2007 Jazzy Awards – Best Sportswriting – Jason Whitlock, Matt Rudy

This year we have a tie for the best sports article of the year.

The spectre of steroids burned like a proprietary torch everywhere in the sports world this year, even golf, where the PGA and LPGA TOURS enacted testing policies. Finally, we will never have to hear the drivel of “steroids can’t help your golf game” – they can – more distance, more spin, less tress and jitters. Matthew Rudy of Golf Digest breaks it down like a fraction for us. I’ll have my interview with WADA’s Dr. Gary Wadler soon. From the article:

Experts estimate a player could generate 10 percent more clubhead speed using testosterone cream in addition to working out. That translates into roughly 30 more yards of carry for a tour player swinging at 110 miles per hour with a driver. Managed with expert supervision, a player could get the benefits from that relatively small amount of testosterone without even triggering a positive result on a drug test.

“The best players aren’t going to be testing positive for steroids,” says Randy Myers, who trains more than a dozen tour players. “Small doses of impact drugs — HGH, things like that — that’s what the modern athlete is doing. It’s barely testable, and it doesn’t bulk you up. It builds explosive muscle, which is what all golfers want.”

Also, Jason Whitlock shines a light on the ugly world of the “sports bojanglers” showing how the clownish buffoonery and criminal antics of many players not only are bad for the game, but demean all the advances for African-American and Caribbean-Americans everywhere, not just in sports. From the article:

Hip hop athletes are being rejected because they’re not good for business and, most important, because they don’t contribute to a consistent winning environment. Herm Edwards said it best: You play to win the game.

I’m sure when we look up 10 years from now and 50 percent — rather than 70 percent — of NFL rosters are African-American, some Al Sharpton wannabe is going to blame the decline on a white-racist plot.

That bogus charge will ignore our role in our football demise. We are in the process of mishandling the opportunity and freedom earned for us by Jim Brown, Walter Payton, Doug Williams, Mike Singletary, Gale Sayers, Willie Lanier and countless others. And those of us in the media who have rationalized, minimized and racialized every misstep by Vick, Pacman and T.O. have played an equal role in blowing it.

Fantastic job, guys. Keep up the great work shinging the light of truth and fairnes in sports. Unlike what ESPN says, yes we can have a clean game and a game in which everyone os a good sport and not a me first, self-indulgent chump.

Past Winners:

2006 Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams

2005 Rob Thompson