online sportswriters

So I'm back again with another opportunity to take up the precious few hours of your day with sports entertainment. I present, Bill Simmons' (better known as the Sports Guy on espn.com's Page 2) running diary of the NCAA tournament......

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/NCAA/dayone&sportCat=ncb

......Yes, I know, it's ridiculous to think that a human being typed out their random thoughts during a 12+ hour day of basketball, but it happened. And his readers, myself included, loved it. But I'd like to go a step beyond and look out how editorial-style sportswriting has evolved. I'm not talking about the game reports where the action is summarized and stats are given, I'm talking about some guy's opinion on some aspect of the sport's world. When I was a kid, it was a column or two in the local paper (Martin Fennelly owns, by the way), now there are an innumerable amount of "sportswriters" giving us their opinion across the internet. Sports Illustrated actually wrote an article about the phenomenon that online sportswriting has become a few years back (Mr.Simmons was the cover boy). And it's only getting bigger. Want proof? I just gave it to you. This link doesn't take you to a thought-out, researched, intelligent article. It takes you to a guy's random thoughts while he's watching the same games as you are. That's just absurd. And what's worse, I've sat down and read all of it. Imagine if you had a court-reporter style situation going on in your living room during a big football game that you and a few buddies were watching. This person would just sit there and type everything that each of you says, and then, after the game, they'd post it on the internet. Do you really think anyone in their right mind would ever read that? Of course not, but that's just what we're doing. Absurdity abound.

By the way, me and 4 buddies uncensored watching any game would be entertaining reading. You cannot tell me any differently.

Grant