Sports Field Guide

Humboldt State University's student-run newspaper, 'The Lumberjack,' investigated health risks related to artificial turf.

Games still dominate sports journalism, serving as a sort of skeleton to all other coverage.

But features are the heart and soul of sports coverage, allowing readers to dig deeper into social, economic, psychological and historical connections.

Of course, we usually don’t think about sports in these elevated terms. Instead too many sports departments focus more on bat-and-ball coverage, preferring to write game precedes, live-blogs and game stories (and, heck, even tweets).

Game coverage is clearly essential. But game coverage should not essentially be all a sports staff produces.

At the college media level, especially, features are as difficult to find as a left tackle. At this more basic level, sports reporters spend nearly all of their time covering games, forsaking stories that offer insights into athletes or pieces that illustrate how sports transcend the games themselves. In sports vernacular, staffs need to report on sports outside the lines.

Reading the Best American Sports Writing series is a start. But you should also read features produced by other college sports journalists.

Here are a few pieces produced by college staffs across the country.

• “This story already has a fairy tale ending: two friends kissing the polished wood of a NCAA championship trophy.”[Read rest of story in The Daily Tar Heel]
• “When Max Good was named the 25th head coach in Loyola Marymount University history, there wasn’t much hoopla. No press conference. No cheering fans. There wasn’t even so much as a photo op. Just keep on grinding. Keep on coaching. Keep on working.” [Read rest of the story in the Los Angeles Loyolan.]
• “On Halloween, as the then BCS No. 6-ranked Horned Frogs took on University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Versus cameramen panned to rows upon rows of unoccupied seats, exposing a huge flaw for TCU’s nationally prominent football team, now ranked fourth in the nation.” [Read rest of the story in the Daily Skiff]
• “In the week following an on-field collision that sent her slamming head-first into the ground, Gator soccer player Sarah Ordaz was in a cognitive fog. She couldn’t concentrate in class because of debilitating headaches and blurry vision, and her short-term memory became glitchy.” [Read rest of the story in the Golden Gate [X]Press.]
• “The used tires from which the crumb is made are known to contain heavy metals, carcinogens and intoxicants, such as benzene. Benzene has been shown to cause cancer in both sexes of multiple species of laboratory animals.” [Read rest of the story in The Lumberjack]
• For most Rice students, powderpuff is a unifying display of college dominance and pride, but for female varsity athletes, choosing to play is a decision that has consequences far beyond representing one’s college. [Read rest of story in the Rice Thresher.]

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