What is Sports Writing?

There are many things in life that are beautiful. Yosemite National Park? Beautiful. Witnessing the birth of your child? Not physically beautiful by any means but the idea of a new life being brought into the world, beautiful. A Tiger Woods stinger? Beautiful.

Tiger Woods Stinger at the 2006 Open Championship at Hoylake

I mean look at this madness.

Most people will look at this picture of Tiger and know nothing about it. Sure, you can go to pgatour.com and see what hole this was on, and what club he hit. But you won’t find any background information. Why did he hit the stinger? what was his round like until this shot? How did it make people feel? (I can guarantee it made most people feel that Tiger is a psycho because nobody in the world can do this as well as he does). A sports writer will produce all of that information, into a story using their own unique voice to make the sport more, well, beautiful.

I’ve played golf my entire life. Currently, I am a 2 handicap, and I hold multiple school records from my high school golf team (subtle flex I know). If I wanted to write a story about Tiger Woods coming down the stretch to win a tournament, I could write about the typical psyche of a golfer needing to birdie the last two holes to force a playoff (notice the use of the word “typical” because again, Tiger is psycho), because I have experienced a similar feeling. I can write a story that can turn a simple round of golf, into a Christopher Nolan style movie script (nobody can live up to the cinema genius that is Nolan, but one can dream) by documenting background and insights that a normal sports report would leave out.

One company that does sports writing very well, that is sometimes controversial, but nonetheless social media giant that is Barstool Sports.

Barstool does well because they don’t have to worry about censoring, so they can truly express how a specific sporting event really made them feel. Although Barstool is not the perfect example of perfect sports writing, they have effectively changed the way sports can be consumed by the everyday fan.

The creation of the Barstool Sports website, which includes blogs, podcasts, videos, and more. With millions of followers on social media, and the creation of the new Barstool Sportsbook, Barstool has completely changed the way sports media is presented. It is hard to give all the credit to Barstool, but before they blew up, there were very few sports blogs that were completely unhinged to provide a more informal, and quite frankly, more entertaining medium to follow and read about your favorite sports. Whether “Old Man Media” likes it or not, sports writing is changing, and Barstool is starting to run away from the competition.

Something will have to change incredibly fast to save Barstool-style writing from taking over sports media.

Or maybe it’s too late.

Viva.

Be on the lookout for more content, including an interview with a very special guest that you will not want to miss.