal for Christmas Day games through 2026 in May. This deal gets even larger as Netflix secures exclusive broadcast rights within the United States for the 2027 and 2031 editions of the Women's World Cup. These are vital signals to the market (together with its WWE rights deal given its live element) that Netflix has evolved from an interest in sports properties to a legitimate sports rights holder.

The streaming giant aired the Kansas City Chiefs-Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens-Houston Texans games on Christmas Day and largely avoided a glitch-filled repeat of its Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight event.

3. Peacock broadcasts an everyday season game from São Paulo

The Philadelphia Eagles-Green Bay Packers game on September 6 was the primary NFL regular season game in South America and aired exclusively on Peacock, the streaming network's third exclusive NFL game following the Buffalo Bills-Los Angeles Chargers regular season game in December 2023 and the Miami Dolphins-Chiefs AFC wild card playoff game last January.

The result was a major increase in viewership for the league and the streamer. Peacock delivered 14.2 million viewers for the Eagles-Packers, significantly higher than the 7.3 million for the Bills-Chargers and Peacock's second-best NFL streaming audience of all time, behind only the Chiefs-Dolphins game (23 million viewers). . The figures include numbers from the over-the-air markets where the games ran.

The NFL will play eight international games in 2025, including in Madrid, as Spain will turn into the sixth country to host a regular-season NFL game. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt have spoken openly about it Play 16 games abroad yearly within the near future, in keeping with this report from SBJ's Ben Fischer. It is evident that we’ll soon see a window with a brand new international media rights package on Sunday morning.

4. Super Bowl LVIII sets TV rankings record

When it involves comparing today's sports viewership to yesterday's, we live in an apples-to-pomegranates world, as a consequence of aspects like latest out-of-home viewership data and cord-cutters and cord-cutters. Based on today's figures from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, the Chiefs' 25-22 time beyond regulation victory over the San Francisco 49ers in February's Super Bowl averaged 123.7 million viewers across television and streaming platforms. That makes it the most-watched broadcast in history, surpassing the previous mark of 115.1 million for Kansas City's last-minute win over Philadelphia within the previous Super Bowl.

5. The rise of different programming

The alternative broadcasts of NFL games reached a brand new dimension in 2024 with an animated “Simpsons” alternate forged from “Monday Night Football” airs on ESPN+ and Disney+, and NBC Sports makes its NFL alternative broadcast debut on Peacock with the Texans-Chiefs game last week. This might be followed by alternative shows on Nickelodeon and ESPN's now long-running Manning Brothers show, in addition to a show featuring “Toy Story.”

6. The New Heights podcast is blowing up

The popular podcast — hosted by brothers Jason Kelce, the Eagles' center from 2011 to 2023, and current Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — signed a take care of Amazon's Wondery podcast network in 2024 to turn into the show's latest home .

The show landed on the metrics lists of the largest podcasts within the US and has nearly 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube. One of the interesting points of the deal is Wondery's plan to translate the podcast into different languages ​​to expand its global audience, including in NFL-heavy markets just like the United Kingdom and Mexico. That's a blank spot for NFL fans.

7. New broadcast rules for higher access

It wasn't a coincidence that you simply saw more in-game interviews during NFL games this season. Last May, the NFL broadcasting department outlined access changes for the NFL's television partners following a review between the league and its media rights holders. The common goal? To improve the sport content we see as NFL viewers. The latest rules included in-game coach interviews for all games, pregame player interviews for all games, pregame network coverage within the locker room, preseason player interviews, and network cameras within the coaches' booths. Search for it to proceed.

8. The NFL was ordered to pay $4.7 billion within the Sunday Ticket antitrust lawsuit…only to have the lawsuit overturned

In August, the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles overturned a $4.7 billion judgment against the NFL for collusion in raising prices for its “NFL Sunday Ticket” television package. The judge disqualified the expert reports that the jury had used to find out damages. (The jury's verdict had threatened to upend the league's strategy of selling exclusive television packages to broadcasters.) Next up: The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Per Sportico's legal creator and sports law professor Michael McMannA call will likely take many months, if not longer.

readers say

The people—or at the very least the individuals who make up Boston.com's readership—have spoken. There's been loads of news in 2024, but these are the stories that readers have cited because the ones that intrigued them essentially the most over the past 12 months.

