Zirin's column, Edge of Sports, appears on Sports Illustrated’s website and he is the host of XM satellite’s weekly show, Edge of Sports Radio. Zirin is a frequent contributor to The Nation, a columnist for SLAM Magazine, and The Progressive, as well as being a frequent guest on ESPN's Outside The Lines and Democracy Now.His first book, What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books) has entered its third printing.

Zirin has also published Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports, and “A People’s History of Sports in the United States,” a sports-related volume in the manner of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States series for The New Press. In addition to “What’s My Name, Fool?” for Haymarket Books, he has also published “The Muhammad Ali Handbook” for MQ Publications. Zirin is also the published children’s book author of “My Name is Erica Montoya de la Cruz” (RC Owen). In addition, he is working on a sports documentary with Barbara Kopple’s Cabin Creek films on sports and social movements in the United States.

Calls for political boycott

Zirin has repeatedly called for sports boycotts on certain players, teams, states, or nations for non sports related, political reasons.

On April 27, 2010, writing for the Guardian, Zirin called for a boycott against sports teams from Arizona, in particular the Diamondbacks, to protest the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act -- aka the Arizona immigration bill.. He did however express tremendous enthusiasm and support during the 2010 NBA Playoffs for the Phoenix Suns, who went by "Los Suns" as a statement against the Arizona immigration law.

On June 2, 2010, writing for the Nation, Zirin justified the decision of the Turkish U-19 soccer team to boycott a match against Israel. He described the Gaza flotilla raid as an act of state terror committed by the Israeli government and proposed a boycott of Israel.