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THE MARICOPA MERIDIAN  ·  OPINION

HEY RUBE

Sports, Politics & Other Dangerous Games

OPINION  ·  Every column in Hey Rube is labeled opinion and represents the views of the columnist, not the news reporting of The Maricopa Meridian.

Sports are the doorway. America is the subject.

ABOUT THIS COLUMN

Hey Rube covers sports the way sports actually work — which is to say, it follows the money, the politics, the real-estate plays, the media machinery, and the occasional moment of genuine athletic beauty that gets buried under all of it. The column starts at the field or the arena and goes wherever the story leads: a county supervisor’s donor list, a stadium-subsidy vote held at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, a high school coach who somehow ended up at a Senate hearing, a bookmaker’s line that tells you more about a city than any press release ever will. One columnist. One opinion. Clearly labeled. The Meridian’s news desk is not responsible for what ends up here.

HEY RUBE  |  OPINION

INAUGURAL COLUMN FORTHCOMING

This space is reserved for the inaugural Hey Rube column. When the Meridian publishes its first issue, the column will appear here — headline, deck, byline, dateline, and full text. The section is built. The paper is not yet out.

Hey Rube publishes with Vol. 1, Issue 1 of The Maricopa Meridian.

ALSO IN HEY RUBE

Additional columns will appear here as they are published — archived by issue, accessible in full.

TIPS & LEADS

Got a document, a lead, or a story that needs telling? Reach the Hey Rube desk: news@maricopameridian.com. Confidentiality honored.

THE COLUMNIST

Hey Rube is written by a staff columnist for The Maricopa Meridian. The column represents the columnist’s own views and reporting — not the editorial position of the news desk. The columnist’s full identity, biography, and photo will be published with the inaugural issue. Until then: they’re here, they’re working, and they know where to look.

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The arena is the easy part. The parking lot — who owns it, what it cost, who got the contract — that’s the story.

— HEY RUBE · EDITORIAL MANIFESTO

ARCHIVE

Hey Rube will be archived here by issue beginning with Vol. 1, Issue 1. Each column will be preserved in full and permanently accessible in the Meridian’s record.