With SPJ’s national convention less than two months away, one sports-related panel that looked of particular interest is the Thursday, Aug. 27th discussion, “America’s Insatiable Appetite for Sports, and the New Media Careers it’s Creating.”  Tim Franklin, director of the National Sports Journalism Center at the Indiana University School of Journalism will lead the forum.

More details:  “At a time when much of the news industry is contracting, the number of sports information outlets is exploding, and so, too, are job opportunities in this new media paradigm. Why? Advertisers are following readers and viewers to these increasingly popular sports news outlets.  Despite the economic downturn, there are projections that online sports advertising will double in the five-year period ending in 2012. The 10 largest sports blogs now collectively bring in tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually. Sports leagues and teams are bolstering their own Web sites to draw viewers and advertisers away from mainstream media, and to better control the flow of information to the public. And, entire cable networks are being created to cover individual sports teams, conferences and regions. The session will cover who’s creating this burgeoning sports information business, the jobs it’s spawning, and the new kind of journalism it’s producing.”

There are of course many other programs during the three-day convention.  You can obtain more info at www.spj.org.

The Hartford Courant’s Jeff Jacobs reports from this week’s Boston Marathon a potential running revolution in America, heralded by two 3rd place finishes Monday by Americans Kara Goucher and Ryan Hall.

“One threw down her gloves. The other threw down the biblical story of Elijah,” writes SPJ member Jacobs. “Neither Kara Goucher nor Ryan Hall would end up winning the 113th Boston Marathon, yet the reaction to their third-place finishes was as fine an indication as any how much American distance running has rebounded.”

Meanwhile, top American distance runner Brian Sell was disappointed in his 14th place finish.  “From the opening mile, nothing felt right for Brian Sell on Monday at the Boston Marathon,” writes Jo-Ann Barnas of the Detroit Free Press.  “And by the end of the race, Sell was as low as he has ever been since he moved to Rochester Hills from his native Pennsylvania eight years ago to train with the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project.”

The famed Proviso West holiday basketball tournament in Chicago concluded with an upset victory this year, with a relatively unheralded Morton taking what is regularly considered as inarguably one of the most competitive high school basketball tournaments in the nation.  Previous Proviso West all-stars who’ve gone on to the NBA have included Michael Finley, Quentin Richardson, Isaiah Thomas, Kevin Garnett, Juwan Howard, Corey Maggette, and many others.

“It was for Berwyn and Cicero and the Clyde Park District and its youth coaches,” Tina Akouris of the Chicago Sun-Times and SPJ member reports.  “It was for Morton coach Tony Martinucci (a Morton graduate), the Mustangs players who came before and after him and the alums around the Chicago area and around the nation who lived through the very lean years of Morton boys basketball.”

You can read the rest of Tina’s report on this incredible upset at the Sun-Times web site.

The Hartford Courant’s Jeff Jacobs has authored a piece on Dillon Coleman, who plays basketball for Cromwell High School in Cromwell, Conn.  In spite of being an outside-shooter for the basketball team and a baseball player as well, Dillon has no left hand.

“If nothing else, his is a compelling story of adaptation,” Jacobs writes in the Courant. “The inspiration is not in a miracle moment, it’s in a family’s adjustment. You take away a boy’s hand and maybe he doesn’t use the remaining five fingers to point to himself and say, ‘Woe is me.’”

It’s official:  Lance Armstrong is unretiring, and several sportswriters have been on top of the story in the last 24 hours.  From the Washington Post, Sally Jenkins (author of two Armstrong books) writes that she thinks the legendary cyclist can make a significant impact in defeating cancer. Ms. Jenkins writes that “the fact is that cancer and improbable odds are the keys to his fierce personality, they’re what propelled him over 2,300 miles and up mountainsides in the first place. ‘Watch, I’m gonna win it again,’ he said, after the first one. ‘Know why? ‘Cause everyone says I can’t.’ ”

Most recently, Armstrong finished 2nd this summer in an arduous ultra-mountain bike race in Colorado.  He has said in the media reports on his unretirement that he aims to use his comeback to raise cancer awareness.  He also wants to become the oldest winner of the Tour de France. At 37, he’d be a year older than Belgium’s Firmin Lambot was when he finished first in 1922.

