Dave Zirin | The Nation

Supporters cheer after the Egyptian army commander addressed protesters in Tahrir Square in 2011. Soccer fan clubs, or “ultras,” played a large part in securing the square for the protesters. (Reuters/Suhaib Salem)

If you want to understand why Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has declared a “state of emergency” or if you want to understand why the country’s defense minister warned Tuesday of “the collapse of the state”, you first need to understand the soccer fan clubs in Egypt—otherwise known as the “ultras”—and the role they played in the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Under Mubarak’s three decade kleptocratic rule, the hyper-intense ultras—made up almost entirely of young Egyptian men—were given near-free reign to march in the streets, battle the police and, of course, fight each other. This has been a common practice in autocracies across the world: don’t allow political dissent, but for the young, male masses allow violent soccer clubs to exist as a safety valve to release the steam. Mubarak, surely to his eternal regret, underestimated what could happen when steam gets channeled into powering a full-scale revolt. After revolution in Tunisia spurred the Egyptian uprising, the ultras transformed themselves in the moment and played a critical role in securing Tahrir Square, setting up checkpoints, and fighting off the police. This is not to say it was seamless. As one Egyptian revolutionary said to me, “In those first days, the Ultras were indispensable. But the hardest thing, it felt like at times, was to keep them all focused on the goal [of removing Mubarak] and keep them from killing each other.”

Manti Te’o talks to the press during media day for the BCS National Championship game. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Manti Te’o has a story and he’s sticking to it. With millions of dollars hanging in the balance, the Notre Dame star, whose cancer-stricken girlfriend Lennay Kekua turned out to never exist, has decided that it’s better to look like a doe-eyed victim than a furtive fraud. In an interview with Katie Couric to be aired Thursday night, the All-American with NFL dreams finally breaks his silence on camera. Te’o reportedly tells Couric that he was deceived into carrying on a three-year online relationship with a fake woman whose identity was really created by “family friend” Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Te’o spent the season talking about how Lennay’s death broke his heart, but he had to play on in her memory. He built a heroic stature and helped create—he says unknowingly—a hokey narrative that was repeated as gospel at Sports Illustrated, ESPN and The New York Times.

Lance Armstrong talks on Oprah’s show, January 14, 2013. (Flickr/George Burns)

Lance Armstrong’s much-ballyhooed “confessional” interview with Oprah Winfrey about his history of performance-enhancing drug use was an unmitigated disaster for the cycling icon in both form and content.

Lance Armstrong speaks as part of a United Service Organization tour in Iraq, Dec. 18, 2007. (Wikimedia Commons)

This week Lance Armstrong, our most famous cyclist/cancer survivor/suspected Performance Enhancing Drug user, aims to do something more daunting than ride a bike up the face of the Pyrenees. He is attempting to ride Oprah’s couch back into the good grace of public opinion. On Monday night, Armstrong will, after fifteen years of strenuous, Sherman-esque denials, “come clean” and admit to imbibing illegal “performance enhancers” during his record-setting career. This will not go well—and not only because the broadcast will have already been leaked, dissected and thoroughly flambéed before it airs Thursday night.