When it comes to the world of NFL, Eisen is as respected as they come. 5 John Feinstein - The Washington Post. I loved Ernie Roberts column, especially his Thoughts While Shaving segment. It set the stage for Kevin Garnetts (pictured) Anything is possible! yell after winning the. While his favorite sport may be basketball, Simmons does a great job of referencing the NFL on his Twitter account. Like Murray Chass and other traditionalists, Cafardo is aggressively old school, with his antipathy towards modern analysis regularly on display. Send me an email. Theres good money, after all, in broadcast. During the 30s, 40s and 50s no true Boston Sports fan went to bed before reading The Colonel In the playoffs against Oakland, the Patriots famously got robbed (at least according to anyone with Boston blood) when Sugar Bear Hamilton was called for roughing the passer. Love him or hate him, Deion Sanders is actually a pretty good football analyst for the NFL Network. For those who did not have the pleasure, it was just that a pleasure. I guarantee that if you follow Lombardi, you'll learn more about football than you'd ever thought possible. Not an industry innovator. He also covers NASCAR for the paper. Incredibly, it happened. While Dan Wetzel covers every sport for Yahoo! Even if they wrote columns in Boston they were really reporters first and foremost. I dont need the players sugar coated, but neither do I want to be besieged by sordid little details, daily. Weaknesses: Doesnt stand out in a crowded market place, lacks a clear niche advantage versus the competition. This search result is here to prevent scraping, On the Market: A Rustic-Chic Home on a Ski Trail in Vermont, On the Market: A Newly Built Farmhouse in Concord, Silver Dove Afternoon Tea Opens in Downtown Boston, The Real, Essential Backstory of the MLK Statue The Embrace', Widowmaker Brewing to Expand from Braintree to Brighton in 2023, What the Boston Athenaeum's $17 Million Renovation Looks Like, Careers and Internships at Boston Magazine. On the minus side, Edes can be a bit of a traditionalist. He loves the game of football and has a great sense of humor. display: none; #ada-button-frame { But the Celtics took care of the Pistons in six, setting up a showdown with their rivals, the Kobe Bryant led-Lakers. Engaging and open to dialogue; hes responded to a couple of mentions on Twitter, which in my experience is rare. Rehashing games, for example, is something that can be done by a variety of third parties: its non-differentiating for writers. if for no other reason than the NFL had few secrets when he was around. Im sorry, but leaving him off is like leaving Lawrence Olivier off a Best Actors list because he only did Shakespeare, really.. Accepting at face value his contention that beat writers dont root for teams, its nevertheless unreasonable to expect that they dont root for people on those teams. Some potential names you might considerand this is by no means a complete list. We won, but you didnt lose, Steinbrenner told the Boston players. Thats where I discovered Leigh Montville. That type of information is priceless to true NFL fans. I miss reading her. Michael joined the Boston Globe in September 2019 covering the intersection of sports with business, politics, entertainment, technology, and many more. Weaknesses: His diverse responsibilities have led to an inevitable decline in production. Will McDonough Fabulous, witty, candid, funny, yet called it VERY much like is was.I miss this guy! There are two things that I really like about Evan Silva on Twitter. Was Leigh Montville the first person to refer to Bob Irsay as Tiger? It seemed that he never was in the paper as often as Id like,which is the ultimate compliment. I was certain the Patriots would lose. The list is sort of subjective, so I didnt include Peter Gammons, as I think of him more as a baseball writer than a general columnist, while Will McDonough did mainly focus on football, but wrote columns about all sports as well, so hes on the list. He was that good. His piece on Tom Brady after Super Bowl XLVI was pure genius. Tom Brady after leading the Patriots to a Super Bowl win against the St. Louis Rams, in 2002. Bob Ryan is the standard bearer but Peter Gammons, Will McDonough and Dan Shauhnessy are soooo ever so close as well it's a tough call. Finn, on the other hand, is a breath of fresh air. he wrote for the traveler and herald. While that type of honesty is certainly refreshing, if you cry easily, you may want to stay away from his tweets. Its got to be Fitzgerald, Montville 1& 2. Russell was awarded the Medal of Freedom by former President Barack Obama in 2011, the nation's highest civilian honor. I meant that some of YOU (meaning the readers) might not think he deserves to be considered. In a perfect storm of Boston Sports, he made his big splash just as Fred Lyn,n Jim Rice and the rest of the 75 cast were making theirs, just as a young TV-38 gambled on putting on 80 games instead of the dozen that the VHF stations would show, just as a then-fresh Dick Stockton was giving a slightly cynical air to play by play. Miller isn't afraid of telling you exactly what he thinks. One of the best things I've seen on Twitter happened by Bowen after Ricky Williams retired. You never get this with Edes, which is a bonus as far as Im concerned. In the dugout, Sox manager Terry Francona winked at Roberts. These days, theyre all trying to be loud and provocative so they can become fixtures on TV and radio. After his more than 30 years at the Globe, everybody knows the columnists shtick: Be contrarian, be over the top, and, if at all possible, be part of the story. To help you sort the rational from the irascible, here are our Boston Writer Rankings for 2010. Everything had been skewed against the visitor from Brockton, Massachusetts Minter in his Union Jack trunks, the promoters with their sly tricks, the nationalistic crowd that rioted at the end but the two judges had made the final decision. Weaknesses: Stubborn and hostile to non-traditionalist thinking. Second-to-last sentence should