Athletes writing
One of the dream classes that I’ve always wanted to teach is a class for student-athletes about identity writing: writing yourself as an athlete. In the past, I’d planned to look at all of the genres that athletes might go on to write: box scores, autobiographies, text interview replies, letters, etc. And of course over the years, I’ve added blog posts, Twitters, and Facebook profiles to that list.
Today I find two new sources for my planning pleasure: Jockipedia and TheJockosphere.
Jockipedia is a site where athletes can make their own profiles and link to all of their own social media, including their personal web site, their blog, their Twitter feed, Facebook and MySpace pages, video and photo sites, and even their foundation or charity’s web site. There’s a brief bio of the player and even some stats on the site. The bio links out to the original Wikipedia article.
TheJockosphere is a collection of reviews of athlete’s blog posts. The editors of the site pick interesting posts and condense them, linking the original blog from the post. This is a great way to surf and find fantastic athlete-writers. Their tag line is: “TheJockosphere - Because how many blogs can you read on your own?”
Please please help me find a department that wants this class taught!