For anyone questioning the mix of coverage on this site: An authoritative, photographic edict of affirmation

Posted on April 4, 2013 by AD

For some reason, some people thought that a mere geolocational shift away from the siting of most of my favorite teams would lead to a sudden abandonment of lifelong allegiances. While that idea plainly is ludacris, I’ve always been interested in what’s happening within my immediate locality, so it’s only natural that I would want to xzibit that sort of content in addition to continued addressing of my non-spatially bound interests. These are concepts that can coexist in my mind and on this site, but you don’t have to take my word for it, because there’s photographic evidence of this unity after the jump.

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The second chapter of Sports on Earth

Posted on March 26, 2013 by AD

Back in August, I noted the launch of what then appeared to be a new heavy hitter in the high-end online sportswriting market: Sports on Earth, helmed by the well-known (for varying reasons) Joe Posnanski. After working out expected opening-day kinks, the site was getting off the ground nicely, and SoE has found a good niche providing current, day-to-day content in digestible bites by good writers. With those good writers and the backing of USA Today and Major League Baseball, the site seemed to be in a good place.

After just five months, though, Posnanski left without explanation, which had the effects of calling the site’s future viability into question and bolstering Posnanski’s reputation as a drifter. (His immediate destination was not a mystery, though: he joined NBC Sports to “writ[e] long-form stories” and a weekly column on Fridays called “The Big Read,” which seems like a painfully obvious play on “The Big Lead,” a popular, all-purpose sports site USA Today– Posnanski’s most recent former employer– bought a year ago. Weird.)

SoE lumbered on through the winter without a formal leader, and, really, seemed no worse for the wear. Spring arrived last week, Easter is this weekend, and yesterday, former “contributing writer” Will Leitch issued this announcement:

I am pleased to announce that next month, I will be joining the staff of Sports On Earth full-time, as a lead writer for the site. I’ve been writing for the site part-time since it launched last fall, but now I’m going to be there every day. It’s going to be my home.

My columns up to this point have been mostly media columns, but this is a more expansive role: I’m basically gonna be writing about everything, traveling all over the place, serving as the face (or one of the faces, anyway) of the site. I will also be hosting a daily podcast and will occasionally contribute for MLB.com, and certain columns will also be running in USA Today. Basically: I’m gonna be all over the place there.

Will’s writing voice has some built-in modesty to it, but the circumstances (including the fact that he is leaving his full-time position at New York magazine) make it clear to me that he has claimed Posnanski’s vacant seat as the head and face of Sports on Earth.

I think this is great news. Leitch remains a fresh voice in the media and sports realm, and he combines that with the experience that comes from operating very successfully and with perspective online. Will seems to have retooled and stretched out a bit since leaving Deadspin, and I think we’re at the point where we’re all going to benefit from his taking an in-earnest plunge back into the sports world.

Leitch’s first day in his new role is April 15.

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Previously
And then there were four: Joe Posnanski’s Sports on Earth joins the fray

Bay of Cigs: The Departed

Posted on March 14, 2013 by AD

Last baseball season, I kept a Detroit Tigers diary here called “The DET Offensive,” a nod to all of the offensive firepower Detroit added in the offseason, primarily in the form of Prince Fielder. This season, the return of Victor Martinez and the acquisition of Torii Hunter make the Tigers even more of a threat with the bat. Their biggest question headed into the year is at the closer position. Jose Valverde had a perfect season two years ago, but he dropped off significantly last year, and GM Dave Dombrowski sent him packing as a result. Phil Coke filled in at that position quite admirably during the playoffs, but for whatever reason, he isn’t being considered for it as we head into the 2013 season. Instead, management seems to be waffling between minor league sensation Bruce Rondon (intriguing) and Rick Porcello (GAHHHHH!). Continue reading →

The NHL is back. Here’s the best thing you can read about it.

Posted on January 11, 2013 by AD

The NHL freezeout finally thawed a few days ago, and like the slow, first drips of a spring melt, hockey writers’ earnest material is starting to trickle out. Breakdowns of the new CBA. Recommendations for how the league can bring back the fans. Wonderings about whether the league is better off as a lesser sports entity. Psychoanalyses of players who might not want to come back to the NHL. Discoveries of a beauty pageant winner’s role in the 2011 Vancouver hockey riots. Something about junior hockey championships. Remembrances of the Great One. I’ve read it all.

I’ve read it all, and it’s all fine, but none of it really satisfies. Just textual workouts over the same old themes. Nothing revelatory or even thought-provoking. None of it, at least, until the last hockey article I read, which might be the last stretch of hockey writing I read until I can get my hands on a commemorative magazine retrospective of my team’s Stanley Cup-winning run.

I don’t care if you call me biased. (Our phone lines are down anyway.) But if you dismiss this piece because I’ve declared my position on the author’s merits and you assume I prejudged the article and was going to like it and highlight it regardless, you’ll miss out on the best bit of post-most-recent-lockout hockey writing and the best swatch of sports writing in recent memory.

Norm Macdonald’s latest article is a short story in two parts– two short stories, really– with some light humor, of course, but more compellingly, real, emotional, suspenseful, rising action conveyed in absolutely compelling fashion with two lovely turns of phrase, one for each part.