In total, readers submitted greater than 500 responses to our survey. Below is a countdown of the five they mentioned most frequently, followed by six more that appear slightly below. (And how much do you bet that at the very least just a few of those will appear on the list again next 12 months?)

5. Massachusetts gets (a part of) the eclipse (7%)

Okay, so Boston wasn’t on the “path of totality.” We'll see our own total solar eclipse on May 1, 2079 (the toughest a part of the wait), but within the meantime, Boston.com readers seemed content to get their very own little piece of the natural phenomenon here last April. Silly glasses were commonplace, schools and businesses stopped all the things to observe it, and lots of people actually traveled north to New Hampshire and Vermont to see the thing in its entirety. (Although a lot of them apparently had difficulty returning home.)

4. Pro-Palestinian protests on campus (11%)

The Boston area has many colleges and lots of students who aren’t particularly afraid to talk their minds. So it probably made sense that when students began protesting the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, our schools can be a hotbed of such activity. And indeed, MIT, Tufts, and Emerson led the best way, followed by Harvard, Northeastern, UMass Amherst, Dartmouth, and UNH, amongst others. Even the Rhode Island School of Design got involved, occupying a part of an administration constructing. Last spring, protests, encampments, arrests, and resignations looked as if it would occur virtually day by day, and readers followed the live updates with interest (and possibly no small amount of concern).

3. Bill Belichick says goodbye (13%)

One of two sports stories to make our top five, a big variety of readers pointed to Bill Belichick's departure from the Patriots team he led to 6 Super Bowl championships. Even though this happened in early January, readers reported that his departure had taken up loads of their sporting headspace throughout 2024 – perhaps because he continued to make headlines, whether due to his opinion of the team he left behind or due to his love life (Couples Halloween costume, anyone?) or his eventual landing as a coach in North Carolina.

2. Celtics are national champions (19%)

While they might not have had the juice of our ubiquitous #1 story mentioned below, readers named our Boston Celtics the second most fascinating story of the 12 months, with their decisive championship win over the Dallas Mavericks in June dispelling any doubt about it: arguably the most effective team by far within the NBA. It almost makes you’re feeling sorry for all the opposite teams that don't have Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, a cadre of wonderful backup players, and coach Joe Mazzulla, who churns out the present quotes like an internet-era Yogi Berra. Oh, and their save was pretty good too.

1. The Karen Read Saga (28%)

In a 12 months that saw greater than just a few disturbing murder stories unfold – the cases of Brian Walshe and Lindsay Clancy come to mind – one by far caught people's attention essentially the most. The Karen Read trial made headlines and sparked water cooler discussions far beyond Boston, leading practically everyone to the logical assumption that it might eventually turn out to be a Netflix documentary. Which after all it would be.

As you almost certainly recall, prosecutors allege Read was driving drunk and intentionally crashed her SUV into her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, as he dropped him off at a house party in January 2022. And Read's lawyers claim that O “Keefe was actually beaten by people in the house (and attacked by the family dog).” It's a suitcase that has all the things, including a Turtleboy. And since her first trial led to a mistrial, we are able to do all of it again next April.

Honorable Mentions:

Trump is making progress sparsely: People affiliated with the MAGA movement probably shouldn't get too upset — Massachusetts remained firmly within the green in November's presidential election, with Kamala Harris receiving about 61% of the vote. But Donald Trump took the entire thing on his own, and readers (well, about half of them) identified that his gains even among the many liberal crowd were a key a part of his booming comeback – he topped ten Massachusetts cities, who voted for Biden in 2020, and narrowed the gap in lots of others. Meanwhile, the anti-Trump section immediately began arguing about what impact his policies might need on the situation within the Bay State.

The massive refugee crisis: Thanks to the state’s “right to shelter” law, migrants were in all places — at Logan Airport, in converted community centers, in hotels and in a closed prison. And despite Gov. Maura Healey's increasingly strict shelter-in-place guidelines, the problem stays a thorn in her side.

Crime in Downtown Boston: A wave of shoplifting and violence within the Common – which many blamed on problems that spread from Mass.'s former camps of homeless and addicted people. & Cass spread – caused great consternation among the many townspeople. However, Mayor Michelle Wu assures us that Boston stays the safest big city in America.

Voting questions: There were five! And three — authorizing a legislative review, eliminating MCAS as a graduation requirement, and allowing rideshare drivers to unionize — were actually passed. Sorry, psychedelics and increased minimum wage.

