I have been using sports and sports writing in particular to teach for a couple of years. One of my favorite units is to look at NCAA data about going pro along with local school sports federation data around participation along with a Room for Debate set from NYT to think about two questions -- the first informational and the second argumentative. The first question is what are the benefits and drawbacks to sports participation in schools? This grounds students in the facts and helps them not just create a persuasive piece that confirms their thinking. Then they propose to what extent sports should be a part of school culture. What's excellent about sports is you can write from data, write from graphs, write from examples, anecdotes, videos. So much good stuff out there.