I hope I haven’t over-hyped it for you the way that one girl over-hyped Shanghai Knights back in high school. Bring your expectations back to norm(al) levels and click here.

This is what is right with Grantland

Posted on January 7, 2013 by AD

Earlier, Brendan told you what’s wrong with Grantland, and I can’t sit here and say that the world needs 3,100 words on a made up basketball statistic modeled after the play of Kobe Bryant.

I’ve already outlined my thoughts about the site in general, and nothing has happened since then to make me want to walk away from my generally positive view of the site

No sooner had Brendan fired his shot across Grantland’s bow, though, than I saw a post from Grantland’s newest writer and my favorite comedian, Norm Macdonald, about how he made a New Year’s resolution to resume his crippling sports gambling habit. Norm Macdonald is what is right with Grantland, and Grantland has never been more right.

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Previously
This is what is wrong with Grantland

This is what is wrong with Grantland

Posted on January 7, 2013 by bpbrady

I was reading a recap of Michigan’s curb stomping of Northworstern last week and they mentioned what is called a “Kobe assist”. So I thought that term sounded funny and googled it and the first result was a Grantland article on the subject. More precisely a 3,100 word Grantland article on the subject. I got like a paragraph in and lost interest. No one needs a 3,100 word article on whatever a Kobe assist is. That is why ALDLAND will always be the best “land,” other than of course Super Mario Land.

Video: Inside Vanderbilt’s 17-13 win over Auburn

Posted on October 25, 2012 by AD

With the most notable exception being our podcasts, this site largely has been about reading and writing. As it has developed, I see its two main functions as a) distilling the ever-increasing amount of sports writing by highlighting just a few of the best pieces and b) providing an independent platform for the relating of personal sports opinions, experiences, and other reactions. Because our A/V crew unionized and promptly went on strike earlier this year, we almost exclusively perform the second function, the real creative one, through the written word. I think that usually is a good thing, and doing that type of writing is part of the fun of this site.

There are plenty of times, though, when video can be a better form of communication than text alone. (See, for example our Silent Film Series, currently on an extended intermission.) My sense is that video is still trying to find its place in an increasingly social and mobile digital world. My sense also is that Vanderbilt’s athletic department is doing as good a job as any program of using social media in general and video in particular to provide to multiple important audiences– alumni, current students, and prospective students– a real inside look into their program. One of the most successful examples came when a video of Coach James Franklin surprising a senior walk-on football player with a scholarship went moderately viral this summer.

The latest example is perhaps less momentous and less likely to spread far beyond the Vanderbilt community, but the extended highlight reel of the team’s win over Auburn this past Saturday offers a pretty compelling and intimate look at the gameday experience through the team’s eyes:

Tracking the best name in sportswriting

Posted on September 25, 2012 by AD

We‘re a pretty modest bunch, but it bears noting, on very infrequent occasion, that the subjects of our content sometimes read our content. When Jalen Rose, in response to a feature on him, tweeted us his approval, I included a copy of the tweet at the bottom of the post because it was relevant feedback and fit within the arc of the piece.

By contrast, some responses bear mentioning separately from the triggering content because, while substantively outside the arc of that content, they require a response, at minimum, in the form of an acknowledgment of receipt. (Sometimes, of course, they create their own conversation altogether.) Such was the case with a tweet we received Saturday morning. Keep reading…

And then there were four: Joe Posnanski’s Sports on Earth joins the fray

Posted on August 28, 2012 by AD

Yesterday marked the first day for a new online sports site, Sports on Earth. Helmed by Joe Posnanski, who left Sports Illustrated this spring after just three years there, the site’s “senior columnist” has assembled a supporting cast of twelve other writers, only two of whom, Deadspin founding editor Will Leitch and Patrick Hruby (who wrote the Dock Ellis feature I highlighted last week), are immediately recognizable to me. That appears to be farm more an indictment of me than Posnanski, though, as a review of the bio pages of the other ten writers discloses a diverse group of talented writers with online and offline experience in national and noted regional newspapers, blogs, and book-writing, representing a range of ages, geographic localities, sporting interests, and, thankfully if barely, genders. On first blush, this appears to be an accomplished and professional staff that, at least based on two days of operation, is up to the call to post regularly and on current topics. Keep reading…

The 2012 NBA finals: Resurrecting the Zombie Sonics allows attention-seeking bloggers to go all-in on LeBron James

Posted on June 12, 2012 by AD

The very elemental 2012 NBA finals tip off tonight between the Heat and Thunder, and while we don’t know which way Captain Planet’s going with this one, I did think everybody outside of South Beach was on board with cheering for Oklahoma City. Probably more accurately, I thought everybody was on board with rooting against LeBron James & co.

Now that King James is (again, admittedly) on the verge of winning his first NBA championship, the internet’s writing hands are rushing to join his camp. Whether they really are tired of harping on James for The Decision, the pep rally, and his promise of eight championships in Miami or they’re just following the old, adhere to one view for a long time and then publicly and suddenly change positions to get attention model, or maybe they see that James’ time is here and they want to be on the right side of history, everybody’s suddenly all-in on LeBron James.

How to accomplish this switch? Remind everybody saying OKC “did it the right way” that OKC did it the wrong way first, by ripping the franchise out of Seattle. Continue reading →

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