The arrest of Tania Fernandes Anderson: It happened just just a few weeks ago, but Boston City Councilman Fernandes Anderson's arrest on public corruption charges — involving a $7,000 money payment in a City Hall bathroom — immediately caused a stir in Boston's political scene. (One reader even suggested that outgoing President Joe Biden should pardon her.)

State Police Problems: As if State Trooper Michael Proctor's classless texts revealed throughout the Read trial weren't enough, the mysterious training death of recruit Enrique Delgado Garcia solid one other shadow over the organization. Plus all of the cheating. (Your run-of-the-mill city police departments haven't gotten off easy either. Case in point: the Sara Birchmore case in Stoughton.)

Once positioned 250 meters east of the Art Gallery of South Australia, the massive Beaux Arts-style Jubilee Exhibition Building was constructed to deal with the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition and rejoice the fiftieth anniversary of South Australian settlement.

The exhibition, which hosted each national and international participants, showcased various items including machinery, art, textiles and products.

In the South Australian area, the Protector of Aborigines is liable for the control of Aborigines in South Australia and the Northern Territory. issued cultural devices and artifacts.

These items included bags and wallets comprised of “native hemp” from the Northern Territory.

This colonial depiction of forced and unpaid First Nations fashion labor was a practice that had begun a long time earlier.

In 1866 the Central Board for the Protection of the Aborigines issued baskets, bags and bonnets Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition of Australasia.

In the Queensland Court of the 1888 Melbourne Centennial ExhibitionPearl jewelry from the Torres Strait Islands was exhibited.

By the mid-Twentieth century, these goods were not featured in Native American exhibitions more autonomy of their craft production. This rise of self-determination led to the primary wave of First Nations fashion design, contemporary clothing manufacturers and textile designers.

A marketplace for design

First Nations women in Coffs Harbor within the mid-Sixties made clothes for tourists at Big Banana. Although the clothes didn’t feature their very own designs, the ladies earned income from making the dresses and sarongs.

In the late Sixties, textiles from the Tiwi Islands appeared and were later demonstrated small fashion shows.

Soon other craft centers joined the textile movement and there was an explosion of designs available in the market.

By the Eighties, First Nations fashion design had established itself as a movement.

This was the time when individual designers presented and presented their designs alongside the established craft centers on international catwalks.

Their designs and silhouettes were latest: they told contemporary stories about colonization, community, family and culture.

Self-determination

Today they’re First Nations artists and designers self-determining ownership of their cultural histories and corresponding fashion, gallery, library and museum practices.

Many First Nations artists and designers present in quite a lot of media, ensuring their designs and practices are culturally, environmentally and economically sustainable.

The First Nations pieces featured within the exhibition Radical textiles Traverse art and fashion design by taking the item off the body and placing it on a mannequin or frame. These artworks have the common denominator of honoring and celebrating tradition, ancestors, family, community and country.

The pieces embody wearable art from a purely experimental or industrial approach.

Dilly Bags Everywhere (2021) contains a modern, vibrant bag and an attention grabbing, eye-catching dress print with women and animal motifs.

Sustainable and recycled materials, including used wool blankets, discarded metal and plant-dyed cotton, are on the forefront of this work.

Trudy Inkamala was a respected elder and knowledge keeper who created fiber art and painted by hand artwork depicting and depicting people and wildlife. Her younger relative, Sheree Inkamala, is an aspiring textile and print artist.

Her designs embody the type of Yarrenyty Arltere Artists, an Aboriginal-run art center in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) known for its colourful and playful soft sculptures, works on paper, textiles and film.

Annabell Amagula's (Anindilyakwa people) (b. 1965) representation of land, culture and sustainability in her Ghost Net Bag and Dress (2020) highlights technical skill and complex details in multiple layers of expertise.

Amagula's dress and bag are comprised of fair trade silk, a hand-woven ghost net and recycled miners' high-visibility uniforms.

The silk pattern features an existing image of Amagula's ghost net crab sculpture, which has been repeatedly and digitally printed. A recycled miner's uniform is used to hem the dress and together with the ghost net to construct and form the bag.

Amagula is an experienced artist from Groote Eylandt within the Northern Territory and a member of Anindilyakwa Arts, whose family has been instrumental in supporting her within the art of painting and bag making.

Always has been, all the time will likely be

Clothing The Gaps' iconic power t-shirt boldly echoes the colours of the Aboriginal flag and bears the historically significant message “Always Was, Always Will Be”, a robust recognition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals are the are the rightful guardians of this land and sovereignty has never been relinquished.

