Sports On Earth

weeba · Sep 5, 2012

Great idea. I'm glad they finally got their rss feed posted/working, as I'd completely forgotten to visit without rss.

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon · Sep 6, 2012

I also haven't heard much buzz about the site, but the content is terrific. I really haven't read a bad article yet. They do a nice job of keeping a variety of stories bubbling up, some light fare, some pretty meaty.

This Will Leitch story on the end of CPU v CPU simulations in Maddon is actually really great. Short and sweet and superfluous in the overall scheme of things, but poignant.

Edit: I also thought this Leigh Montville piece was a great take on the Paul Ryan marathon lie.

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon · Sep 14, 2012

Emma Span seems to be a good writer, but she keeps picking topics everyone has already tackled. Her last two pieces I read were on Bobby V and RA Dickey. Both were pretty nicely done, but I didn't really learn anything.

denilson3 · Sep 16, 2012

I was not aware of SOE as an entity before reading this thread, even though i did stumble upon that Will Leitch Madden article through twitter. The layout is kind of jarring and the body text font is faint/blurry on my computer, but the large pictures are nice. At minimum, some competition for Grantland on the high-end (read: not deadspin) can't be bad.

Phil Plantier · Sep 18, 2012

Leigh Montville's latest, which I'd call "almost good":

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/38590252/

I don't really get what happened to Montville. One of the icons of my childhood, he hasn't seemed to age like other sportswriters - it seems like most of the great reads of yesteryear get bitter and angry (Shaughnessy, Lupica, Mushnick, a cast of thousands), Ryan and Gammons are different, but they have become perceptibly more Ryan-like and Gammons-like. Montville - it's not like he lost his fastball, it's like he lost all his pitches. Strange.

John Marzano Olympic Hero · Sep 18, 2012

I think Montville is a better long-form writer, as in books.

If you haven't read his Ted Williams biography, drop what you're doing right now and order it off Amazon (use the SoSH landing page too, you ingrate!). That will turn your perception of him around, trust me.

I haven't read "Big Bam" or "Evel", but those two are on my to-read list.

Jordu · Sep 18, 2012

John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
I think Montville is a better long-form writer, as in books.

If you haven't read his Ted Williams biography, drop what you're doing right now and order it off Amazon (use the SoSH landing page too, you ingrate!). That will turn your perception of him around, trust me.

I haven't read "Big Bam" or "Evel", but those two are on my to-read list.

If you can find it, his short book from the early '90s, "Manute," is a gem. Wonderful book.

Phil Plantier · Sep 18, 2012

An amazing line from Posnanski today:

I believe there are many people in baseball -- I’m talking about MANY people, based on my conversations in and around the game -- who believe a walk is in many cases worse than an out.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/38601084/

Dollar · Sep 25, 2012

I have been thoroughly enjoying just about everything I've been reading on Sports on Earth the past week or so.

JoePos has an early take on the Seahawks-Packers ending.

I honestly cannot see how the NFL can let this stand. Then again, I have not been able to understand how the NFL has allowed this sporting travesty to go on for three weeks. When that last pass landed in Jennings’ arms, when Tate tried to take it away, when one referee signaled interception and another signaled touchdown, I looked up to Olympus and thanked whichever of the Greek Gods set that up. It was said that Zeus turned Pandareus to stone for stealing the golden dog that had once guarded Zeus. Sure, it would have been good to see Roger Goodell turned to stone. But this was good, too.

Will Leitch with an entertaining article about the NFL Red Zone channel.

And Mike Tanier is quickly becoming my favorite football writer, with his takes on Week 3 action and breaking down the changing dynamics of football strategy.

Orel Miraculous · Sep 25, 2012

Dollar said:
I have been thoroughly enjoying just about everything I've been reading on Sports on Earth the past week or so.

JoePos has an early take on the Seahawks-Packers ending.

Will Leitch with an entertaining article about the NFL Red Zone channel.

And Mike Tanier is quickly becoming my favorite football writer, with his takes on Week 3 action and breaking down the changing dynamics of football strategy.

