Dirk?
For a brief period of time, my only job was to do editor and writer things about sports. Now? I think about EVERYTHING—and get a lot of headaches. But back in February, with the help of the dudes and dudettes at Deadspin, we launched Good Sports, the Good Men Project’s sports section. I spent back-to-back-to-back nights up until 5 AM (with the help of Henry Belanger and Cooper Fleishman), getting the section ready for launch. Those were the most exciting, delirious days of my barely-year-old career, and it was great. Drinking coffee at 4 AM is not as depressing as it should be.
The launch went better-than-swimmingly, a lot of people came to the site, and a lot of people got really angry about me calling Ron Artest a good guy. From there, we produced some great stuff, some batshit-crazy stuff, some bat-shittiest crazy stuff, and really, I think, somehow, managed to put together a nice little time capsule/snapshot of what it means to be a fan and to care about sports in 2011.
While I’m not full-time on sports any more and the content flow has slowed, there’s still some great stuff coming in. But, from back in February to today, I wanted to highlight some of the best work we’ve published in Good Sports. To everyone who contributed: you’re amazing and you made the section what it was. And if you didn’t make the list, you’re still really great! There’s a very good chance I overlooked your work because I was eating pizza while I made this list. Whenever people talk about the importance of multitasking, they’re not talking about pizza. It’st’s hard to type—and think—when your hands are covered in grease and you’re choking on crust.
So, by no means is this an exhaustive list of all the great sports stuff that’s been written for the site, but it’s a pretty good overview of everything we did. At least, I hope it is. Enjoy the 22 stories and then check out the archives. Thanks for a great year, people of the Internet.
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Nick Lehr, “We Make the A**holes”
Bethlehem Shoals, “Somewhere Between Winning and Losing”
Max Ornstein, “The Essential YouTube Sports Library: The Artistry of Michael Jordan”
David Matthews, “On #Abandonment, Be It of Yard or Blog”
Peter Schrager, “An Ode to Dr. Z”
Alan Siegel, “The Best Coach You’ve Never Heard Of”
“Talking to Talking Balls Week”
Aaron Gordon, “Rooting for Existence”
Kevin Lincoln, “The Best-Scoring Blank Canvas in the Big East”
Bethlehem Shoals, “Imagining a Locked-Out World”
Patrick Hayes, “Is the True Center Really Dead in the NBA?”
Tom Ley, “What Makes a Trade Hurt?”
Erik Malinowski, “Pride in Battle: An Attempt at English Soccer Fandom”
Tom Ley, “In Defense of the Dong Shot”
Patrick Smith, “Losing the Big Coin Flip”
Yago Colás, “How Sports Helped Me Realize I’m Not White”
(Bonus Non-Sports Story! Jon Bois, “Man Up: The CEO of Light Beer Takes Issue With Miller Lite”)
Elliot Turner, “The Big, Unnecessary Numbers Behind the Little King of Spain and Barcelona”
Noah Davis, “Co-Owners”
Spencer Lund, “The Buffalo Bills and the Depreciating Expectations of a Fan’s Masochism”
Andrew Sharp, “Modern Manhood, the NFL, and You”
—Photo AP