This article argues that popular sports media (such as websites, TV shows, and tweets) can be used in the freshman composition classroom to introduce students to academic argument and to encourage them to reimagine their own writing styles. Because sportswriters, broadcasters, and analysts frequently try to persuade someone of something, the intellectual operations that take place in many types of sports writing make them vibrant examples of academic argument. Asking students to read—and ultimately learn—from sports writing, which is often written in a personal, humorous, and experimental style, inspires students to revisit their own writing style and can teach them about the relationship between form and content. Specifically, Gubernatis Dannen uses David Foster Wallace’s essay “Roger Federer as Religious Experience” to demonstrate relationships between content and prose style strategies. For many students, thinking about sports and sports writing opens up larger possibilities of thinking and writing in college.
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