This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,829) on Friday, January 20, 2023. As promised in last week’s newsletter, I continue to present websites that attempt to avoid, as best they can, the “bad news bias” of many of the mainstream media. This week’s entry is YES! magazine. YES! emphasizes what it • Read More »
Archives: sports
Bat Masterson: gun-slinger turned sports reporter
January 17, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: reporters, reporting, sports, writers, writing.The world today knows him as one of the Old West’s most famous gunslingers, fearless associate of the famous lawman, Wyatt Earp. But in 1921, the world knew Bat Masterson as a world-class sports writer for the New York Morning Telegraph and one of the foremost experts on the second most popular sport of the • Read More »
The ancient and ever controversial game of football (soccer)
December 2, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: history, sports.Soccer, or what most of the world outside of America calls “football,” is once again in the headlines. It’s not just that the World Cup, the globe’s biggest sporting event, is underway. The headlines involve the politics of the sport, this year revolving around where it is being played. Such controversies are nothing new. In • Read More »
America’s first female police officer, Dan Jenkins, lots of emails, and a modest proposal: newsletter, March 22, 2019
March 25, 2019 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, history, journalism, journalists, sports, writers, writing.This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,866) on Friday, March 22, 2019. The tractor came out of the barn and had a pretty good workout this week. We had a string of dry days that allowed me — finally! — to get into the garden with some much-needed sub-soiling and • Read More »
Dan Jenkins, 1928-2019, RIP
March 19, 2019 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalists, sports, writers, writing.Back in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, if you had a sacred cow — particularly if it had to do with sports or anything connected — Dan Jenkins would come along and push it over. And make you laugh while he was doing it. Jenkins was one of an elite group of sportswriters who worked • Read More »
The lost eloquence of the sports page
February 20, 2018 | By Jim Stovall | 1 Comment | Filed in: journalism, sports.The “Four Horsemen” became part of the legend of Notre Dame football, and publicists at the University placed the four footballers on four horses for a famous photograph. And that photograph was turned into a postage stamp more than 50 years later.
Artist Daniel Moore announces latest national championship painting
February 7, 2018 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: First Amendment, sports.Moore discovered a gold mine for his artwork in 1979 when he produced “The Goal Line Stand,” a photo-realistic oil painting of the moments when Alabama prevented Penn State from scoring in the Sugar Bowl.
College football heads for its zenith
January 1, 2018 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: sports.Update on Tuesday, Jan. 2: Congratulations to all four teams (Oklahoma, Clemson, Georgia and Alabama) who participated in the College Football Playoff — and especially to the winners of last night’s games, Georgia and Alabama. The championship game next Monday should be a fun one for all fans, especially the Tiders and the Dawgs.
Many of us on the academic side of campus (including me) spent a lot of time grousing about the over-emphasis on football and the enormous salaries that many big-time football coaches make compared to, say, the governor of a state. The grousing is not misplaced, but we forget, ignore, or are unaware of the deep historical roots that the game of football has on the nation’s campuses. Some higher ed historians argue that that many colleges in the late 19th and early 20th century could not have survived if football had not been there to attract students and create a brand to which alumni and others, particularly doners, could be loyal.