I like it for the most part, but I have major quibble that is perfectly exemplified by the links in your post: it's basically football on earth. We're in the middle of an amazing pennant race and Poz is pretty much the only guy on the site who bothers to write about baseball.

JimD · Sep 25, 2012

Joe's writing every day about the pennant races - that's good enough for me.

LogansDad · Oct 4, 2012

This is easily one of my new favorite sites out there.

A great piece today on Brady and Manning:

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/39445110

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon · Oct 9, 2012

This is now an every-day visit for me, and I find it much better than Grantland, but I'm not sure if the outside world knows about it at all.

Alexa.com isn't the best, but it's got SOE as the 17,612th ranked site in the US. By comparison, Grantland is #856.

Maybe SOE is just so new it's not really registering with the tracking engines, or maybe this is still part of the soft roll out, but I'm kind of concerned they don't have the pageviews to support all the talent they've got on board. Could all go up in smoke....

JBill · Oct 9, 2012

I doubt they are comparing their pageviews with Grantland at this point. Grantland is an ESPN/Simmons backed project, Simmons alone brings a huge crowd that I doubt many other .com writers can match. And they have had more than a year to establish themselves. SOE is just starting out, I hope they have more realistic benchmarks of success than "do as well as Grantland" roughly a month in.

I have checked out SOE and I think it will be fine long term. Grantland has a lot of crap to be fair, like the majority of their pop culture output, but it consistently churns out high quality sports pieces better than what I find most elsewhere. And it has a few writers that I can depend on to be consistently excellent. I don't think SOE is there yet so it's not a daily visit for me, but I think you have to give it a long time to settle and find an audience. I'm just glad sites like this and Grantland are the recent trend in online sportswriting.

JimD · Oct 9, 2012

Good interview here with SOE general manager Steve Madden and editor Larry Burke.

Naturally, the Grantland comparison came up:

What’s your response when people say you want to be another Grantland?

Burke: It seems to come up a lot more outside these walls than inside. I can see why. Structurally, Grantland is a site about great writing existing in a larger entity: ESPN.com. In a simplistic way, you can say we’re the Grantland of USA Today.

I never thought of it that way. I don’t think anyone here did. I personally feel the writing at Grantland is terrific. I feel there are a number of sites and publications that are doing great work. We’re not trying to knock anyone out of the way. We’re trying to pull up a seat at the table. Everyone here felt that there was a place for something like this.

Grantland does more with pop culture.

Madden: There are a couple of differences. They have the latitude to write about pop culture. We decided one of the things that makes us different is that we focus just on sports. Second part of it is the newsiness. Writing off news is pretty important to us.

johnmd20 · Oct 9, 2012

JBill said:
I doubt they are comparing their pageviews with Grantland at this point. Grantland is an ESPN/Simmons backed project, Simmons alone brings a huge crowd that I doubt many other .com writers can match. And they have had more than a year to establish themselves. SOE is just starting out, I hope they have more realistic benchmarks of success than "do as well as Grantland" roughly a month in.

I have checked out SOE and I think it will be fine long term. Grantland has a lot of crap to be fair, like the majority of their pop culture output, but it consistently churns out high quality sports pieces better than what I find most elsewhere. And it has a few writers that I can depend on to be consistently excellent. I don't think SOE is there yet so it's not a daily visit for me, but I think you have to give it a long time to settle and find an audience. I'm just glad sites like this and Grantland are the recent trend in online sportswriting.

The best of Sports on Earth destroys the best on Grantland. Grantland has a lot more content, but it's challenging to separate the wheat from the chaff. And often not worth it. Sports on Earth, not only do the best writers write a lot, but it's very high quality stuff. To me, Sports on Earth is what I thought Grantland was going to be.

I still read both but I find myself looking forward to going to Sports on Earth and tolerating Grantland.

JBill · Oct 9, 2012

johnmd20 said:
The best of Sports on Earth destroys the best on Grantland. Grantland has a lot more content, but it's challenging to separate the wheat from the chaff. And often not worth it. Sports on Earth, not only do the best writers write a lot, but it's very high quality stuff. To me, Sports on Earth is what I thought Grantland was going to be.

