NFL Rumors: Browns to keep Mike Pettine, fire Ray Farmer
December 28, 2015Irving Cools Suns: Cavs-Suns, Behind the Box Score
December 29, 2015WFNY is proud of our assortment of writers and are especially grateful to be blessed with its daily readership. As part of our year-end festivities, WFNY has put together an Author Spotlight series to allow the readers to get to know the writers a bit better by pulling back the curtain on their thoughts and pulling in some of their favorite pieces from the year.
Here’s a quick look back at Will’s 2015 year and maybe find something you like that you missed the first time around. We hope you had a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, will have a Happy New Year, and we hope you continue blessing us by reading the site. Thank you.
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Will Gibson Quick Biography
[First off, this whole “best of” thing is terribly embarrassing. That is all.]
My first publication was a little paper book, maybe 10 or 15 pages long, called Football that I wrote in or around first grade. The whole thing was in the shape of a football helmet, though as I recall a key subplot was the protagonist staying home from school one day and beating all the teams in NBA Jam. Write what you know, they say.
I was taken by sports from a young age, as many are. My folks got me a subscription to Sports Illustrated for Kids, and when I was ready, the grown-up version. The back pages of both were among the first that I read routinely — Kids had cartoons documenting the travails of Buzz Beamer, a vaguely Calvinist character, while for years SI meant reading Rick Reilly, perhaps my first favorite sportswriter. I latched on to Bill Simmons and ESPN.com’s Page 2 circa 2002, drawn to the site’s innate silliness, and I ate it all up. Sports-as-fun was a powerful idea.
Before I started in this space, however, I was a shamefully inactive sportswriter — or writer, full stop. Myself and a couple friends started up a blog that can still be found online called the Sporting Itis (Tagline: “So much sports analysis you’ll need to take a nap!”). I wrote a single feature for a high school magazine about an alumnus who was (and is) spending life in prison. I can’t bear the thought of reading it now, but it was a mildly controversial piece; for some reason the school wasn’t so keen on the idea of highlighting a graduate behind bars. For a while, that was it in terms of my output. I didn’t write much in college, nor in the years that followed. It wasn’t until I came home from three years abroad1 and had some time to think (read: unemployment) that I thought I might want to give writing another shot.
An idea here, an email there, and suddenly I became part of the WFNY family. The in-house Kool-Aid is very good.
Anywho, are these the best five things I wrote this year — who’s to say? It’s like asking Michael Jackson what his best five songs are or Donald Trump to pick his five most absurd statements. Once you hit a certain level of greatness, it becomes difficult to suss out the best of the best. (If you’ve not taken note of the tongue in my cheek, I invite you to print your insults in blue or black ink on the back of a $20 bill and send them to WFNY headquarters.) I do enjoy and am proud of each of these for one reason or another. I hope you enjoy them as well.
If not, see above instructions re: $20 bill.
Five works that best describe Will Gibson from 2015
Most Deadline-y: Instant Classic (feat. Ky’s 57) — One perk of not writing for a proper newspaper, besides lack of fear of the industry itself perishing, is that we rarely have to write on deadline. We aim to be timely and topical, but the demands aren’t as intense as they are for print scribes. I did, however, feel tremendous pressure to churn out something of substance after Kyrie Irving scored an all-time Cavs-high 57 points against the mighty San Antonio Spurs, an intimidating task given the greatness of the game.
Most Prescient: Embrace the Absurdity — The gist here is that I try not to get upset by the Browns anymore. Instead I try to delight in their very Browns-ness, which is to say that I try to embrace that which makes them so delightfully unsuccessful. Had I known the Browns were going to be extra-absurd this year, even for them, I would have made this a weekly feature. Frankly, there’s still time.
Most Australian: Something About Maryborough: Learning About Delly’s Hometown — I’ve not traveled in a couple years now, which feels odd to say since traveling defined my existence for a spell. Researching Matthew Dellavedova’s hometown of Maryborough, Victoria, Australia — including its other sporting heroes, local areas of note, and the extent to which the city was stricken with Delly Fever — brought back that thrill of international exploration.
Most Musical: A Very Special NBA Draft Version of “Wonderwall” — A great many douchebags with three months’ of acoustic guitar under their belt have ruined this song for countless listeners, which to me indicated that it was ripe for re-imagination. The days leading up to the NBA draft were filled with the usual loose talk of rumors and sources, and it became too much to handle. I said maybe / Draft season has gone too crazy.
Most Begging: Don’t Give Up. Please — This one came to me out of nowhere, inspired by NBA writer Zach Lowe’s heartfelt musings about the New York Mets. His relationship with the team frayed over the years as life’s other distractions became more pressing, and he thus wasn’t able to fully enjoy the Mets winning the World Series. He urged fans to stand by their teams, and I tried to add a Cleveland twist. (I have had a hard time standing by my own words this season.)
- For the uninitiated, I lived in South Korea for three years and had the good fortune of visiting a handful of nearby nations while abroad. [↩]
2 Comments
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The Embrace the Absurdity notion has had a long shelf-life for me. It’s in line with my refusal (for many years now) to be crestfallen by any defeat of the local teams. First order of business to teach the kids as they learn about sports, “Thou Shalt Not …” Most recently, when Johnny Manziel threw that INT right after Nate Orchard’s pick, I burst out laughing. No anger, no fist slammed on the couch, just laughter. And I thought once again of the Embrace notion. Old Russian proverb: Where you are born is where you are most needed. No surprise, then, that the Embrace the Absurdity idea was born in Browns Town. Well done!