Great sports stories - on Bumgarner, McCloughan & Luck

Three great pieces of sports writing from December included one on World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner, one on NFL talent evaluator Scot McCloughan and one on Colts QB Andrew Luck.

For Sports Illustrated, the excellent Tom Verducci wrote "2014 Sportsman of the Year: Madison Bumgarner" on the Giants starting pitcher with the unbelievable postseason run this year and the feature from ESPN was "The Far Sideline" by Seth Wickersham on Scot McCloughan, who helped build both the 49ers and Seahawks rosters in recent years.

The other football story that stood out to me as excellent was for the Wall Street Journal with Kevin Clark writing "Andrew Luck: The NFL’s Most Perplexing Trash Talker." The banter from Luck after being sacked is definitely different than normal and seems to either be the result of him being a exceedingly nice guy, incredibly crafty or a combination of both. Regardless of the cause, it's a fascinating approach.