I still read both but I find myself looking forward to going to Sports on Earth and tolerating Grantland.

Maybe I just haven't looked at SOE enough. But when I think of "best of" Grantland, I think of their oral histories, their athlete profiles, and their longform pieces on niche or non-mainstream/non-American sports, like chess or wrestling or euro soccer articles. Content that looks like its taken some time to develop, maybe. SOE, like Grantland, has a lot of stories that play off what is popular in the current news cycle, a lot of opinion pieces, and that's fine, that can be excellent when the writer is excellent. But I hope it mixes in some different stuff, whether in form or content.

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon · Oct 9, 2012

JimD said:
Good interview here with SOE general manager Steve Madden and editor Larry Burke.

Naturally, the Grantland comparison came up:

Great find. 7.5 minutes is excellent. That will make up for a lack of pure page views with smart advertisers. I wasn't saying they should be on par with Grantland numbers-wise, but that's a wide gap and they're selling to basically the same demo.

It's not like USA Today and MLB are tiny brands. I'm just hoping the keep up their early momentum.

johnmd20 · Oct 10, 2012

JBill said:
Maybe I just haven't looked at SOE enough. But when I think of "best of" Grantland, I think of their oral histories, their athlete profiles, and their longform pieces on niche or non-mainstream/non-American sports, like chess or wrestling or euro soccer articles. Content that looks like its taken some time to develop, maybe. SOE, like Grantland, has a lot of stories that play off what is popular in the current news cycle, a lot of opinion pieces, and that's fine, that can be excellent when the writer is excellent. But I hope it mixes in some different stuff, whether in form or content.

You make a good point but it is worth mentioning Grantland has had over a year to build up a "best of" list. Sports on Earth has had weeks. There is certainly room on the internet for both and they should both be successful. But, god damn, does Grantland need an editor and a Web designer.

shlincoln · Oct 10, 2012

On mobile I like the Grantland site more than SoE, which slaps that ad in the middle of all their pieces, and overall feels very slow, maybe because of Disqus?

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon · Oct 12, 2012

It gets just a little bit too cute at times, but Chuck Culpepper's piece on Sean Payton coaching his 12-year-old's football team while serving his year-long ban is pretty cool. Payton's not giving interviews about it, so the way Culpepper had to go about building the story required a lot of detail and scene-setting, which he did a nice job with. And the quotes from the other coaches are great. It really makes you feel the thrill these guys have in coaching with and against him.

OzSox · Oct 17, 2012

I have only been reading Posnanski at SoE as I'm not very familiar with the other writers, but I see Gwen Knapp's by-line regularly so today I clicked on her story on David Freese. Unfortunately it's a short and rather pointless article that basically says David Freese was really good in the postseason last year and is good again so far this year, and that he doesn't have an ego about it, and that Carlos Beltran is also really good in the postseason. There's no new information at all and no additional insight from her or from anyone else. There's one quote from Mike Matheny but it's unclear if he is even talking about Freese and/or Beltran and not just Cardinals hitters in general. It's as though she didn't realize until 30 minutes before deadline that Freese and Beltran homering in Game 1 to add to their playoff legends was the main story out of the game, and then quickly threw something together with a couple of quotes and one anecdote that adds nothing to the story. It just seems like hardly any thought went into it at all.

Then I read Posnanski's story on Beltran and it's fabulous, as usual, and it made the Freese piece look even more pedestrian, even though we've all read Posnanski write about Beltran many times before.

DeJesus Built My Hotrod · Oct 17, 2012

OzSox said:
Then I read Posnanski's story on Beltran and it's fabulous, as usual, and it made the Freese piece look even more pedestrian, even though we've all read Posnanski write about Beltran many times before.

I just read this and, as usual, great.

The second image I have of Beltran during that time was watching him in the clubhouse play with a remote-control car. This was before a game, and the car would capture other players’ attention for a couple of minutes here and there, you know how it is with toys and adults. But Beltran's interest in the car never wavered. You know that line, "He was like a kid." Well, Beltran was like a kid. He played with that car for an hour or more, just guiding it around the clubhouse, around stools and couches, and what struck me about that scene was how blissfully happy he seemed. He didn't look happy like that very often.