Clothing The Gaps is a majority Aboriginal-owned social enterprise based in Victoria, co-founded by Laura Thompson (Gunditjmara people) and Sarah Sheridan. The organization designs wearable clothing for First Nations peoples and allies and uses colours and slogans to spotlight the critically vital issues affecting First Nations people.

Their clothing is ethically made in Australia in Wurundjeri Country, Victoria and embodies wearable activism that demands and influences social change.

Paul McCann's (Marrithiyel people) (*1984) Sovereignty Never Ceded Gown and Suit (2023) speaks of the trauma and resilience of First Nations and the importance of sovereignty and self-determination.

A commissioned set for the 2023 Melbourne Fashion Festival, McCann's dress features cream satin, blue organza and painted by hand gold patterns. The black vintage suit is decorated with hand-painted motifs in blue and gold.

A fashion design graduate, McCann was inspired by his grandmother's vintage outfits and his family's cultural stories and art. His design ethos is one in all culture and glamour, and he often adds hand-painted art and embellishments to garments and jewellery that tell stories of tradition and country.

These 4 artworks and fashion have diverse interwoven messages, themes and artistic practices. Some are wildly colourful while others are muted. Some represent contemporary graphics, others traditional art. Some speak openly about sovereignty, while others are subtle of their message.

Their commonality advocates and showcases culture, craftsmanship, sustainability and the will to inform the reality.

Our adventurous readers have been traveling all over the world in the previous couple of months, Exploring AntarcticaTake a day trip to Downton Abbey and in addition discover the wonders of Wyoming. Now these travel stories are shared together with some travel suggestions.

This week we hear from a bunch of friends from San Jose who visited British Columbia last summer. Read on for details and find more travel inspiration at www.mercurynews.com/tag/wish-you-were-here/.

Wish you were here

BRITISH COLUMBIA: A birthday trip took longtime San Jose friends Connie Skipitares, Suzanne Arnaud, birthday girl Maureen Lewis, Kathy Infantino and Shaye Ryall to Victoria in August.

“Victoria is an Anglophile’s dream,” says Connie. “Although this charming city is not on the European continent, it still offers a rich environment of British culture. Afternoon tea is served almost everywhere! At the long-established Empress Hotel, traditional English tea is served daily in the elegant dining room from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Save your money for this lavish experience – $100 per person.”

Other must-see highlights included “spectacular Butchart Gardensa 55-acre flower lover's paradise 30 minutes north; Hatley Castlea sprawling Tudor-style manor house and gardens; and downtown Victoria with lively pubs and quaint shops.”

TRAVEL TIPS: “The Hop-on hop-off double-decker bus tour is a must-do, a two-hour tour around the city that offers us a selection of the main attractions that we returned to on our own tour. In the summer, try to visit Butchart Gardens on a Saturday evening to not only enjoy the flowers at dusk, but also to enjoy an outdoor concert and a breathtaking fireworks display.”

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Great-grandmothers. We all have them. But most of us won’t ever know them except through fleeting glances at fading scraps of paper: sepia photographs, recipe cards, handwritten letters written with a fountain pen full of cocoa-colored ink.

What does it take to construct coherent stories from such exciting fragments of life? This query has been a continuing in my profession as Professor of nineteenth Century Literature and Culture. I recently used this experience to jot down a book about my circle of relatives.

When I inherited my great-grandmother's diary, a repurposed teacher's planner wherein she documented the family's move from Michigan to Miami in 1926, I discovered a marriage portrait inside. The slanted profile shows her youthful skin and a dress too elaborate for the on a regular basis wear of a Midwestern teacher. It's easy to assume that she took enjoyment of writing her recent name on the back of the image: Faith Avery.

I stared at her beautiful picture for years, as if details of her satin dress could explain why a girl widowed in 1918 refused for the remaining of her life to confess she had had that first husband, and yet fastidiously preserved that portrait.

And then, because archives are at the center of my academic work, I started researching. I searched for marriage certificates and military service cards, studied maps, and located relations in censuses and obituaries. In these documents I discovered surprising and poignant answers.

What was I searching for? How can someone who only half tells their family history uncover more truths? And what does it take to know them?

The digging

Questions that begin with “why” are rarely easy to reply, so researchers prefer to start out with “who,” “when,” and “how” by locating an individual in a single place after which tracking them through time. There's a technique to this adventure down the rabbit hole.

