1. “I’ve gradually come to realise that my picture of the game, almost exclusively drawn from the words of others, may bear little relationship to the one sighted people are playing or watching… All this led me to wonder how many other perceptions of the sports I love were based on a miasma created from words, rather than concrete shapes.”

Peter White may not have what many people consider the sense most integral to an enjoyment of cricket, that being sight, but in this article for the Guardian, the superfan sets about tracing the roots of his love for the game. It’s an eloquent and poignant reminder of the essential qualities that draw us to athletic confrontation in the

2. “Canales has moved to Mestalla for two years. According to the agreement reached, Valencia will pay his wages for the two seasons and, at the end of each campaign, it will have a €12 million ($17M) option-to-buy. The other thing the agreement stipulates is that Canales will not be able to play against the club that owns him, Real Madrid. The crapping-yourself-clause strikes again.”

From pathos to bathos, then, as Sid Lowe (writing in Sports Illustrated) explains what has come to be known in Spanish footballing circles as the “crapping-yourself-clause”.

3. “Tebow, meanwhile, looked like a man being chased by bees. He barely got off a pass (1-for-3) and was sacked three times. Nice kid, sincere as a first kiss, but he’s not ready yet, might never be ready. Somebody alert the Filipino missionaries. If he doesn’t improve, he might be among them sooner than we thought.

The Heisman Trophy winner looks stiff under center. Most quarterbacks go snap-step-step-step-throw. Tebow goes snap-step-step-step-think-ponder-think-some-more-finally-decide-throw-three-feet-behind-the-receiver.”

Tim Tebow has been fighting a losing battle for a starting place in the Denver Broncos 2011/12 starting line-up, but as ESPN’s Rick Reilly writes, what the aspiring quarter-back lacks in tactical nous, he more than makes up for in pure, unadulterated earnestness.

4. “Last Sunday, I watched Tiger Woods do some lousy things that I had never seen him do before. He tried ridiculous shots that failed. He putted half-heartedly. He was in trouble after virtually every drive. He seemed like he would rather be just about anywhere else in the world. And then, suddenly, he made a couple of birdies in a row, and there was a bounce in his step, and focus seemed to return to his glare, and he was locked in again. The experts seemed to take that as a good sign. Tiger Woods himself seemed to take that as a good sign. A few days later, he played like a very good club pro. Apparently it wasn’t a good sign.”

For all the frantic discussion, slow-motion analysis and incessant parsing of interviews, Sports Illustrated’s Joe Posnanski thinks pundits are allowing history to compromise their objectivity when it comes to appraising the state of Tiger Woods’ game.

5. “Maybe revolution is, above all, a state of mind. When Richie Stakelum thinks about what it is that Anthony Daly has brought to their lives, he suspects it to be something as simple as the nobility of struggle. All the words in the world can fall from a man’s mouth, but, without little acts of selflessness, they become nothing more than stones. He remembers one January day in ’09 and, from early evening, snow leaking from a sky of velvet black. The M50 became a pocket of Antarctica. It took him three hours just to get home from Citywest and, pulling into the drive, he felt like Amundsen pitching tent in the South Pole.

Then the texts began to fly. Daly was in O’Toole Park ready to start training. Where was everybody? Suddenly, across a quilted city, kit-bags were being tossed in car boots and wheels skittering in drives.“

The Irish Independent’s Vincent Hogan on the original man’s man, Anthony Daly.

6. “He wasn’t the biggest person on the field, and probably not the fastest, but he was strangely fast for a big person and unusually big for a fast person. He played both sides of the ball: running back and linebacker. He was also the kicker, and he returned punts. In my memory, he scored a touchdown, kicked a field goal, and sacked the quarterback for a safety. 12–0. As my father and I searched for his name in the program, a man seated a couple of rows in front of us spun around and said, ‘They call him Ironhead.’ I was smitten.”

As a life-long fan of the NFL, the New Yorker’s Ben McGrath considered himself inured to the violence and aggression at the heart of American football. Now, however, with evidence of the sport’s potentially catastrophic side-effects mounting, even he has begun to ask: “Does football have a future?”

7. “Forget about American football, extreme wrestling, darts, running for the Irish Presidency, refereeing ladies football in Tyrone, forget about life under the Tories or about being a single mum in the world of Mr K Myers (who should surely now take up residence alongside Major Gowen in the lounge bar of Mr B Fawlty). Forget about hurling, love and climbing Mount Everest. All of those are dangerous games but golf is the most dangerous game of all. Golf is so dangerous that I fear they may have to ban it.”

Keith Duggan‘s take on Rory McIlroy’s wrist injury, in the Irish Times.

8. “Norm cooled off and came back into the writers’ room to watch the beginning of Thursday Night Football. The Steelers were playing, so he was firing off rape jokes at a rapid clip. He also went into this bizarre rant about a conversation he’d had with a guy about time travel and the concept of altering history and how this individual said he would go back in time and if not kill Hitler, he’d at least punch him in the face.”

In an article entitled “I Never Want to Work on a Goddamn TV Show Again” Deadspin’s A.J. Daulerio revisits a week he spent in LA working on a pilot for a sports show with comedian Norm Macdonald. From moments of existential angst to jokes about giant moths attacking the floodlights at Wrigley Field, it’s a parade of surreal discomfort. Some of the content’s a little NSFW.