Spacemans Bong · Oct 18, 2012

OzSox said:
I have only been reading Posnanski at SoE as I'm not very familiar with the other writers, but I see Gwen Knapp's by-line regularly so today I clicked on her story on David Freese. Unfortunately it's a short and rather pointless article that basically says David Freese was really good in the postseason last year and is good again so far this year, and that he doesn't have an ego about it, and that Carlos Beltran is also really good in the postseason. There's no new information at all and no additional insight from her or from anyone else. There's one quote from Mike Matheny but it's unclear if he is even talking about Freese and/or Beltran and not just Cardinals hitters in general. It's as though she didn't realize until 30 minutes before deadline that Freese and Beltran homering in Game 1 to add to their playoff legends was the main story out of the game, and then quickly threw something together with a couple of quotes and one anecdote that adds nothing to the story. It just seems like hardly any thought went into it at all.

Then I read Posnanski's story on Beltran and it's fabulous, as usual, and it made the Freese piece look even more pedestrian, even though we've all read Posnanski write about Beltran many times before.

Gwen Knapp wrote for the SF Chronicle for a long time and I've never found her to be particularly interesting. She is the epitome of the average sports columnist.

John Marzano Olympic Hero · Oct 23, 2012

I put this in the Posnanski thread, but it really belongs here:

I know that Gary Sheffield is about as popular as rug burn around these parts, but Sports on Earth has a fascinating article on him.

It's really well written, Sheffield is candid as hell and there's a really nice flow to the piece. It might be one of the best, most interesting things I've read online in the last few months.

LogansDad · Oct 23, 2012

JMOH,

I just read that Sheffield article and came here to post the same thing. A really well crafted piece, and while Sheffield still comes off as a kind of a dick at times, he was also very candid for it, and is a much brighter guy than I honestly expected him to be. I think what makes it interesting is that with his deferred contract he is still getting paid, so he doesn't care whether he has a job or not, and he is willing to say things that a lot of other recently retired MLB'ers (or any athlete, for that matter) may bite their tongue on.

I didn't know about the Boras/LAD guaranteed contract stuff, and i can understand how that could disenchant a guy on agents and front offices.

When I opened it, and saw how long it was, I figured there was no way I got through that many words about Sheffield, but I couldn't stop reading.

Lose Remerswaal · Oct 23, 2012

Sheff was a good supporter of the Negro League Baseball Museum, which makes him a good guy in my eye.

cmac24 · Oct 24, 2012

The Sheffield article seemed way too one-sided. How could the writer not even ask about Sheffield's steroid use?

http://www.baseballssteroidera.com/bse-list-steroid-hgh-users-baseball.html

Gary Sheffield December 2003

Admitted Using: Steroids (The Clear, The Cream, Andriol)
The Story: Sheffield testified before the BALCO grand jury that he had used the undetectable BALCO steroids and some 'red beans' which lawyers identified as Andriol. Sheffield said that the drugs were obtained directly from Bonds noting that Bonds' trainer, Greg Anderson, was never involved. Sheffield's confidential testimony was leaked to the San Fransisco Chronicle; excerpts were published in a Dec. 3, 2004 article entitled What Bonds told BALCO grand jury.

The Social Chair · Oct 30, 2012

Good KG profile.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/40114908/

“You only get so many chances to win the whole thing,” he said. “You have to do it when you can. We came so close, three years ago against L.A. Seventh game. Last year against Miami, seventh game … pissed is a good word. Yeah, I was pissed. Miami goes against Oklahoma City after us and just blows them out. Then Kevin Durant goes and works out with LeBron. What’s that about? Yeah, pissed.”

John Marzano Olympic Hero · Oct 30, 2012

That's probably the best Montville piece he's done for the site. I really enjoyed it.

