Chris Ballard, Kevin Ding, Jason Quick and Marc J. Spears have been named first-place winners in the 2015 PBWA Blumenthal Memorial Writing Contest, which honors the best work by members of the Professional Basketball Writers Association during the 2015 calendar year. Ballard, of Sports Illustrated, won the Features category for his 30th-anniversary retrospective of the …
Read MoreThe Rangers made the grandest of classy gestures on Friday. The team donated $5,000 to the GoFundMe.com fundraiser account raising money for Associated Press sports writer Ira Podell, a beloved mainstay on Garden press row until last spring when a brain tumor, surgery and subsequent stroke left him fighting for his life. “I was sitting with …
Read MoreWith news like this, there is crying in baseball. Tom Singer, among the first journalists hired at MLB.com, passed away suddenly on Monday at his residence in Scottsdale, Ariz. Tom was a world-class reporter and beloved colleague who had been with us for each of our first 15 seasons. He dedicated his life to the …
Read MoreBy Sports Capital Journalism Program Staff | @SportsCapJour Here’s how The Denver Post and The Charlotte Observer covered Super Bowl 50. The Chicago Tribune’s Shannon Ryan on Rob Gronkowski’s ‘shameful, infuriating, damaging’ lap dance on a live Fox Sports1 show. Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur on Roger Goodell and nihilism. Eric Nusbaum of Vice Sports …
Read MoreThe Super Bowl’s true spirit came to life Thursday night at a midway point — not San Francisco or Santa Clara, but a restaurant in Half Moon Bay, where an assemblage of royalty gathered for a glorious reunion. Football heroes come and go, but the photographers persevere. The guests of honor were Mickey Palmer and …
Read MoreBROWNSBURG, Ind. — Five days before a documentary alleged that quarterback Peyton Manning and other star athletes had used performance-enhancing drugs, two men hired by Manning’s lawyers visited the parents of the documentary’s key witness. Both men wore black overcoats and jeans and, according to a 911 call from the house that evening, one initially said …
Read MoreSAN FRANCISCO — It was the summer of 1959, and a young receiver on the Baltimore Colts had earned a special distinction. Johnny Unitas had taken a liking to him. “Probably because he was catching everything,” explains Hall of Famer Raymond Berry, one of the veteran receivers on that team. “John kind of liked those …
Read MoreHe was different from the start, the privileged son of an NFL quarterback who scoffed at the idea of shortcuts. At times it felt like he was engineered in some sort of football laboratory, this 6-5, 230-pound quarterbacking machine with that laser, rocket right arm and the mind of an offensive coordinator to match, constructed to make all …
Read MoreIt wasn’t until I was on the plane ride back to Indianapolis that I realized that the fondest memories I carried from the previous five days in Arizona had very little to do with the game that took place between Alabama and Clemson. The fact that the game was so competitive on Monday night was …
Read MoreSaying goodbye to the College Football Playoff National Championship was tougher than just leaving sunny and 65-degree Arizona for Indianapolis’ frigid 8-degree weather and having to scrape an inch and a half of snow and ice off my friend’s car at the airport. I had gotten into a groove, a routine of covering numerous events. …
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