The Art of Sports Writing, Part IV
Make Long-Form Storytelling Great Again.
NOTE: This is the last in a four-part series of essays on the beauty and importance of sports writing. I got my start covering sports, and even though I’ve moved on, I care deeply about the medium and wish sports journalism would get back to what it once was. Read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.
In its heyday, Sports Illustrated was the pinnacle of sports reporting.
It was almost never about the on-field result (rather, it was never solely about the on-field result), but Sports Illustrated gave its writers and photographers the space necessary to get to the humanity behind it all. We saw our heroes in ways sports journalism had never allowed before. We saw that, for all their bravado and physical skill, for all their dedication and otherworldly focus, they were human.
Just like us.
At its best, ESPN The Magazine was the same way. I’m reminded of a lengthy cover feature Marty Smith penned on NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt, Jr., in 2008, not long after he left the company his late father had founded to drive for someone else. Little of the story was about racing itself; it was about Dale the man, not Dale the daredevil.
Dale’s story was a captivating one, a rising superstar who lost his larger-than-life father and was left to mourn that loss publicly, while also shouldering the burden of a fanbase that was mourning right along with him. Dale had to weather the expectations his father’s success placed on him, while figuring out how to be a professional athlete and a man in the public eye.
Trying to live up to a legacy, while also trying to forge his own path.
This dynamic, this focus away from the realm of competition, is what has allowed ESPN’s 30 For 30 series of documentaries to flourish, even as so much of the other stuff that network does flounders and decays. These documentaries, often crafted and directed by people without a background in sports, are sterling examples of storytelling and the embodiment of the fact that our athletes’ lives are what drive us to care about what they do with a ball, puck, steering wheel, or other athletic apparatus.
The Last Dance was less about the Chicago Bulls’ dynastic run of six NBA championships in eight years during the 1990s than it was about the tenacity and outright hubris of just about everyone involved—including Michael Jordan, who would take it personally if you sneezed too loud around him.
The athletic prowess of Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman are well-known almost to the point of boredom, as was the coaching genius of Phil Jackson. I was far more interested in the stories of how Jackson and the rest of the team handled Rodman’s…eccentricities.
Where else could one of your best employees just duck out for a week or two in the middle of the busiest time of year? To go to Las Vegas and pound back Miller Lites?
Yet Rodman did it. The team let Rodman do it. And everything was fine.
(Fine being a relative term.)
How Jordan formed a familial bond with two members of his security detail. How his father didn’t just pass; he was murdered, and how that hung over Jordan even as he briefly walked away from the game he dominated (basketball) to be a mere mortal at another (baseball).
How good are these 30 For 30 films? I don’t give two shits about professional wrestling, but the one featuring Ric Flair, Nature Boy, had me in tears. Storytelling is at its most powerful when it can get you emotionally invested in something you otherwise have no interest in.
The state of sports media today is where it is, in large part, because of the rise of social media and the fact that outlets like ESPN are willing to toss millions of dollars at personalities, often at the expense of experts.
The hot take, the viral soundbite, the shouting match, are the currency of the day (as Fox Sports’ Joy Taylor puts it in an ad for her TV show Speak, “The language of sports fans is hostility”).
How else does Skip Bayless still have a job in an industry where he’s universally loathed?
A lot of the same things that plague political reporting and overall news also infect what has become of sports media. The shouting match has replaced the respected column. Reporters are being forced to flock to places like Medium and Substack, because the likes of Tribune or Jeff Bezos don’t see the value in good reporting.
Even The Athletic, once a beacon for the kind of sports storytelling I’ve talked about this past month, is a shell of its former self. The New York Times has instead stripped the site for parts, removed much of the local flavor, and turned it into the newspaper’s pathetic excuse of a sports section.
(Non-union, of course.)
Even with all that, I hope there’s still a place for long-form storytelling, whether it’s through documentaries or a resurgence in magazines. Because when it’s at its best, sports writing is an art form. There’s beauty in those who are built like gods yet are as human and as flawed as the rest of us. It’s not about worshiping the athlete at the expense of the teacher or the firefighter; it’s about celebrating the physical and mental peak of human capacity and recognizing that excellence comes from the same vessel in which the rest of us spend our lives trapped.
Even today, sports have a hold over us few other pursuits can match. I want us to get back to a point where those who chronicle athletic greatness are as respected, revered, and appreciated.
Less shouting. More writing.