Make a listing of unknowns. These may be facts or tantalizing tidbits of incomplete family history. My mother tried to be helpful and told me things like, “Faith always said there was a horse thief in the family, but she was too ashamed to reveal his name” and “I think Aunt Harriette (Faith's sister) was briefly married once.”

Do precise, not general searches. Typing “horse thief Avery” into Google won’t yield anything useful, but many other sources contain precious details about old-fashioned heroics. The New York Public Library Guide to family research presents some options. The Library of Congress Print and Photograph Collection also can aid you imagine the world of your ancestors. Physical libraries contain historical photos, maps, local records, and digitized newspapers that should not available online. Historical societies and state universities typically allow free personal use of their collections.

Be aware that sometimes you’ll fail and should change course. I looked for the horse thief for several days to no avail, much to my mother's disappointment. But after I turned to Aunt Harriette's marriage, I discovered a personality no less fascinating, one I now know as “Four Wives Frank.”

Read old documents when that they were created by a various group of people that took information on a whim. The handwritten birth, death, marriage and Census records of the past centuries were based on self-reported data that didn’t require verification. They can suffer from negligence within the name of efficiency.

One hasty census taker recorded Faith's mother, Cara, as “Cora,” one other renamed her brother, Horace, “Harris.” Frank listed a series of birth years, countries of origin, and maiden names for his mother as he made his way west. He will need to have been charming. Who but a captivating man could have persuaded woman after woman to marry him, each of whom thought she was at most his second wife? The registrars and census takers, not to say his trail of brides, were none the wiser.

Which leads me to this: Check the data. I knew I had the suitable Frank because several records listed the identical three sons. Inconsistencies in those records, and combined along with his life history, made this conclusion inescapable: The man consciously reinvented himself.

The Assembly

My academic work has taught me that almost all Archived answers result in further questions. So I expect several phases of collecting. I gathered every little thing I could find about Faith's youth, hoping that something might explain her reticence about her first marriage. As her story got here to light, I kept coming across gaps within the narrative that prompted me to dig even further.

It is simpler to know people when you’re aware of their world. For background, I read stories about Miami within the Nineteen Twenties and looked in Faith's diary for details which may reveal her personality or motivations. As I combed through her reading lists, I discovered a girl who enjoyed popular entertainment, resembling the blockbuster “Aloma of the South Seas.“ Primers from Wages and costs within the Nineteen Twenties explained the family's financial worries.

As I got to know Faith higher, I checked out the documents again and asked myself recent questions. To discover if Harriette's husband Frank had anything to do with Faith, I created timelines for each sisters. To think in regards to the emotional background of those events, I reread Faith's diary, paying particular attention to the entries about Harriette and Faith's second husband.

Since each stack of documents accommodates multiple stories, the important thing to a coherent narrative is to seek out a typical thread that addresses the most important puzzles while identifying the lesser ones. I let the horse thief loose.

The results

The detective actions of what I “investigative memoirs” might encourage you to do your personal family research. Genealogy web sites like Ancestry.com And FamilySearch.org can assist.

But it's vital to do not forget that reading more information enriches any family history, and native librarians are exceptionally good at helping users find what they're searching for.

As improbable as it might sound, Four Wives Frank helped me understand how big Faith's secrets were, and that she kept them within the hope that her children's lives can be easier. Such self-sacrifice is common amongst moms. And yet their details are as individual as the marginally silvery portrait of the gentle young woman who married Harold Avery in 1911 and whose story requires a whole book to inform properly.

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In her sixth Olympic Games, Diana Taurasi is essentially the most experienced player even among the many veteran players on the U.S. basketball team. At 42, she might be the oldest member of the 12-person women's basketball team, and few within the history of the U.S. basketball program have shown more commitment than Taurasi.

She is well-known on the Olympic and international stage, but it surely wasn't all the time that way. In 2004, shortly after the Phoenix Mercury chosen her with the No. 1 pick within the WNBA Draft, Taurasi arrived in Colorado ahead of the Athens Games because the youngest member of the USA Olympic team. Led by three-time Olympians Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley and Sheryl Swoopes, this team was a seasoned team in pursuit of this system's third consecutive Olympic gold medal.

So the query becomes: We know what Taurasi is like now as a seasoned athlete, but what was she like in her first Olympic appearance? Several members of this team were asked for his or her “Best Diana as a Rookie” story from Athens. Their stories didn’t disappoint.

