Andrés Martinez is co-Director of The Great Game Lab, Special Advisor to Arizona State University President Michael Crow, and professor of practice at the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is also the Editorial Director of Future Tense, a partnership between ASU and the New America think tank in Washington, D.C.
Andrés has a track record of developing public-facing ideas journalism projects that bridge the worlds of media, academia, and policy, including Future Tense, Los Angeles-based Zócalo Public Square, and ASU's Convergence Lab in Mexico City. He writes and speaks often on sport and globalization and is currently writing a book on the subject. He is a columnist for Mexico City's Reforma newspaper, and frequently writes for such publications as Slate, The Atlantic, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Reuters.
Andrés was previously a Vice President at New America. He has also been the editorial page editor of The Los Angeles Times and an assistant editorial page editor at The New York Times, where he was a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Andrés also worked at The Wall Street Journal and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Before taking up journalism, Andrés worked briefly at a Washington law firm and served as a law clerk for a federal judge in Dallas. He studied Russian history as an undergraduate at Yale and went on to obtain a master’s degree from Stanford and his J.D. from Columbia University Law School, where he was a member of the Columbia Law Review.
Andrés has long appreciated how important sport is in connecting so many of us to the broader world. He learned his U.S. geography watching the NFL as a kid in Mexico, but subsequently felt like he’d been dropped behind the Iron Curtain when he moved to a U.S. that was still cut off from the other footballing world. Oh, and ask him sometime how confused he was as a little kid tuning in to watch a World Cup game played by Germany vs. Germany.
Favorite sports memory?
Bonding with my dad in front of a TV watching the Pittsburgh Steelers play one football, then decades later bonding with my son watching Arsenal play the other. Both memories cover a number of years but seem like a wondrous blink of the eye in retrospect.
Your global sports Mount Rushmore?
Mean Joe Greene, Dennis Bergkamp, Leo Messi, Iga Swiatek.
Which world leader would you put in goal?
Vladimir Putin. He’s a SOB, and good goalies all tend to be a little crazy, so in a game I’d want him to be our crazy SOB in goal.
Which athlete would you want to be world leader?
Martin Ødegaard.
Best rivalry?
In the old days, it was the USSR vs. Uncle Sam in any and all sports, but nowadays you have to go with El Clásico, Barça against Real Madrid.
A sign that the world of sport is shrinking?
The hero of the Paris Olympics, French swimmer Léon Marchand, was one of our student athletes who helped ASU win the NCAA Championship a few months before heading home to represent his country.
Where would the Great Game Lab find the quintessence of global sport?
The least glamorous and most remote place in Brazil where young kids are kicking a ball.
Question you'd most want to ask other fellows?
Want to play a five-on-five?