Some of the sports writing I've seen recently that struck me
as particularly interesting included stories by Jeff Pearlman, Kevin Van
Valkenburg, and Brian Phillips... with the Pearlman and Van Valkenburg pieces
having separate website posts done on how the stories came about.
Two of the pieces centered around the NFL and to me showed
the all-encompassing and often mentally (not to mention physically) unhealthy nature of the league. For the site Bleacher Report on Nov
26, Jeff Pearlman wrote "A
Year After Jovan Belcher's Final Act, Friends Offer Clues to Tragic
Downfall" about Belcher's life before he killed himself and the
mother of his young daughter and Pearlman posted to his website "On Jovan
Belcher." Certainly not as tragic of a story, but also about what
it's like to be in the NFL was a piece done for the December 9 issue of ESPN
The Magazine. In "A
week in the life of a coach" Kevin Van Valkenburg listed
out a game-week schedule for John Harbaugh of the Ravens and a few days ago the
ESPN website had a Q&A with
the writer.
Additionally from Jeff Pearlman was "Late
ABA ref made call that still lasts" for ESPN and
then Pearlman wrote "A story finally
runs" on his website. The piece on Andy Hershock and
his death 43 years ago while referring a basketball game struck me as
particularly interesting with how the writing of that story impacted Hershock's
children so many decades later.
The last piece to note here was by Brian
Phillips for Grantland with "Smart's
Choice" on Oklahoma State star basketball player Marcus
Smart and his return to school for a sophomore year. The story
felt to me to be about the culture of sports debate, what people expect someone
to do and then what they actually choose. It was I thought a really well-written story and the ending struck me as particularly strong...
"He made a choice for himself, one that fell outside
the collective consensus-logic of the sports-culture machinery. It's a good
choice if he thinks it is, because he's living his own life. Isn't that how
we're all supposed to live? I'd like to think Smart's independence, and not the
chattering about his NBA stock, could become the defining characteristic of his
season. But the world is very cold."
