We’re a loyal mob here at the Almanac but the appetite for sports news and articles runs wide.
Here are some others on my “favs”:-
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Race fields. RISA get them first. Once I know they are up, I can then drift to racing.com or a corporate site.
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http://racingbitch.wordpress.com/ can sometimes be original, though occasionally OTT
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Cricket. Have always found CA awkward. cricbuzz seems OK.
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Soccer. Here’s a recent find… http://www.camporetro.com/read/
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Articles. Grantland is hardly a secret. I’m not a USA sportsfan but this site demands visits for the quality features.
Obviously the list is long and must these days include apps. But with footy over(ish) our interests diversify as do the sources – surely Robbo isn’t enough!?
Yes to Grantland… a site that has both Brian Phillips, Zach Lowe and Charles P. Pierce on its books.
Keeping my US sporting loyalties in the one city (Celtics, Red Sox, Pats), also makes the Boston Globe a handy resource during the summer.
KP’s book will be an important source of cricket info for starters this summer
I’M a big NFL fan, Crio, altho my team the Cleveland Browns hasn’t set many (any) benchmarks in recent seasons.
We haven’t got Pay TV in our house but Melb. family households do. Is it true only 25% or thereabouts of Aussie households have embraced Pay TV.
From a quick flick through the channels there’s a heap of shite there. And anyway we get 15-16 free-to-air channels already in our own house. There’s enuf free shite right there!
I’m also into Major League Baseball Can’t believe Test crik followers have the hide to criticise baseball as “too slow”.
As a NY Yankees fan owning some of their sports gear hate Boston.
On Robbo — he used to work for me. what’s with the unofficial Hird spokesman posture he’s adopted?
The Stacks part of Deadspin is my favourite, and I reckon a lot of over 50’s in Australia would love it. Its basically an archive of great American sports journalism. So if you like languid pieces on Ali, Mantle, Sugar Ray, Northern Dancer etc etc – its wonderful. Most pieces are 20+ years ago but wonderful characters, events and writing for readers who had time to digest and reflect in a less pressured age.
The best thing is that it is also a writing site – so there are often features like the recent one on Elmore Leonard or great screenwriters etc. Lots to chew on.
The core Deadspin site is too much social media trivia for me. The features on Grantland are great as Crio and the Elbow have said, and I am sure there day to day sports reporting is great – but I don’t have any attachments prior to play offs, World Series etc.
One worth checking out is http://www.theallrounder.co a crowd-funded offshoot of New Books in Sport that has featured Harmsy, Lord Bogan and the Almanac on occasions (good judges). I have only recently started looking at the Allrounder and there is lots of sports nerd stuff that goes over my head (eg soccer analytics). They have a series on explaining sports to newcomers – this week is an Aussie academic and Hawks tragic using Lethal Leigh to explain Aussie Rules to newcomers. A bit stilted but she was trying to talk to newbies.
They have a weekly Worthy Reads section which trawls good web sports writing highlights like Litza and I sporadically do. Some is nerdy but this piece was brilliant about why we love teams that are dogs (sorry Crio, Cowshed and Neil). Very insightful and we can all see the parallels in our own experience:
http://theclassical.org/articles/the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-loser
I did once go to si.com (Sports Illustrated) for my daily fix of US sports news.
But with a revamp of the site format some months back, they have done a brilliant job in ruining what once was an easy-to-navigate site.