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon · Oct 30, 2012

Agreed. Institutional memory and knowledge seems to be something SoE is particularly strong on. The story about Garnett and his boys busting into the agent's room at 2 a.m. is classic. I've never heard that before.

JimD · Nov 27, 2012

Mike Tanier is just killing it with his NFL pieces - he's my first read every Monday morning.

John Marzano Olympic Hero · Nov 27, 2012

Check out this piece Joe did on Frank White. It's really well done.

dynomite · Nov 27, 2012

John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
Check out this piece Joe did on Frank White. It's really well done.

There are few better things in sports journalism than Pos on the Royals. It's a double-edged sword: there's the joy of reading yet another triumph on one hand, and the pain of reading most other sports journalism by contrast.

johnmd20 · Nov 28, 2012

Dehere said:
And yet.....I ran into a guy this weekend who has a fairly high-level job at Gannett, high enough to be familiar with SOE's financials, and he says the whole thing is going "terribly". That they either have no idea what they're trying to be or (more believable to me) they do but the audience for that just isn't very big.

It's a new endeavor, so I think they need to give it time. And it's not publicized anywhere, despite being an awesome site. But it takes some time for an audience to grow. Hopefully they give it time, because it really is a great read every single day.

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon · Nov 28, 2012

With so many people using Facebook and Twitter as their de facto home pages nowadays, pageviews are rushing toward stuff that's likely to be shared - the LOL-celebrity-did-what? and car wrecks of the world. Hence, ESPN's love affair with the gotcha story and "can you believe so-and-so said that!?!?" and Tim Tebow. They know where their bread is buttered. Plus, they've got the huge market position to start with.

It's harder and harder for serious stories to attract pageviews because the only people who read those kinds of stories are those who seek them out and pageview growth is much slower and steadier. Generally, sites like SOE need to derive a lot of their pageviews and revenue from email newsletters. If I were them, I'd have a newlsetter sign-up at the top of the page and put a "best-of" out bi-weekly. Busy people just forget to seek out stories on specific sites, and unless they're into RSS or Twitter, they just don't realize that there's good stuff available.

Even if you are into Twitter, you can only monitor it so much and good stuff shoots right through the feed all the time.

I know email seems antiquated sometimes in this day and age, but it's still an effective way to get a population to visit your site if you content is compelling and they don't see the email as a nuisance.

JimD · Nov 28, 2012

Dehere said:
And yet.....I ran into a guy this weekend who has a fairly high-level job at Gannett, high enough to be familiar with SOE's financials, and he says the whole thing is going "terribly". That they either have no idea what they're trying to be or (more believable to me) they do but the audience for that just isn't very big.

In the big scheme of things, I wonder how expensive SOE is to produce? They have a relatively small stable of writers but no mega 'stars' who would command outsized contracts to stay. The main writers no doubt do some traveling to cover major events but otherwise they avoid incurring the expense of sending personnel to games every day or week. It seems well situated to be the type of project that Gannett and MLB can bring along and allow to build its audience.

Dollar · Dec 11, 2012

Am I the only one who hates the bar that comes up on the bottom of the browser when reading that has links to two other articles? I mean, I know how to navigate to another article if I'm not enjoying the one I'm reading, you don't need to take up 25% of my screen space for a navigation bar. Keep that shit at the bottom of the page, don't make it come up in the middle of the article.

johnmd20 · Dec 12, 2012

Dollar said:
Am I the only one who hates the bar that comes up on the bottom of the browser when reading that has links to two other articles? I mean, I know how to navigate to another article if I'm not enjoying the one I'm reading, you don't need to take up 25% of my screen space for a navigation bar. Keep that shit at the bottom of the page, don't make it come up in the middle of the article.

It doesn't bother me that much but I can see it being annoying. If you want annoying web design, go to Grantland.

epraz · Dec 12, 2012

johnmd20 said:
It doesn't bother me that much but I can see it being annoying. If you want annoying web design, go to Grantland.

I don't think he does want annoying web design.
What's bad about Grantland?

johnmd20 · Dec 12, 2012

epraz said:
I don't think he does want annoying web design.

What's bad about Grantland?

