So it's come to this: An SMG Notes Column

Here’s a secret about writing a regular column, or blog, or whatever: You won’t always have something to write about.

More accurately, you won’t always have an idea that fills out a full column. You don’t have the time and attention to dedicate to fleshing out an idea, to doing the reading and thinking and writing that a full post needs.

That’s where I find myself this week. It’s the end of the semester, which brings with it all of the business of closing out several classes. My family’s been lucky to do some incredibly fun travel lately, but that made for a busy November with weekends in the car and weeks recovering from weekends in the car. I’m still trying to find the right balance of using Bluesky while not falling back into the unhealthiest of my old habits from Twitter. If I’m being honest, I’m still trying to get my footing after the presidential election last month.

Which means, it’s time for a notes column.¹

There are two types of notes columns in sports journalism. The first is one that is a collection of … notes. Little news nuggets that aren’t fully formed stories but still worth sharing. Things a reporter is hearing and seeing and observing from around their beat. Peter Gammons is generally considered to have invented this back at the Boston Globe in the 1970s and it has become a staple of Sunday sports sections since. Peter King raised this to an art form with his Monday Morning Quarterback columns at Sports Illustrated in the 2000s.

Truth be told, these notes columns are an artifact of the age of media scarcity. When your sports media was limited to the newspaper, the local sports cast and maybe Sports Illustrated, the notes column was your chance to learn stuff from around the league and other cities. Digital and social media have upended that.

The second notes column is the collection of quick observations, jokes, one-liners and other pithy comments. In the pre-social media days, this was the chance for columnists to share their quick opinions on music, movies, TV shows, pop culture, politics, or otherwise make funny statements that aren’t a full-length column but worth sharing.

Mike Lupica generally gets the credit for being the originator and the all-time best at this, with his Shooting from the Lip column in the Sunday New York Daily News. My friend Mike Vaccaro calls his Vac’s Whacks, and he’s the best in the business at it.²

Both types of columns rely heavily on the introduction and bullet point structure.³ Jerry Sullivan, when he wrote for The Buffalo News, used the lede “Column as I see em.” At The Times Herald, Chuck Pollock and I would start with an intro that made a reference to an obscure-ish sports figure (Some random thoughts while wondering what happened to Joe Cribbs:).

Anyways, here we go:

• Best thing I’ve read this year: The Barn by Wright Thompson.

This is a spectacular book, a hybrid of historical research, reporting, and memoir that reexamines the murder of Emmett Till. It’s beautifully written, reported, and structured book. It’s should win all the awards, and it’s well deserved.

Here’s why the book really struck a chord with me: I read it in the weeks leading up to the election, which was admittedly a bold choice on my part. But it was actually helpful. In the leadup to and immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory, you heard people say things like “I just can’t believe this is who we are as a country,” right? I did, and from very smart, kind, well-meaning people. It’s an understandable reaction.

Reading this book did away with that thought for me. It drives home the point that for so many years and so many people, this is always who we have been in this country.

• Best thing I’ve read lately (sports story): “How the Bears wasted the final 32 seconds in their sixth consecutive loss” by Kevin Fishbain, The Athletic.

“The clock might rush you, but a clock isn’t rushed.”

Writing a good game story in this media age is a tricky needle to thread. You have to describe what happened for people who may not have seen the game (or only seen the score on their phone, or only caught the highlights), but you also have to give the people who were watching and closely follow the team something new as well. It’s the balance of appealing to the die hards and the casual fans.

Fishbain does that with this story. The framing devince of the clock works really well in this story. If you weren’t watching, you learn what happened. If you were, you get more insight into why what happened happened.

Thirty-two seconds, clock is running. One-one-thousand, one-Mississippi. It’s all the same. Players are running, arms are waving frenetically, a game is up for grabs, a coach’s job is maybe in the balance.

As each second ticked down to zero, down to a sixth consecutive loss, the team’s fourth loss in six weeks on the final play, another baffling, astonishing way to lose a game, everyone was left wondering: What the heck happened? How did this happen?

• Official Sports Media Guy Review of Night 5 of The Eras Tour in Toronto: Taylor Swift is very good at concerts.

• Holiday Album Worth Your Time: It’s a Holiday Soul Party by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.

• Holiday Banger I Don’t Apologize for Loving: Underneath the Tree by Kelly Clarkson

• College football thought: I’ve never been a college football guy, so I’ve found myself rooting for Indiana this season. I joke about not being able to escape IU people, but I’ve got a lot of really close friends who either teach there or went there, and I’m happy their team is having such a banner year.

Also, thanks to

Joe Posnanski

and our chat on The Other 51, I can claim some credit for the Hoosiers’ success this year:

1. If you understand the reference in the headline, we can absolutely be friends.

2. This tracks, because Vac is the best newspaper sports columnist

3. Writing this post makes me think this is a really cool historical study to do at some point.