College Football Pieces by Rick Bragg, Wright Thompson & Kevin Van Valkenburg for ESPN

Three features from the Aug 20 ESPN the Magazine College Football preview stood out to me as excellent.

Lengthiest was the profile "Urban Meyer will be home for dinner" on the Ohio State head coach. It's an excellent piece by Wright Thompson that delves into whether Meyer will be able to coach at the level he's accustomed to while avoiding the deterioration in health and loss of family time that plagued him at Florida. It's definitely a question with an unknown outcome and Thompson frames it exceptionally well (with a Thompson interview about the piece here).

Also from this issue was another another excellent profile revealing internal conflict. From Kevin Van Valkenburg, "Who's afraid of the Honey Badger?" is on Tyrann Mathieu, the now dismissed from the team Heisman trophy finalist for LSU. It's fascinating to know that Van Valkenburg wrote this piece questioning whether Mathieu's story "the beginning of a cautionary tale?" prior to him getting booted from the Tigers.

Final story that stood out was from Rick Bragg with "Down here: To understand football's place in the South, you first have to see it from the inside." Reminiscent of the Warren St. John book Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania, it shows (for better or worse) just how much college football matters to people in SEC country.

Writers on Writing - from Thompson, Whitehead & Stout

I've come across a few different pieces lately that feature some really solid content by writers on how they do (or have done) their work. Most recent was insight from Wright Thompson of ESPN via an interview he did with Brandon Sneed titled "Can Urban Meyer Really Make It Home For Dinner? Wright Thompson On Profiling The Man Who Can't Quit Coaching." Sneed is a freelance writer who has published in a number of major magazines and I've linked a number of times to his website... particularly when like is the case here it's to interviews he does with writers dishing on their craft. It's excellent stuff from Thompson, with two of most interesting things being the description of how much work he puts in to his writing and the importance of caring about your subject and what you write (which brought to mind a similar perspective from Anne Lamott).

Also of interest in the craft of writing category was a recent New York Times piece "How to Write" by Colson Whitehead. With 10 (well, 11 sort of) rules for writing, it's insightful content from the acclaimed novelist.

Finally, it's a different angle on the topic, but another excellent piece I've seen of late on writing was by Glenn Stout, series editor of the Best American Sports Writing books. On his blog "Verbplow: Where I Turn Words Over" Stout posted "How I became a writer: a true story." Super fascinating missive by a guy who sought out and then seized an opportunity.

Urban Meyer Follow-up from S.L. Price on CNNSI

Back in December, I did a blog post titled Urban Meyer SI Profile by S.L. Price which linked to an in-depth Sports Illustrated article on the University of Florida football coach. One of the main take-aways from that article was the health problems Meyer has had and how he's struggled to reconcile them with the demands of being a top of his profession college coach.

Well, just several weeks after the publication of this piece, Meyer has made headlines by first being admitted to the hospital following Florida's loss to Alabama in the SEC Title Game, then resigning as coach due to health concerns, then taking back that resignation to simply take a leave of absence... which now appears it will manifest itself as maybe just a long weekend away from UF football.

It's fascinating stuff as you've got someone obviously conflicted between what they love to do and how what they love to do can be detrimental to their health. Since hearing of Meyer's resignation and everything since, I was curious to know what the take of the excellent author of the SI feature, S.L. Price, would be. It's not a long piece, but I'm glad I came across on CNNSI "To understand Meyer's flip-flop, one must first understand his past." Within it, Price explains the conflict for Meyer and why it's so hard for him to leave something that in reality is dangerous to his well-being... at least has been with the way he's worked the job to date.

Here's to hoping that Meyer is able to actually reconcile his coaching with keeping himself healthy and around for his family...

Urban Meyer SI Profile by S.L. Price

Excellent feature story on Urban Meyer in the Sports Illustrated "Sportsman of the Year" issue.



Written by S.L. Price, it's a very in-depth look at the University of Florida head football coach and the path he's taken to prominence. Meyer seems a fascinating guy who has had to both work extremely hard and overcome obstacles every step of the way. Perhaps additionally, or perhaps as part of this, Meyer also was raised by an extremely authoritarian father who constantly pushed him to achieve.

What helps make this a great piece is that Price is such a good writer and able to provide a nuanced portrait of the subject. Some of the stuff he's written are the book "Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in the Minor League America" which I reviewed here and the SI profile "Big Love "cc!" (which I originally linked to here) about Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia.

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I enjoyed the piece on Meyer primarily for the quality of the writing, but also really liked the "2009 Sportsman Of The Year: Derek Jeter" article for the subject himself. I've never been a Yankee fan, but can't help but admire how the future Hall 0f Fame shortstop conducts himself and how he feels about the game of baseball. So cool to read about someone who gets joy out of what he does and doesn't take anything for granted.

This is completely an aside, but I also have thought of Jeter in the last week as the Tiger Woods infidelity scandal has grown. If Tiger wanted, he could have just as easily developed a Jeter-like "man around town with the ladies" persona and nobody would have faulted him. Rather than Jeter's lifestyle as a single man, Tiger appeared to choose BOTH the playboy and wife with kids lifestyles. C'mon, not sustainable and... frankly, not very cool.