Five sports and sports-adjacent newsletters I'm thankful for

Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media. This post is free for everyone thanks to our premium subscribers. And a very happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers here in the U.S., and to any others who celebrate the holiday: I'm very thankful for you. In that spirit, I wanted to use today's post to spotlight five other people writing sports and sports-adjacent newsletters that I enjoy.

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1. Scott Hines of Action Cookbook: Scott's one of my favorite writers out there, which is especially amazing considering how it's a definite side gig for him to his career as an architect. He's been publishing his newsletter since 2019, and it includes remarkable sports thoughts, food/drink/book/music recommendations, parenting essays, fiction, and more. He's written so many things that stand out, but here are a couple: "The Greatest" (a fiction story on a 42-year-old who gets his wish fulfilled to be the greatest baseball player in the world), and "Somewhere, There's Baseball" (an essay on appreciating a minor-league baseball day, and the sport overall). You can get some posts for free, but the premium subscription is well worth it, especially for his Friday offerings of food and drink recipes, book recommendations, and much more.
2. Kelly Dwyer of OnHoops: Kelly is one of the few of us left from the early online sportswriting days (I worked with him for almost a decade at Yahoo last decade) who's still working in that arena, and doing it well. He's created a lovely mostly-basketball newsletter (although his World Series post, on his baseball fandom overall, is well worth a read), and he has a remarkable sense of historical perspective and context, as shown in his recent post on the worst NBA general managers of all time. His work's also well worth it on either a free or paid subscription.
3. Joe Posnanski of JoeBlogs: I've plugged Posnanski's work before, including his upcoming Big Fan book with Michael Schur, but his regular newsletter is worth its own spotlight. He's consistently one of the most informed voices out there on a wide variety of sports topics (come for the baseball, stay for the Browns Diaries and dives into everything from the Olympics to hockey to chess to sports books). His free offering is great in its own right, but the bonus material he provides to paid subscribers in The Clubhouse is particularly worth it.
4. Rodger Sherman of Sports!: Rodger's a fascinating guy who's done some remarkable things over the years, from a 62-game college football road trip in 2023 to regular coverage of the zaniest sports out there. He only recently launched this Sports! newsletter at Beehiiv, but previously had a long-running Read Rodge Substack. A couple of examples of his work are a thoughtful look at Bill Belichick and UNC back at the start of September​ and his April post on a curling scandal. He has fun things well worth it at either a free or paid level.
5. Will Leitch of The Will Leitch Newsletter: While the history of sports blogging goes well beyond any individual figure, Leitch deserves his own chapters, if not his own book. The Deadspin founder has done so much to popularize online sports coverage through his own smart writing, the talented people he's tabbed to join him at different ventures over the years, and especially the gracious way he's promoted others' work and taken the time to answer questions. He's also managed to carve out a remarkable career, opining on sports and politics for many big publications and also writing novels (The Time Has Come is a particular favourite here). And his long-running and completely-free newsletter is always a good read, ranging from personal updates to thoughts on the world to sports coverage to reading and listening recommendations. Will's perspective is always worth it.

Thanks for reading! Have other newsletters I should check out for a possible future post? Let me know at andrew@andrewbucholtz.com, or on X or Bluesky (or, if you're a premium subscriber here, on our Discord server).