The "Sports Articles Your Mom Enjoyed Last Night" thread

[naturalborn103]

http://www.sbnation.com/college-footbal ... -interview
Interview with a (SEC) college football bag man.

[ThaJim2]

Not a sports article but a I had a lot of fun reading this blog from Bill Simmons: http://grantland.com/features/the-actio ... ship-belt/

It's actually one of the rare Bill Simmons articles that I actually liked in the past few years. Or maybe I really wanted to like this.

I know I am a month late but that article is bullshit. Burt Reynolds was the belt holder easily form at least 76 (though I would go from 73 or 74 and White Lighting and Longest Yard). Gator, Smokey and the mutherfucking bandit*, Semi Tough, Hooper, Hooper, Cannonball Run, Sharkys Machine, Stroker Ace are all fucking action classics and that run is as good as any action star has had. Yes I put Hooper twice because it is so awesome. Just more anti FSU hate.

*I think its safe to say 1977 is the year America went pussy. What went wrong where Smokey losses to some puppets and gay robots in the box office?

[drobizhek]

No Van Damme? smh

[peanut butter]

Article about Bill James in SI from 81:

James is 31, with a B.A. in English and economics, graduate credits in psychology, a passion for William Faulkner and an abiding interest in the French Revolution—all more or less standard attributes for a resident of a college town like Lawrence, site of the University of Kansas. But James spends less time analyzing Faulkner's prose or Robespierre's motives than he does calculating the average time of games worked by various umpiring teams, or figuring statistically which pitchers are really best at holding runners on first base. His father, George, 74, who still lives in Mayetta, Kans. (pop. 246), where Bill was raised, says of his son's boyhood, "Mostly, Bill had his nose in books, but he was a baseball nut, too, like a lot of other people. He was just nuttier than most." And a lot smarter, too. Unfortunately, a statistician's mythology is not like that of a fastball pitcher; we have no mental picture of young Bill hurling stats at the side of a barn, sharpening his nominal curve.

In any case, in 1975, when he was a graduate student at Kansas, a professor told him it would take five to eight years for him to get the Ph.D. he was working toward, and that even after he had it there probably wouldn't be many jobs available. "What am I doing?" James remembers asking himself. "Why should I invest all this time in a degree I don't really want and won't be able to sell?" He decided to pack it in and try instead to become a writer. What would he write about? Something he knew. What did he know? Baseball. He'd turn his lifelong obsession with the game into a professional endeavor. Easy.

It turned out to be not so easy. His early baseball articles usually ended up in publications that paid him "with free copies and misspelled bylines," and a living obviously had to be made, even though James says he has learned from his wife, Susan McCarthy, an artist, "how to live on nothing." In 1976 he became a high school English teacher and earned $9,500, still the most he's ever made in a year. Later, he worked for a time as a boiler attendant—a watchman of sorts—in a food-packing plant in Lawrence, which turned out to be an ideal job for James. "I'd spend five minutes an hour making sure the furnaces didn't blow up," he says, "and 55 minutes working on my numbers."

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm


PEACE

[Gregg Popabitch]

Not a sports article but a I had a lot of fun reading this blog from Bill Simmons: http://grantland.com/features/the-actio ... ship-belt/

It's actually one of the rare Bill Simmons articles that I actually liked in the past few years. Or maybe I really wanted to like this.

I know I am a month late but that article is bullshit. Burt Reynolds was the belt holder easily form at least 76 (though I would go from 73 or 74 and White Lighting and Longest Yard). Gator, Smokey and the mutherfucking bandit*, Semi Tough, Hooper, Hooper, Cannonball Run, Sharkys Machine, Stroker Ace are all fucking action classics and that run is as good as any action star has had. Yes I put Hooper twice because it is so awesome. Just more anti FSU hate.

*I think its safe to say 1977 is the year America went pussy. What went wrong where Smokey losses to some puppets and gay robots in the box office?

Also, I would say The Rock is the current belt holder. I think we'd disagree with some of his choices but I like the premise of his article.

[peanut butter]

Gary Smith retired from Sports Illustrated today. He is our generation's greatest sportswriter. Here's some of his best articles. You should read them. He is fucking incredible.

On Mike Tyson, which I posted an excerpt of earlier in this thread:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

On Jim Brown, and the 1957 Cotton Bowl:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

On competitive freediving (scroll down):
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/archiv ... 39941.html

On George O'Leary and the lies he told to get the Notre Dame head coaching job:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

On the power of basketball. If you only read one of these, read this. It's my favorite piece of sports writing ever:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... AG1118885/



PEACE

[ThaJim2]

Not a sports article but a I had a lot of fun reading this blog from Bill Simmons: http://grantland.com/features/the-actio ... ship-belt/

It's actually one of the rare Bill Simmons articles that I actually liked in the past few years. Or maybe I really wanted to like this.

I know I am a month late but that article is bullshit. Burt Reynolds was the belt holder easily form at least 76 (though I would go from 73 or 74 and White Lighting and Longest Yard). Gator, Smokey and the mutherfucking bandit*, Semi Tough, Hooper, Hooper, Cannonball Run, Sharkys Machine, Stroker Ace are all fucking action classics and that run is as good as any action star has had. Yes I put Hooper twice because it is so awesome. Just more anti FSU hate.

*I think its safe to say 1977 is the year America went pussy. What went wrong where Smokey losses to some puppets and gay robots in the box office?

Also, I would say The Rock is the current belt holder. I think we'd disagree with some of his choices but I like the premise of his article.

Posted this in Curb for further discussion.

[peanut butter]

Awesome dedication to Gary Smith on Deadspin:
http://deadspin.com/what-i-learned-from ... 1570929568


PEACE

[Jayou Ayen]

Jason Whitlock gets that work.
http://deadspin.com/can-jason-whitlock- ... 606960/all




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[peanut butter]

Jason Whitlock gets that work.
http://deadspin.com/can-jason-whitlock- ... 606960/all



39

PEACE

[peanut butter]

Lowkey one of the gems in that Howard hitpiece is that he links to Ralph Wiley's work on Page 2, which then opens a portal to a gang of the other shit he wrote there. If you wanna read some of the best sports contemporary sportswriting, go through those Wiley columns. Just unbelievably beautiful writing.

I've said this before, but its truly unfortunate that ESPN doesn't offer a Page 2 search function similar to the one SI has. A lot of great work happened on that site, and its damn near impossible to find.


PEACE