Solid sports writing - by Burkholder, Posnanski, Arthur, Wetzel, & Tullis

Some recent great sports writing included a couple of pieces that that struck me as fascinating along with a few more that were really impactful as well.

Stories in the fascinating category were "Being Andre the Giant" by Denny Burkholder for the CBS Sports website and "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Dalkowski?" by Joe Posnanski for the NBC Sports site. Both pieces are on really interesting people with pro wresting star Andre Rene Roussimoff having passed away in 1993 and retired MLB pitcher Burkholder now 75-years-old.

Two pieces that felt to be on very cool people were "Canada’s Steve Nash calls time on transcendent NBA career" by Bruce Arthur for the Toronto Star and "Aaron Hernandez finally taken down by a 5-foot-tall operations manager" for Yahoo Sports by Dan Wetzel, with him writing about about jury foreman Lesa Strachan and the courage she showed in delivering the guilty of murder verdict to Hernandez.

The last piece of great writing to note here was by Matt Tullis for SB Nation. "The Ghosts I Run With" was a feature story about Tullis and how his running pastime makes him think back to his teenage years battling cancer, and how many of those he got close with didn't make it. It's extremely personal writing and really really good.

Excellent sports writing - by Murphy, Magary and Arthur

Three different pieces of excellent sports writing I've seen recently ran the gauntlet of topics with them respectively covering topics of entertainment, sportsmanship and courage.

In terms of entertainment, Austin Murphy wrote about the Super Bowl halftime show for Sports Illustrated with "It's Halftime!", an interesting feature with lots of embedded videos of performances.

The other two pieces to note here were columns by Bruce Arthur and Drew Magary. For Canada.com, Arthur wrote "Cross-country coach Justin Wadsworth makes Canadians proud with Olympic sportsmanship" and Magary for Deadspin did "Michael Sam Shouldn't Have To Do This Alone," a great piece on the Missouri graduate and NFL prospect who earlier this week publicly came out as gay.

Jason Collins SI cover story & writing on Collins

While none of it as singularly impactful as the first-person narrative "Why NBA center Jason Collins is coming out now" that Collins did with Sports Illustrated writer Franz Lidz, there were some other excellent pieces of writing done on the heels of the announcement Monday by Collins.

About the piece itself was SI Senior Editor Chris Stone who wrote "The story behind Jason Collins' story: How it happened" and Lidz a day later provided "Jason Collins overwhelmed by enormous support for his announcement".

In terms of pieces published placed other than Sports Illustrated, Bruce Arthur wrote for the National Post the excellent "Jason Collins coming out a new beginning for sports" and specifically about the #98 jersey homage to Matthew Shepard, Sam Gardner wrote for Fox Sports "Collins' act wows victim's parents".

Additionally, "The meaning of Jason Collins' coming out" was written by Cyd Zeigler for SB Nation Outsports and "Just the Beginning" by Chuck Culpepper for Sports on Earth and the last piece to mention here was "The Decision" by Charlie Pierce for Grantland. Like many pieces I've seen from Pierce, it's extremely thought-out and contains the interesting idea that people shouldn't get caught up in basically congratulating themselves and society as a whole for being so accepting of Jason Collins on the heels of his coming out publicly.

Favorite Olympic Writing So Far

There's quite possibly been better pieces that have been and are still to be written on the London Olympics, but a few have stood out to me so far for the subject covered and/or excellence of prose.

In the category of post-event recap writing was Bruce Arthur for Toronto's National Post newspaper with "Canada delivers something worth remembering in Olympic soccer loss to U.S." Really great work done quickly.

With an insightful and important take from the Olympics was the Jen Floyd Engel column "Games of the Girls? Not really" for Fox Sports.

Finally, two additional pieces that stood out were "Painful, Poignant Memories of 1992" by Joe Posnanski for the site Sports on Earth and "Olympics 2012: Rupp follows good friend Farah to podium in 10K" by Pat Graham in the Washington Times. Both were short works of writing that covered tremendously cool events on the track.