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Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week we profile one of history’s most significant African American women, Condoleezza Rice. National security advisor during President George W. Bush’s first term and U.S. Secretary of State for his second, Rice was the highest ranking African American woman in U.S. history until Kamala Harris’ ascension to the vice presidency in 2021. Her upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama in the era of Jim Crow and entry into politics during the Carter administration set the table for a conversation about a career and legacy notable for both historic professional achievement and also examples of disgrace and cronyism. Rice comes to prominence working in the National Security Council under the H.W. Bush administration with a concentration on Soviet and Eastern European policy, service that accelerates her rise in the cabinet of Bush’s son George W. Much like in the way you think “sports and politics” and the Bill Bradley Collective immediately comes to mind, for many Condoleezza Rice has a similar association with the Iraq War and the foreign policy of the Bush administration. Her culpability for those spectacular failures is the meat of this portrait, but her relationship to the sporting world takes us home. Once floated as a candidate for an NFL head coaching job, the first(!) chairperson of the College Football Playoff committee and first female member of the Augusta National Golf Club, Rice’s political career and forays into sport share parallels. On paper a resume fit for one of history’s pre-eminent civil servants, but in actuality a career propped up by being long held in the favor of those in power and as something of a black effigy for conservative white America, giving way to results and realities that don’t measure up to certain commendations and appointments. A fascinating study of ambition and race and legacy is Condoleezza Rice, and this is the home for it, on the Bill Bradley Collective.