Grantland's layout is confusing and hard to navigate and find the best stuff. Sports on Earth is simple, one column after another.

Rudi Fingers · Dec 12, 2012

Dehere said:
Patrick Hruby's outraged, incredibly well-researched piece today on what he calls "sports welfare" is not only the best thing I've ever read on SOE, it's the best piece of sports journalism I've seen anywhere this year.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/40595178/

Just came here to post this link - great stuff, though I wouldn't go so far to say that it's the "article of the year"

Jordu · Dec 12, 2012

Dehere said:
Patrick Hruby's outraged, incredibly well-researched piece today on what he calls "sports welfare" is not only the best thing I've ever read on SOE, it's the best piece of sports journalism I've seen anywhere this year.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/40595178/

Great reporting there, but I'm a little surprised he left out the 50 percent tax deduction for tickets and season tickets to sporting events.

timlinin8th · Dec 13, 2012

Dehere said:
Patrick Hruby's outraged, incredibly well-researched piece today on what he calls "sports welfare" is not only the best thing I've ever read on SOE, it's the best piece of sports journalism I've seen anywhere this year.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/40595178/

I really enjoyed Will Leitch's article on the intertwining of sports business and tv:
http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/40627104/
Not that its earth shattering information but seeing some hard numbers is pretty eye-opening. The thing I appreciated a lot about the article was that its main inspiration came from another author's article on the site. That kind of collaboration has been helping SOE really knock it out of the park for me lately.

johnmd20 · Dec 26, 2012

No rest for the weary, Sports on Earth finishes an excellent freshman campaign with tremendous coverage over the past 4 days, while everyone else was asleep.

Here is a sentence from Mike Tanier about the Pats. I love the way he words the end of the sentence. Here is the whole column.

When struggling against the Jaguars, Brady called an audible at the goal line, changed the Patriots’ formation around, and delivered a tiny pass that was like another raindrop in the monsoon of his Hall of Fame career.

JimD · Jan 1, 2013

I know I'm sounding like a broken record here, but Mike Tanier's work on SoE is simply awesome.

From yesterday's column on Black Monday in the NFL:

Mike Tannenbaum, Jets (GM)

In the weeks to come, tens of thousands of words will be written on the Jets’ front office skullduggery. Real Jets insiders will serve up tons of juicy gossip, and I will be as eager to read it as you. Here’s one thought from an outside observer: You can learn a lot about the NFL by watching your kids play Minecraft.

Minecraft is a video game in which players build structures and mine resources to stave off zombie/monster attacks. On the surface, it is a “kill the zombie” game, but the core gameplay really focuses on managing resources and creating a sustainable “world” that can stand up to the nightly onslaughts of invaders. Watch gamers in action, and they spend more time caring for livestock and managing a variety of commodities than fighting.

The NFL is a lot like Minecraft. The real work is done by scouts, assistant coaches, management and trainers, who identify talent (not just in the first round of the draft, but on the waiver wire on Tuesdays in mid-season), develop it, maintain and sustain it, and make sure that both immediate and long-range needs are met. Fans love coaches who shout “just win” and get the guys fired up on game day; the best coaches/executives do a little of that and lots and lots of tape study and delegation/coordination work to keep everyone on the same page.

The Jets are a team that really needs to sheer some sheep. All Woody Johnson and Rex Ryan want to do is kill creepers.

Jordu · Jan 12, 2013

Another thing that makes me grateful for Sports On Earth is that it's brought the estimable (and as nice a guy as you'll meet) Leigh Montville back to what he does best: writing columns.

The start to today's Montville effort:

FOXBOROUGH, Ma. -- The voice is answering-machine perfect. There is no modulation, no emphasis on any particular syllable. The words sound as though they have been sand-blasted to the same size, passed through a filter at the end of some long plastic tunnel, delivered now on a conveyor belt of bland conversation. All emotion has been removed. If there were a color attached to these words the color would be gray. No doubt about that.

Full column: http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/40918480/

To think Shaughnessy is his successor. Like replacing Mo Vaughn's roster spot with Jose Offerman.

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