Every single story that was chosen as No. 1 this year.
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Posted inUncategorized
College Longreads Pick: 'Without Rules: The Untold Story of the Johnny Bright Incident' by Kyle Fredrickson, Oklahoma State University
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: Journalism requires a relentless focus on the now and the next. But in order for journalists to give their audience any sort of context, they must always have a sense of the past. It’s not enough […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The American Male at Age Ten
Susan Orlean’s classic profile of a ten-year-old boy named Colin Duffy: “If Colin Duffy and I were to get married, we would have matching superhero notebooks. We would ‘ wear shorts, big sneakers, and long, baggy T-shirts depicting famous athletes every single day, even in the winter. We would sleep in our clothes. We would […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Chris Kluwe Takes a Stand
[GLAAD’s 2013 “Outstanding Newspaper Article” Winner] How Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe became “football’s most aggressive straight ally to the gay rights movement”: “Kluwe says he doesn’t see the issue of gay marriage as political. His philosophy on the subject goes back to the Golden Rule, and he believes an amendment that would constitutionally criminalize […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Raider. QB Crusher. Murderer?
[Not single-page] Anthony Wayne Smith, a former defensive end for the L.A./Oakland Raiders, has been linked to the murders of four men: “Soon after retiring from football, Anthony invested in at least one shady business—an online medical-billing scam that was later investigated by the FTC—and started spending more and more time with gangbangers and thugs. […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Old Man and the Tee
A 29-year-old combat veteran returns home, then decides to try to walk on as a kicker for Wyoming: “Noble took a job for his uncle’s hay-brokerage company, throwing bales from trucks into the barn lofts of thoroughbred horse farms, sometimes 720 of them a day. He told the stories of walking dusty streets and climbing […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show
Loving alternative music, but feeling like an outsider: “One day in gym class, sitting on the bleachers adjacent to the football field, the popular kids in class came to sit next to me as we waited for everyone to suit up. Among hushed whispers, one of them turned around and asked me who my favorite […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax
A college football star learns about the death of his grandmother and girlfriend on the same day and has inspirational stories written about him by major media outlets. But there’s a problem: His girlfriend never existed: “There was no Lennay Kekua. Lennay Kekua did not meet Manti Te’o after the Stanford game in 2009. Lennay […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Friday Night Tykes
In Texas, football is everything—even among 12-year-olds: “‘Celdon is the best eleven-year-old football player in America,’ Ronnie Braxton, his trainer, told me. ‘In America.’ Celdon isn’t the first youth football player to inspire that kind of claim. But when he hit the pile, his powerful legs churning furiously as he wormed his way through the […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Glorious Plight of the Buffalo Bills
Undying hope from a city’s football fans—and a fear that their team will soon disappear: “For Bills partisans, white, black, or anything else, the greatest fear is not that the team will lose a game or suffer another demoralizing season. A far more distressing concern is that the team will follow industry and investment and […]
