Mailbag! Pablo Torre, Stephen A, best ledes

It’s our first-ever mailbag at Sports Media Guy. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with questions. I have the best, smartest readers around. 

Keep sending your questions in, either by comments here or by email for a future mailbag. As the famous man used to say, these are actual questions from actual readers: 

From old friend

Chris Edwards

:

I am so curious about your take on the Pablo/Bill Simmons pod. Based on what you wrote in Torre, and what Simmons did and didn’t do in talking with, rebutting and kind of tearing back Pablo’s reporting without any background.  The through line of Torre-Simmons-Kornheiser and what that means about journalism’s evolution (including what Simmons himself is or isn’t as a “journalist” in 2025 …) Stuff I gotta hear from my favorite journalism educator.

This is the note that inspired this whole mailbag thing to begin with. Chris is referring to the Pablo Torre/Bill Simmons “feud” from a few weeks back over the Bill Belichick story. And look, after I wrote that love poem about the initial Pablo Torre Finds Out episode about this story, I’m obviously going to be team Pablo on this one (although to be honest, I didn’t enjoy his follow up episode nearly as much as the first one). And it always felt to me like Simmons was reacting much more as a Patriots fan upset that his team’s greatest coach’s name was being dragged than as any kind of journalist. Which is fine - Simmons has always been more fan than journalist. That was one of his biggest impacts on sportswriting in the 2000s – opening the door to the fact that you could still be a sports fan and write about sports. But it was also pretty clear that Simmons hadn’t listened to the full episodes Torre had done, which made this whole thing pretty silly. 

The Kornheiser connection they have is an interesting one, because there is a through line from Kornheiser (a first ballot hall of fame columnist who was irreverent and funny in his writing and who became one of sports journalists first true multimedia stars) to Simmons (who was irreverent and funny in his early writing and became one of sports writings’ first stars in digital age) to Torre, who seems like an interesting combination of traditional journalistic chops, an irreverent attitude (take stupid stuff very seriously) and is becoming a new multimedia star. 

Seamus Lyman, one of my former students from my early days at SUNY Oswego, writes in: 

I know you've written about the relationship between sports betting and sports journalism, even a few weeks ago. Reading sports journalism and avoiding a gambling tie-in seems unavoidable lately. I know it's out there, but not the easiest to always find. Do you think there's an audience with a hunger for sports journalism totally absent of gambling-related content? I often wonder if someone could compete with the likes of ESPN by focusing on the storytelling (sure hot takes too), but without worrying about betting lines. 

It’s a fantastic question, and kind of a two-parter. 

Is there an audience for sports journalism without any gambling-related content? Absolutely. Given what I hear and read on social media and from friends and colleagues, a fair number of folks are overwhelmed by and just sick of gambling ads/content. One thing that has surprised me in this space is not the growth or popularity of legal and accessible gambling but the aggressiveness with which it has been put in front of all sports fans. 

OK, second part of the answer. Of course, it’s impossible to have sports journalism that is totally absent of gambling-related content, because the language of sports journalism is deeply intertwined with gambling. The second someone refers to a team being favored or discusses an NFL team’s injury report, you’re in gambling-related content. But I know what you really mean when you talk about gambling content. And I don’t think it’s possible to compete with ESPN on this grounds, because ESPN is simply too big. It dominates sports media in a way that no other outlet does in any other genre. There could be a gambling-free zone in sports journalism, but I wouldn’t say it is competing with ESPN. Competing makes me think it’s trying to “beat” ESPN and I just don’t think that’s happening. 

---

Matthews

asks a long one but a good one: 

When the topic of the greatest sports lede ever written is raised, isn't it generally  accepted that Grantland Rice owns the top spot when he wrote this over 100 years ago?: "Outlined against a blue, gray October sky The Four Horseman rode again.  In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death.  These are only aliases.  Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller,Crowley and layden,"

Perhaps it may not be as well known, but John Lardner wrote this lede in 1954 which I think many consider equally as good, if not better than Rice's:  "Stanley Ketchel was twenty-four years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast."

Dan Jenkins at Sports Illustrated had a reputation there for writing the magazine's best lede's.  Here's an example taken from his revered 1971 recap of Nebraska vs. Oklahoma:  "In the land of the pickup truck and cream gravy for breakfast, down where the wind can blow through the walls of a diner and into the lyrics of a country song on a jukebox---down there in dirt-kicking Big Eight territory---they played a football game on Thanksgiving Day that was mainly for the quarterbacks on the field and for self-styled gridiron intellectuals everywhere.  The spectacle itself was for everybody else, of course, for all those who have been waiting weeks for Nebraska to meet Oklahoma , or for all the guys with their big stomachs and bigger Stetsons, and for all the luscious coeds who danced through the afternoon drinking daiquiris out of paper cups.  Bur the game of chess that was played with bodies, that was strictly for the cerebral types who will keep playing it into the ages and wondering whether it was the greatest collegiate football battle ever.  Under the agonizing conditions that existed, it well may have been."

