Coming Changes At TheSportsNotebook

TheSportsNotebook is making a change in how current sports action is being covered here at the site. Our focus has been gradually shifting from contemporary coverage to continued development of the historical museum, a rapidly growing archive of articles that is devoted to preserving the best of the modern era of sports (1976-Present). This change will further that development and allow more resources to go towards ensuring that we chronicle modern history (to use an oxymoron) like no other place online.

As it pertains to current sports action, we are no longer going to have game-by-game coverage of the NBA & NHL playoffs. What we will instead do is have a twice-weekly column (the current plan is to run it on Mondays and Thursdays) that will discuss current topics across the sports landscape.

The goal is to benefit the reader in two ways—the Monday and Thursday column will hopefully provide a different angle on current events that what you get in the mainstream media. While I’m proud of the efforts made to dig deeper into both boxscores and game analysis, let’s be frank—it’s tough to be that much different from ESPN, FoxSports, CBS Sports or any of the other mainstream news outlets when it comes to discussing what happened last night. Unless of course, you want to turn into First Take and just shout outrageously stupid things, which I really don’t want to do.

What I do want to achieve is continue this site’s mission of preserving the best of 1976-Present. That time period was chosen for two reasons—first off, it really is a significant demarcation point in sports.

Either in that year or right around it, you had the end of the UCLA dynasty in college basketball, the advent of free agency in baseball, college football’s settling its national championship on New Year’s Day and the NBA-ABA merger. In this context, even the NFL’s move to finally award homefield advantage in the postseason on merit rather than a rotation system looks mild, although even that’s significant in the bigger scheme of things.

The second reason is a little more self-serving—I was six years old in 1976 and it’s the first year I can start to remember what was going on in sports (I specifically remember the Chambliss walkoff and the subsequent Big Red Machine sweep of the World Series, along with the Raiders’ Super Bowl demolition of the Vikings). So our collection of sports history articles is also intended to serve as a generational statement.

And that’s where the prime content focus needs to be. Today alone, five new articles were added to the archive of sports history articles. We’re going to continue growing this area and look forward to having you with us. TheSportsNotebook.com has the best museum of the modern sports era and will give it some current flavor with a twice-weekly column. We look forward to having you as a part of it.