Are sportswriters funny anymore?

I don't think the one-liner schtick works. Jim Murray did it so well that anyone who tries now, most obviously David Whitley and Rick Reilly, comes across as an imitation. But Jon Bois, Spencer Hall and Drew Magary are fucking uproarious. And I don't care that they're in the blogosophere; they're sports writers.

 

Writing humor is by far the hardest and scariest form of sportswriting. So it's not surprising relatively few writers do it on a regular basis. I'd be willing to bet there are probably as many who do now as there were back in the day, though. Whether or not they're AS funny as the writers of yesteryear is a different issue.

 

Jon Bois is just about the driest motherfucker out there. That dude is hilarious.

 

Thanks to new media, there are more (and better) sports humorists working now than at any time in history.

That said, the days of the hacky punning general columnist are numbered. Even done well, the style feels archaic, (and precedes greats like Jim Murray by several generations).

Longform sports writing has never much been about wisecracks, so may seem humorless compared to the dying, rimshot style of other legacy sportswriting.

Looked at honestly, in many ways this is a Golden Age of sports writing.

 

They're just as funny, but in different forums, and in different ways. Hell, they might be funnier just because more people are getting the opportunity to try. Also, who is a sports writer? Does Michael Schur qualify, even though it's essentially his hobby? Because he's funnier than Dan Jenkins or Rick Reilly ever were. Brian Phillips and Spencer Hall are incredibly funny and incredibly smart, and Magary is quite funny despite choosing lowbrow over high brow. Klosterman, Simmons and Jeff MacGregor each has that arrow in their quiver. Charlie Pierce too. We've talked about Hruby, obviously, who manages to combine humor and long-form better than pretty much anyone.

Are there a lot of newspaper writers doing humor? No well. In fact, I can think of a handful of truly awful columnists trying humor, and it is -- for the most part -- embarrassing. But there are a lot of other forums for smart people to be funny.

 

Gene Collier does stand up in Pittsburgh.

 

I don't think the writer in Podunk is really that clever with his/her columns on professional sports teams they never cover. I don't need to hear an opinion just because you have the space, and I can probably guess that sportswriter in Podunk stole the joke they used from ESPN or FOX Sports.

 

This is so true. I have a couple guys on my staff who are in their 20s and that is exactly how they write everything. Or overwrite, to be more accurate. But I'm not sure this is a generational thing. I think it's a young guy thing.

I was in college 20 years ago, and I did the same thing -- tried to write everything like I was imitating Sports Illustrated. The problem is, when you're in your 20s, and you write some January high school basketball game like that, you're unable to see it for the over-wrought rambling it really is. Inexperienced sports writers being in love with turns of phrase that in 10 years will turn their stomachs is nothing new. The default is to be intense. Funny isn't even an afterthought. It's a no-thought.

And 93Devil is spot on about Gene Collier from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ... that guy is hilarious.

 

Simers and Bianchi make me laugh on a regular basis.

 

I like Whitley, but I think he tries too hard sometimes... Norman Chad is freaking hilarious.

 

I wasn't in love with Chad's book, and he repeats himself too much on the tube, but his current column output remains a laugh riot.

 

The Denver Post isn't nearly as amusing without Jim Armstrong.