Archive For The “Sportswriting” Category

Remembering Paul Reinhard

By |

Remembering Paul Reinhard

The year was 2004.  For about a year I had been blogging about Lehigh football, thanks to the relatively new Blogger platform that allowed me to collect my thoughts (as soon as I could get to a computer) and post them instantly on the interne…

Read more »

Remembering Paul Reinhard

By |

Remembering Paul Reinhard

The year was 2004.  For about a year I had been blogging about Lehigh football, thanks to the relatively new Blogger platform that allowed me to collect my thoughts (as soon as I could get to a computer) and post them instantly on the interne…

Read more »

Why Just Sticking To Sports Will Never Work

By |

Why Just Sticking To Sports Will Never Work

One of the hottest topics in the sportswriting niche of the world has been the following online debate, kicked off by Bryan Curtis over at The Ringer.  The name of his piece was “The End of ‘Stick to Sports'”, and it was a thinkpiece that truly got writing minds thinking.  “Sportswriters have been awakened by Donald Trump’s presidency,” the byline read.  “Is that what their readers want?”

It’s had an interesting effect on the entire sportswriting community – a response veering from general agreement, to “we never really did stick to sports anyway” and “I will always stick to sports and let others talk about politics.”

What it isn’t is cut and dry.  I think the problem with this so-called “debate” is that it attempts to make sportswriting into a binary choice – either you stick to sports or you have your sports explore other topics.

Art is not a series of binary choices, and if you agree sportswriting is a form of art, then “sticking to sports” will never work.  It’s like saying to Lady Gaga “stick to singing show tunes”.  It doesn’t work that way.
Read more »

Read more »

Dreams Of Sports Illustrated Still Dance In My Head

By |

Dreams Of Sports Illustrated Still Dance In My Head

I remember, growing up, having the covers of Sports Illustrated on the wall.

Growing up outside of the county, Sports Illustrated for me was a vital link back home, to America.  It allowed me, a stranger in a country not my own, to stay connected to the sports I otherwise would have lost contact with.

Back then, I pored over the weeks-old issues, reading accounts of games that were long in the past.

I’d read pieces by Frank Deford and Rick Reilly – my only link to an active sports culture back home.  (That and Armed Forces Radio on the short-wave made me feel American.)

They kept me engaged, connected, in a world where American football was just that – American – and sports in general had a different emphasis.

Those days feel very far away, coming up into this Christmas season – an era away.

And my boyhood dreams of appearing one day in Sports Illustrated, too, still seem very far away – and different.
Read more »

Read more »

Skip to toolbar