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Van Chancellor, head coach of the 2004 Olympic team

My whole focus was on winning the gold medal. I didn't care about politics or what I had achieved up to now. I just wanted the 12 best players that might help me win. When the time got here, I said, “I want Diana Taurasi on the team. No-brainer.” She was a senior at UConn. She had all the abilities.

Team USA played an exhibition game at Tulane the night before the 2004 national championship game. Sold out. We had all of our players except one last player. All of us (from Team USA) then went to the national championship game. So UConn wins the national championship and the following morning, at 9 or 10 o'clock, we were on our Team USA bus on the point of go to the airport to fly to our training center in Colorado. Diana gets on the bus. I'm within the front seat and he or she sits right next to me and immediately says, “What do you want from me?”

I said, “Diana, you can help us, but I need something else. I have Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Dawn Staley. They are experienced players. They have won two gold medals. You have to act like a novice.”

She said, “Coach Chancellor, if that's all you need, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to help this team.”

She was the most effective with older players I've ever seen. She was a terrific player, but she acted like a rookie and fit perfectly into our team.

Dawn Staley, teammate 2004

I remember Diana was all the time loud. Incredibly loud. That was advantageous until it just got an excessive amount of. At some point you only must tell her to be quiet. I remember telling her once, “Shut up.” We were at training. I had just had enough. I used to be done. Everyone else was probably done too.

I don't think she meant it in a foul way. That's just how she was, but it surely was my third Olympics, so I knew what we needed to do to bring home gold and I didn't want any unwarranted, unwanted distractions. I knew the key to success and he or she was this young, carefree, free Diana. And for us, we were just ourselves.

But it was cool because she understood. There was no hostility. It was just, “Hey, this is what we need to do. Stop being superfluous. Let's just get lean.”

Swin Cash, teammate 2004

At the Olympics, our group was young: me, Sue Bird, Tamika Catchings, Diana, Ruth Riley. We were the young wave that got here in, and within the lead as much as the Olympics, we all the time loved the white versus red practice games, when the young players played against the experienced veterans. We would kick their asses, after which once we needed to win or were near winning, Van Chancellor would all the time say, “Time's up!” It was a terrific competition. I loved it.

But I remember Dee (Taurasi) and Yolanda Griffith were moved to the red (veterans) team. Our team was still great, and I remember Dee talking trash, like, “I need to go back to the white team! Screw it!” and throwing a complete tantrum. I used to be literally in tears. She was so competitive. She was so mad when Van moved her to the red team. She was all the time talking trash. And when she was moved to the red team, it was like someone put a Tennessee jersey on her.

Sue Bird, teammate 2004

It was the primary game of the Olympics. We were staying on the ship Queen Mary 2. It wasn't a crazy good distance, but it surely was about half-hour to the venue. We got there and all of us got ready, got taped up, and put our shoes on. And Dee had two left shoes. She said, “Damn, I have two left shoes.” And I said, “What do I do?” Someone needed to run back to the hotel to get it for her, and he or she had it for the sport. But she did the team warm-ups in her trainers.

I also remember once we got our outfits for the opening ceremony. And that yr it was these skirts. They looked like school uniforms. And we had these hats, and Diana wore two pigtails, which is so funny looking back.

Carol Callan, Director of the USA National Team

Diana didn't play much. She got here on instead. But she was so attentive and driven. She took every opportunity to figure things out. She respected the time the veterans had put in. She knew she couldn't just turn into a star. But I remember her being supportive from the bench, and if a coach looked down at her, she would jump up and sprint to the scorekeeper's table.

Gail Goestenkors, assistant coach of the 2004 Olympic team

Diana was a fierce competitor. We played against her after I was at Duke. Her competitive spirit was incredible. But what I loved about her – and he or she still is – is that she's just so funny. In stressful situations, and the Olympics are loads of stressful, she will say something that makes everyone laugh and calm down.

I remember talking to her and Sue Bird before we shot some balls before a practice and I told them each that they weren't defending thoroughly. I used to be joking about their defense. And then I remember asking Diana what made her need to go to UConn. And Sue said, “Coach (Geno) Auriemma just said, 'Give her a great time. She must have a lot of fun.'”

Dee said, “I don't remember most of it because we had so much fun. That was the key point because I was worried about what I was going to do in Connecticut.”

The athlete