The Colby Echo

Issue date: 2/16/07 Section: Sports

Writing a weekly sports column is harder than you think. The problem isn't the amount of material out there: there are thousands upon thousands of topics that can be written about from a variety of different angles. Nor is it the audience: there are millions and millions of sports fans out there, and the spread of the internet has made it possible for anyone who can write intelligently to gain an audience through word of mouth and good commentary.

The biggest problem with writing a sports column is the fact that there is so much commentary already out there, almost every conceivable thing about major sports has been written about already. There are always interesting new developments each season, but even these
developments tend to follow familiar patterns: the stories about Peyton Manning "breaking through" bear an eerie resemblance to the stories about Bill Cowher from the year before (or the stories about the Red Sox or the White Sox "finally making it" after the 2004 and 2005 World Series).

There are obvious exceptions to this problem: if you're really into a sport, then you'll read just about anything written about it. The term BABIP (batting average on balls in play) probably means nothing to 97% kids at this school, but the 3% who are absolute hardcore baseball fans would love to read a column telling them that Curt Schilling's very high BABIP makes him a leading candidate to bounce back with a better season than what he had last year. There are nuances like this to explore in every sport, but unless you write for an intense fan site like Baseball Prospectus, InsideHoops, or Rotoworld the majority of the readers will have no idea what you're talking about (and have no desire to read the complex analysis you're offering).

So most sports columnists have to try to find a balance: a way to remain accessible to casual fans while keeping the interest of the fanatics, all the while trying to remain original and not spew out the same recycled material as everyone else. The best at doing this are individuals like Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly, ESPN's Bill Simmons, and Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser on Pardon the Interruption (admittedly a TV Show, but these guys both continue to write for newspapers and both spent most of their careers as columnists). These guys tend to keep things reasonably light-hearted: they are discussing sports, after all. They also do an excellent job talking about different sports and different topics, even throwing in the occasional (or in Simmons's case, required) pop culture reference every now and then.

So that's what I try and do with my column: keep things interesting, keep things varied, and try and not write about the same stuff as individuals who get paid to do this for a living. Hell, this might not be such a hard thing after all: I just wrote an entire column about how hard writing this column is.

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