read: and the Globe HASNT BEEN THE SAME . ", "Sports News | New York Sports | New Jersey Sports", "Post-Gazette.com - Sports Columnist Mark Madden", "Post-Gazette.com - Sports Columnist Stan Savran", "San Francisco Bay Outdoors with Tom Stienstra", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_sports_writers&oldid=1121166930, This page was last edited on 10 November 2022, at 21:30. Saturday mornings were never the same after he retired. display: none; I appreciate, as does the front office, a balance between statistical and human based analysis. Globe staff 1. Peter Gammons invented the Sunday notes column, and as a baseball writer/reporter, he was peerlessabsolutely peerlessin the 70s and 80s. Clockwise from left: Marvin Hagler; Dave Cowens and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; a crowd; Kevin Garnett; the 1980 Miracle on Ice; and Dave Roberts' iconic steal. Priority on this list, with a few exceptions, is given to writers focused exlusively on the Red Sox. Weaknesses: Shallow use of statistical analysis, though the extent to which that is by choice versus dictated by an editor is unclear. When I asked Cowens how it felt to have finally achieved the goal of winning a title, he said, For me, the fun was in the doing. Besides, how can you not recognize a guy as cool as this: http://www.bostonsportsmedia.com/2008/08/infamous-moments-mcdonough-punches-out-clayborn. My parents made me a Red Sox fan, but it was Peter Gammons that made me a baseball fan. And Horgan was terrific. McDonough and Gammons for super inside knowledge. While the CEO composed his concession speech in executive Box L-1, Kevin Millar drew a leadoff walk against Mariano Rivera and was called back to the bench for a pinch runner. Good guy, struggled recently with a huge personal loss, and still sticks to his beliefs. One on how it is his life goal to never run 26.2 miles cumulatively for the rest of his live and another on how he couldnt even drive the marathon route, never mind run it. Marvin Hagler winning the. Maybe you have your reasons for putting Gammons on the list. In addition to being the all-time NBA scoring leader, he is currently fourth in assists, and he has always been about T-E-A-M. 4. Still miss that Sox postgame show he, Upton Bell, and Joe Fitzgerald used to do on 38. Good usage of both historical precedent and numbers to form and/or supplement his arguments. His knowledge of the sports world could not be challenged, Ray Fitzgerald- The Grandaddy of them all. I fondly remember the Will McDounough Sunday column. Sports, his best journalism shows up when writing about the NFL. I once interviewed him for my high school newspaper, in about 1966. very nice guy. Those were the best of a very good lot. Leigh Montville was like an artist with the typewriter. For instance, after the Patriots earned a spot in the AFC Championship game by beating the Houston Texans in January, the Herald dutifully recapped the series of events in the game, sprinkling in quotes like Tom Brady saying afterward, Im tired, man. (One would think so!) He does a fantastic job of providing key information on players and provides great insight into what they excel at and what they could improve. In case it wasnt already apparent, this is a focus on Boston market writers. ET ON CNBC AND PEACOCK. Enter the length or pattern for better results. Sando has all the information you could ever want about the NFC West, and he does a great job at keeping you up to date via Twitter about the happenings in that division. By advantaging data at the expense of overheated speculation, McAdams voice has always been one to listen to and look forward to. He was almost elected Commissioner of Basketball for crying out loud. Its a pleasure having him cover the Red Sox. Montville and Ryan. McAdam and several of his colleagues publicly called him out on this behavior, justifying their actions with claims that it was affecting Okajimas teammates. Glenn Stout told me that, 20 years ago, he might have been able to come up with a dozen Boston sports-media personalities. also an author. The information he provides on Mocking The Draft is great stuff, as are his tweets regarding the NFL draft. The playoff run was tougher than the teams 66 regular-season wins might have suggested. Plus her basketball writing was the best. Before that Texans game, for example, Shaughnessy used his column to gleefully ridicule the Patriots opponents, calling them pure frauds. It was the same caustic, one-liner-laden junk hes been peddling for years. Whiny, petulant, entitled, self-importantno, it's not Boston fans we're talking about, it's Boston sportswriters. The Celtics proud franchise was in the midst of an NBA championship drought. It was the final crescendo to a season in which the Red Sox and Yankees, two historical rivals, ended with identical records. Jackie McMillan The Lady has her stuff together, especially on that basketball court..Hail Jackie, just keep it going girl! is quite exciting to keep tabs on. When the team added stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to go along with Paul Pierce before the 2007-08 season, there was suddenly hope to hang up banner No. If you're into that fantasy football thing, Michael Fabiano is a man that you must follow. All due respect to the guy b/c hes good at what he does but hes not an all-time great. Strengths: An original innovator in the Boston media landscape, brought an evolved approach to the market, properly leveraging his access to provide differentiated coverage. Its bad enough that media outlets still overpaginate their content in an attempt to articifically inflate viewership metrics, but when the payoff for that click is a few words, well, you become the definition of a poor customer experience. Todd McShay is the other draft wunderkind for ESPN. Good or bad, it doesnt matter, he wrote on his website, Boston Sports Media Watch. The Crossword Solver finds answers to classic crosswords and cryptic crossword puzzles. The players, who called him "Scoop," alternately respected and resented the Boston Globe writer.