Best Current Sports Sections

Orlando was damn good last time I had a chance to flip through it.

 

I vote for the New York Daily News. They haven't laid a ton of people off, still throw the kitchen sink at baseball coverage and have some in-depth or enterprise features.

There may be an axe in the future, but they are putting out a good product right now.

 

Another vote for WaPo from me.

 

Orlando has held up pretty well despite the layoffs. I think part of that is because the place was so overstaffed under McKenzie (I mean no disrespect by that) that they could stand to lose a few people. It would have been better if they hadn't lost Tim Povtak, but you can make similar comments about every major paper in the country these days.

 

I liked the four corners thing Orlando does.
My assumption is that it was something that started up after the cuts.
For the unfamiliar, they get four different columnists/writers from different Trib papers and they write a few grafs each on some national sports topic of the day.
What Orlando did for pro football was astounding. A page each on Florida's three pro teams, plus two or three national pages. Then college coverage, local sports and then more national sports. It kicked the living shit out of the USA Today, the day I read them both at the airport as I waited for my flight.

 

I thought Orlando had stopped covering the Bucs, at least on a daily basis.

 

Don Mahler got me my start. He'll never know we're talking about him though. Hates the Internet and everything on it.

 

Oh, and I love the Boston Globe. Still. With a half a vote for the Hartford Courant (which I haven't seen in 5 years).

 

Love the Globe and Wapo, and I'll always have a special place for the Plain Dealer. Still has good coverage of the Big 3 and Ohio State and they maximize their preps coverage by highlighting big games every week. I'm a PD homer, though.

 

I picked up the Sunday Times-Picayune a couple of weeks ago and I was mucho impressed. They had a 14-page section, with 10 open pages. The front was a good mix with LSU-Florida as the CP (including a column by Peter Finney, who is still at the top of his game), the Hornets preseason game, Tulane's game (played way down the page), a prep game with art, and a bye-week Saints analysis down the rail that jumped inside to a very informative graphic detailing the rest of their schedule. I don't see a lot of big metro papers, so I don't know how they stack up against some of the ones already mentioned, but it made this small-paper guy a little jealous.

 

Didn't read the rest of the thread, but I read the Post the last couple of days. Very good section, though the design is lacking (would have thought they'd pry someone away from the RMN on the design side). Good columnists, good reporters and good overall feel for news.