In the Vanity Fair article that broke the story, Douglas Brinkley wrote: “A 2,000-mile, 23-day race, much of it uphill? By next July? I asked him, rather ungraciously, if he wasn’t too old to get back into shape that quickly. He laughed. And he was off and running.”

Armstrong said in Brinkley’s interview for Vanity Fair that his body aches more in his mid-thirties than it did when he was winning his first seven Tours de France.  “But when I’m going, when I’m on the bike — I feel just as good as I did before,” he said.

And veteran Olympic sports correspondent Philip Hersh wrote in the Chicago Tribune that the biggest challenge may be mental, according to experts in the sport who spoke to Hersh for his article. “The hardest part will be to go back to the mental discipline of training, eating and sleeping with 110 percent commitment,” cycling analyst and coach Robbie Ventura says. ”Snapping your brain back into a mode of being perfect all the time is difficult.”

The New York Times’ The Quad is down to its four final schools for its annual college football preview.  For the past several weeks the blog has been counting down the top teams that will take the field this week.

Yesterday’s featured team was their #5 prediction, the University of Florida.  (By far the most prevalent conference in virtually every sportswriter’s coverage of preseason predictions has been the Southeastern Conference.)

“Though Tim Tebow is the face of Florida football, and deservedly so, college players come and ago, leaving only the head coach and his assistants as the constants,” Paul Myerberg writes. “In that case, Florida must feel very confident in the future of their program, as Urban Meyer, now entering his fourth season at the helm, has piloted the Gators back into the enviable position of competing yearly for national championships. Now two years removed from his title, Meyer broke in a number of inexperienced underclassmen a season ago, making the Gators a logical favorite to win the SEC and play for another national title.”

As the Gators weigh in at #5, the remaining four teams will be unveiled during this last week of preseason coverage for the nation’s cadre of reporters covering college football.

Led by American Jason Lezak in last night’s 4 x 100m relay in men’s swimming, the United States took gold in the first compelling Olympic event to draw attention from the nation’s sportswriters.

The Detroit Free Press’ coverage remarked that Lezak’s leg of 46.06 seconds was the fastest time in the final race by more than 0:00.05, and relegated Michael Phelps to the role of cheerleader, Michael Rosenberg wrote.

On ESPN.com, Pat Forde has been updating.Phelps’ quest for a record number of gold medals on an ongoing basis.

And sportswriting legend Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post filed a story on Sunday’s victory as well, calling it possibly “the greatest swimming relay ever.” Her column in the Post recounts how Phelps wasn’t the hero, but that his urging his teammates on was one of the more emotional moments the Games will likely see.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada spoke at the 14th annual Sunshine State Awards banquet for the South Florida chapter of SPJ that were held recently.

The duo had exposed the BALCO steroid scandal for the Chronicle and then wrote about it in-depth in their book “Game of Shadows:  Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports.”  Their work led to an investigation into steroid use in Major League Baseball.  When the reporters were called before a grand jury in May 2006 to reveal their sources or face 18 months in prison, they opted for prison.  The tandem successfully appealed and the government dropped the subpoena in February.

The Sunshine State Awards honors the best online, print and broadcast journalism in Florida and is the largest journalism contest in the state.

According to a front page story today from the Wall Street Journal’s John Wilke, the Pittsburgh Steelers are in play.

“The storied Pittsburgh Steelers football franchise has been secretly shopped to potential buyers amid continuing divisions among the five sons of the team’s founder, Art Rooney Sr.,” Wilke reports.  “The talks affect not only one of America’s iconic sports franchises, but one of its most fabled sports families.

“Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney, who helped build the National Football League and is the oldest of the five sons, wants to consolidate his control by acquiring most of his brothers’ shares in the Steelers over 10 years, those briefed on the talks said.”

On August 24 of last year, the Times launched “The Quad,” a blog dedicated to college sports.  Additions this week to the site include an basketball report on some of the off-season activities of some of the top coaches in the game, “Basketball Notes from Le Land of LeBron,” and the Quad’s college football preview countdown (currently they’re on #53, which happens to be UCLA).

Not to be outdone by the Times, other scribes have offered up their own collection of previews on the upcoming pigskin season, even though opening kickoff is still almost two full months away.  D3 Football offers reporting exclusively devoted to NCAA Division III competition, so for those who write about smaller teams in their market, this is a good site to keep an eye on as well.