Lehigh Football Nation

The year was 2004.   For about a year I had been blogging about Lehigh football, thanks to the relatively new Blogger platform that allowed me to collect my thoughts (as soon as I could get to a computer) and post them instantly on the internet.  It allowed me to post my thoughts mere hours after attending an event, well before the newspaper rolled off the presses early the next morning!  It was what separated me from being just an ordinary Lehigh fan, and strangely got me started on this path to covering sports.   In 2004, I started to write longform stories for an outfit called The College Sporting News, starting with an epic Lehigh/Colgate battle won by the Mountain Hawks in the last minute of play.  On the basis of that piece, I was able, through my editor at the time, to get a press pass to watch the game from the press box. It would be my first time watching a game in the press box, and the first time I would meet Paul Reinhard. If you read The M...

One of the hottest topics in the sportswriting niche of the world has been the following online debate, kicked off by Bryan Curtis over at The Ringer .  The name of his piece was "The End of 'Stick to Sports'" , and it was a thinkpiece that truly got writing minds thinking.  "Sportswriters have been awakened by Donald Trump’s presidency," the byline read.  "Is that what their readers want?" It's had an interesting effect on the entire sportswriting community - a response veering from general agreement, to "we never really did stick to sports anyway" and "I will always stick to sports and let others talk about politics." What it isn't is cut and dry.  I think the problem with this so-called "debate" is that it attempts to make sportswriting into a binary choice - either you stick to sports or you have your sports explore other topics. Art is not a series of binary choices, and if you agree sportswriti...

I remember, growing up, having the covers of Sports Illustrated on the wall. Growing up outside of the county, Sports Illustrated for me was a vital link back home, to America.  It allowed me, a stranger in a country not my own, to stay connected to the sports I otherwise would have lost contact with. Back then, I pored over the weeks-old issues, reading accounts of games that were long in the past. I'd read pieces by Frank Deford and Rick Reilly -  my only link to an active sports culture back home.  (That and Armed Forces Radio on the short-wave made me feel American.) They kept me engaged, connected, in a world where American football was just that - American - and sports in general had a different emphasis. Those days feel very far away, coming up into this Christmas season - an era away. And my boyhood dreams of appearing one day in Sports Illustrated , too, still seem very far away - and different.