Browns to wear brown-on-orange Kardiac Kids look Sunday
September 10, 2015Lonnie Baseball saves defensive runs, Indians in 7-5 win over Tigers
September 11, 2015
Happy Friday, you guys. Man, that sure sounds a lot better than my typical “Happy Monday” nonsense. No wonder Craig likes doing the Friday edition of While We’re Waiting… It’s effectively a send-off into the weekend. And while I’m ever so grateful for Craig stepping in on Monday following the holiday weekend, I feel a bit as if I hijacked one of the best Fridays of the year—the Friday before Week 1 of a given NFL season.
For much of the last decade, the Friday before Week 1 is the last Friday in which our Cleveland Browns have a goose egg in the loss column. Hope is high, optimism reins supreme, and the team has managed to get through a week without doing anything dumb or worth criticizing. Oh, wait…
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Of course, with any mention of the NFL comes the New England Patriots and this incredibly well-reported and detailed account of Robert Kraft, the Patriots and Roger Goodell. While the Pats stomped on the Pittsburgh Steelers in what’s bound to be their second season of public retribution, it’s very tough to read that fantastic piece of sports journalism and not come away with even more of a disdain for the NFL as a league.
Our own Kyle touched on the topic here a few weeks back. The NFL is starting to become the enemy that is perpetually there due to its proximity to the thing you love. While I want to sit here and wax on about Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham interviewing 90-plus individuals for that piece—the nerd in me seeps out when pieces like this hit the web—it is the context and the content that is exponentially more important. Trust, or what’s left of it, is dissipating fast on whatever the NFL’s equivalent of Capitol Hill is. Goodell said this week on ESPN’s “Mike and Mike in the Morning,” that he’s given plenty of thought to no longer being the guy responsible for everything, showing that even he believes he’s in over his head.
But like with any position of power, considering and analyzing alternatives and then going forward with them are two vastly different things. It doesn’t help that the NFL owners are technically his boss and those 31 men (and all of Green Bay) are printing money each and every season.
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Deadspin turned 10 years old this week. Say what you wish about the content and the topics therein, but for any “blog” to last 10 years is a sheer testament to the quality and persistence of their work. Ten years is equivalent to 50 web years. There have been plenty of editorial changes over the years—from Leitch to Daulerio on down—but the site, like many others, has reinvented itself so many times over that it could eventually be a case study for web writing, perhaps in the year 2045.
Sure, Deadspin has long had a media company backing it from a financial perspective. And sure, this backing has led to them paying for scoops. But I maintain that the Manti Te’o story was one of the biggest of the last few years, and that entire story was reported out by the folks at Deadspin.
A few of the editors got togheter to discuss their favorite stories of the last 10 years. It’s well worth your time as a bit of a walk down memory lane. Hell, who knows if WFNY would even exist without it.
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If Deadspin is doing it, you know it’s worthwhile. Here’s this week’s edition of #ActualSportswriting:
“Beyond the Breach” by Wright Thompson (ESPN The Magazine): “With the air conditioner off for filming, the only noise in Steve Gleason’s home is the breathing machine that keeps him alive. That’s as good a place as any to start a Katrina story, with the wires and plugs and tubes strapped to the back of his wheelchair, a life-support apparatus doing the heavy lifting for one of the most fervently alive people the city has ever known.”1
“Serena’s difficult win over Venus revealed her need for the Grand Slam” by S.L. Price (Sports Illustrated): “For long stretches, the sisters produced some of the best tennis in the history of their rivalry. Early in the second set, it became clear that Venus’s forehand and serve had rounded into form, and Serena crumbled under the pelting.”2
“DeflateGate exposed Roger Goodell as unfit to serve his office” by Sally Jenkins (Washington Post): “Goodell pushed a bad case purely out of hubris and overconfidence, sure of finding a friendly federal judge to cooperate with his power-consolidating agenda. But the days of preferential treatment are over for the NFL — and for Goodell personally.”3
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And finally, have a spectacular weekend, you guys. If you haven’t checked out all of WFNY’s terrific work this week, I recommend going back to do so. Joe Gilbert’s bold predictions, Will Gibson’s column on friendship and The League and Mike Bode’s coverage of the Tribe are just some of the latest.
Have a great weekend, folks. Summer’s coming to an abrupt end; football season is officially here. Let’s enjoy it while we can. It won’t be long before we’re talking NFL Draft.4
- This story is a huge deal. Not only is it 30,000 words of incredible reporting and detail, it’s the first time ESPN The Magazine has given up its entire feature well (typically saved for three features) for one story. Thompson’s account of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and what New Orleans is like present day will win awards. It’s more than worth your time. [↩]
- I wanted to include a ‘game recap’ here this week because all to many of them fall into play-by-play traps and robotic stanzas of lede-stats-quote. Price shows what a recap should look like. [↩]
- And as I always try, I wanted to end this week’s edition with a column from one of the best in the game. It also helps that it all ties in to my open. Fancy that! [↩]
- I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the 14-year anniversary of September 11, 2001. I will speak for all of us at WFNY when I say that our thoughts are with anyone who lost a friend or family member on that fateful day. [↩]
5 Comments
I have a love-hate with Deadspin. On one hand, it delivers interesting stories behind the basic reported stories. In doing so, it also weeds out the knuckle dragging ESPN commenting readers.
On the other hand, they have gotten too self-righteous and politically pretentious for my taste. The way they shape their stories and groom their comments to fit their narratives (and image) is too inorganic to be considered a true sports blog. You end up having 5,000 dudes trying to out snark each other and sucking up to the author. The resulting lack of actual discourse on the topics, just like any cultivated echo chamber, is pretty dull and one note.
yeah the best way to do it is to stay out of the comments section.
Don’t forget the “F you” to Donald Trump on Twitter. Easily my favorite Deadspin moment of time. Not because I have anything against DT, because he’s as meaningful to my life as the ins and outs of the migratory patterns of the dark-eyed junco. More so because they saw a celebrity trying to latch on to their story, identified it as such, and ended it abruptly and perfectly.
Plus, “F you”s are always funny.
Take that Goodell and the rest of you haters Tom Brady just stuck it up yo blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank! Oh wait, maybe those footballs were deflated last night too.
I do that with TBL.