Excellent sports stories - Wickersham on Derek Carr, Svrluga on a baseball marriage & Michael Sam being drafted

Over the past few weeks three different sports stories stood out to me, one as particularly well-written, one as being on an interesting topic and a third as being just a fantastic thing.

The one I found noteworthy due to the writing was by Seth Wickersham for ESPN The Magazine with "Sins of the Brother" on Derek Carr, the Oakland Raider second-round pick at QB and whose brother David was the first pick of the 2002 draft, also at QB. Really focused look at the connection between the two and fascinating reading.

The second piece of writing that was memorable for me in the past few weeks was by Barry Svrluga for the Washington Post with "The Wife: Chelsey Desmond" about the baseball life led by the young family of Washington Nationals SS Ian Desmond. Tremendously interesting look at a family life very different than most.

The final sports story to note here wasn't writing, but the ESPN video of Michael Sam learning of getting drafted by the St. Louis Rams and kissing his male partner. Really great stuff...

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.