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Sunday, May 3, 2009

Even ESPN sometimes has quality writing

As I have already mentioned, I still get most of my sports news from ESPN. While I will read some of their general news stories in addition to it being the site where I look at box scores, ESPN.com has two of my favorite writers. There are two writers on the site who if I see that they have written something new, I will put aside whatever I had planned on doing and read their column. The first writer has already been mentioned a few times on this site, and that’s Bill Simmons. In my journalism classes, most of the other males want to be sports writers and almost all of them love Bill Simmons. There’s something about Simmons that strikes an incredible chord with our generation, as older readers do not seem to have the same appreciation for his writing as younger readers do. As some other point, I might write a longer piece about why I like Simmons as a sports writer so much.>The Sports Guy is an obvious choice. Can you guess who my other favorite ESPN writer is? It’s Gregg Easterbrook, the writer of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback pro football column. My favorite thing about Easterbrook is that he treats the reader not only like an intelligent football fan but like an intelligent human being as well. He provides thoughtful, in-depth analysis of the NFL. If I want thoughtful insight on trends and strategies in the NFL, I look to Easterbrook. Plus, I really enjoy that his columns discuss other topics besides football. I don’t know about y’all, but I have a wider variety of interests outside of sports. Easterbrook understands this about fans and caters to this by providing thoughtful insight on pertinent topics such as politics and economics. His columns tend to be super lengthy, but I enjoy popping on my headphones and taking a leisurely time digesting his columns. Just recently, Easterbrook wrote an excellent piece about Jack Kemp that you can read it here. I somehow doubt that Easterbrook’s writing style appeals to y’all, but if you don’t read him already, I suggest at least taking a peek at his work. I think he is a fantastic and thoughtful writer who provides well-researched and insightful knowledge on football and a host of other topics. If you like football like I do, I highly recommend his TMQ columns.

1 comment:

  1. I was talking to a buddy today who is a journalism major, writes for the paper and even edits pro football outsiders or something like that. he says that he has analyzed simmons' articles and they only have like 5% passive verb usage, compared to like 20-30 for other crap writers. So that may be one reason simmons gets his message across better

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