I’m feeling better today. Yesterday was lousy. I blamed the back thing, which was 11 or so days ago. After sitting outside in the chilled evening air I did feel better. Ibuprofen probably helped, too. And then I got in bed, feeling fine, and completely forgot about this, right until I tried to wiggle into a better position. And I wiggled so hard that I thought I tore the wound open.

I did not.

It felt sharp anew, though. And so I lay there wondering if I gave myself a setback. But it seems not. And, hey, stitches come out Friday. And maybe I will be able to stop itching. The tape holding gauze in place is not agreeing with my skin.

Anyway.

This is my artistic interpretation of my day. The view of the sunset, through my blinds.

It was up early, work from the home office, and then work at work, and then work back in the home office again. I am, believe it or not, catching up?

In my Criticism in Sport Media class we discussed two stories. I picked them this week. Both of these are pieces I saved from this summer, for just such an occasion. (I have a remarkable folder with stories that can all be useful in making this point or that one.)

The first one we discussed was: How 3 Muslim sisters helped change the rules of American women’s wrestling.

Jamilah, Zaynah and Latifah McBryde never expected to become college athletes, much less change the rules of American women’s wrestling.

The sisters are devout Muslims who were homeschooled and grew up wrestling one another in Buffalo, N.Y.

“We always said we would never be able to wrestle in college,” said Jamilah, 22.

Coaches recognized their talent when they were teenagers, but they couldn’t wrestle with boys, nor could they wear the required wrestling singlet — due to their faith.

Eventually their passion for the sport – and their perseverance – led to rule changes allowing Muslim women to compete in full-body uniforms at collegiate and national levels.

My impression is that more of the people in my class should read these stories. And I’ve now got half a semester to figure out how to make that happen.

I really like this story. There’s so much you can do with it about story structure, quote selectivity, tone, and the pure efforts of reporting. Plus, it lets you talk about youth sports. And it has the added benefit of being ridiculously infuriating. ‘They control everything’: How the Dallas Stars monopolized Texas youth hockey:

Unlike the NFL, NBA and MLB, a handful of NHL teams are intimately involved in running the youth levels of their sports in their regions – perhaps none more than the Stars. In Dallas, the Stars spent decades turning what was once seen as a community good into a lucrative arm of their for-profit enterprise.

Stars executives addressed some of USA TODAY’s questions in a 35-minute interview and emailed statements, but left other questions unanswered.

“We’re really proud of everything we built here, and we’re committed to continuing to grow hockey in the community and across the state,” said Dan Stuchal, the Stars’ chief operating officer. “We’ve become the model for all non-traditional NHL markets that both the NHL and USA Hockey continually point to in terms of how to grow the game, because that’s the focus for everybody.”

At a time of increasing commercialization of youth sports nationally, hockey is particularly vulnerable to capture by corporate interests. Whereas baseball and soccer fields, tennis and basketball courts are ubiquitous in parks and schools, fewer than 3,000 ice hockey rinks exist across the U.S., largely because running them is so expensive.

Plus, I got to make a Kenny joke here. The author is Kenny Jacoby, an extremely well-regarded investigative reporter. And I told my class that all Kennys are fantastic writers. Some of them got the humor. But it’s a story designed to inform and aggravate and shed light on some predatory tactics of people who are sometimes a little too desperate. It’s terrific journalism and there’s a lot to glean from it. Probably because a Kenny wrote it.

In my Organizational Communication in Sport class we talked about media strategy and planning. This is the fun stuff. It’s brain work. It’s a bunch of puzzle pieces in a sandbox displayed on an Etch-a-Sketch, where the real decisions are made and money and personnel are figured out. It’s a bit difficult to just teach it. So I’d run a point out there, and then try to get the class to put this to work in a hypothetical context on their own campus. The best part is that no matter the question, and no matter the answer, there’s another consideration, another possible or additional approach. It demands you limber up your mind before you wade in. It’s a perfect thing to do at 3:30 in the afternoon, when a roomful of people’s post-lunch blood sugar is plummeting.

In first class they’ll have a midterm on Thursday. In the second class, we’ll do a media planning assignment. And after that I’ll have to decide which one was easier to grade.

But that’s a problem for Friday and Saturday.

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