Thank you for taking the time and for the opportunity to submit this, Brian. My question is who are the sportswriters today who may be consistently crafting creative ledes and which ones should be included in the discussion?

I love this question so much and had a lot of fun going through my own library to figure out my favorite ledes beyond the ones you mentioned. In no particular order: 

“The imperfect man pitched a perfect game yesterday.” - Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News (with a direct assist from Dick Young) on Don Larsen’s perfect game. 

“Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. There art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.” - Red Smith on Bobby Thomson’s home run.

“And all of a sudden the ball was there, like the Mystic River Bridge, suspended out in the black of the morning.

“When it finally crashed off the mesh attached to the left-field foul pole, one step after another the reaction unfurled: from Carlton Fisk’s convulsive leap to John Kiley’s booming of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ to the wearing off of the numbness to the outcry that echoed across the cold New England morning.” - Peter Gammons on Game 6, 1975.

As for modern ledes, I think my favorite is from Chuck Culpepper on the Villanova-North Carolina title game a few years back: 

As a roaring basketball game in a roaring football stadium distilled to one final, soaring shot making its descent, 74,340 seemed almost to hush. The hush would not last. Kris Jenkins’s cocksure three- pointer from the right of the top of the key swished down through the net and into deathless fame, and all manner of noise broke out and threatened to stream through the years.

Villanova’s players surged into a pile. Villanova’s coaches hugged and hopped. Jaws dropped. Fans boomed. Streamers fell. North Carolina’s players walked off toward hard comprehension. The scoreboard suddenly read 77-74, and Villanova, a sturdy men’s basketball program with an eternal Monday night glittering from its distant past, had found another Monday night all witnesses will find impossible to forget. 

And, as always, John Branch: 

The snow burst through the trees with no warning but a last-second whoosh of sound, a two-story wall of white and Chris Rudolph’s piercing cry: “Avalanche! Elyse!”

Dan Meyer

writes in with a three pack:

In no particular order:

- How much Stephen A. Smith is too much Stephen A. Smith?

Back in another life, when I was covering St. Bonaventure and the Atlantic 10, I would see Stephen A. Smith at games in Philadelphia. I remember one game at the Liacourus Center at Temple where he was writing a column and Bona star (and Phillly native) Marques Green came and the two dapped each other up. Point is, I’ve known of Stephen A. long before he became who he is today and respect his work ethic and. career path.

It’s funny: I use Stephen A. in my “no hot takes” lesson about column writing, because he’s an easy touch point for students. But he works incredibly hard and does what he does very well. He may not be your cup of tea or mine, but ESPN wouldn’t showcase him so much if he wasn’t tapping into something. Also, when you dial down the volume a bit, like he did with Scott Van Pelt the other night, he’s really good and insightful.

We don’t need him running for president, though.

- With so much concern about the future of sports journalism, do you have any hope for the use of social media platforms to help improve content from trusted sources when those seasoned journalists are often overshadowed and out-hollered by rank-and-file fans/online influences?

In a word, no. 

What social media has done over the past 15 years, as much as anything, is flatten our conversations around news. It’s not impossible for seasoned journalists from trusted sources to put out great content on the platforms. But they don’t have the natural advantage of standing out from the rank-and-file, as you put it. 

The split between X and Bluesky is making these conversations even trickier. There is still a large audience for sports and sports content on X. Bluesky has been growing, but it’s still not the social home for sports (there was a whole discourse about it last week). So now that the audience is divided among different platforms, it’s harder for journalists to stand out on any one. It also depends highly on the individual journalist and their skill at using the platforms. 

- What is your take on USA TODAY and other media outlets using "Grok AI" and "AI" to make predictions on mock drafts for the NFL and NBA?

I wasn’t aware of this until your question, and wow is this not cool. I’m sure I could make a quick joke about how this shows how useless and dumb mock drafts are. But at the end of the day, it’s a job that when done well by a knowledgeable reporter can inform readers about what’s happening in the league. Farming that out to A.I. is just another kick in the teeth.

Got questions for a future mailbag or a topic you’d like me to write about? Post it in the comments, or write to me at bmoritz99@gmail.com. Let’s chat.