The Human Side of Sports delivers more than stats.
My mission at the Human Side of Sports is to tell the stories behind the stats and focus on people — athletes, coaches, parents, trainers, mascots, everyone — who has a story that might not be told otherwise. You can count on The Human Side of Sports for original, inclusive and completely independent reporting — fueled and financed by you, the reader.
Sports is more than running a ball to the end zone or hitting a homerun. Many sports don’t even use a ball! Yep, I will cover those, too. Sports is intertwined with education, politics, music, food, economics, art, religion and every aspect of life. Remember, athletes are more than their height, weight, position and ever-changing stats. Coaches are more than their season records. They are humans. I want to get more than quick interview sound bites from them. I want to have conversations with them.
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Here’s what you won't find in the Human Side of Sports:
Play-by-play rehash of games played on any given night that you can find in real-time on social media.
Stories focused only on the D-1 stars of a team.
Stats. Stats. Stats. Look on Hudl for those.
Team schedules, scores, a boring sportsboard.
Cookie cutter quotes about why a team won or lost.
Stupid sports cliches.
The Human Side of Sports offers intelligent, witty sports journalism that profiles people and places, honors history, highlights players of tomorrow and captures moments in time.
Because sports is fluid, so is this newsletter. You will get it delivered at least three times a week in your inbox. With enough founding members subscriptions, this endeavor could become a daily newsletter covering south Arkansas sports like no other publication. But I need your help to make that happen.
The Human Side of Sports offers two membership levels:
A basic membership costs $8 a month or $60 a year. In addition to receiving the newsletter, members of The Human Side of Sports can participate in the newsletter’s comments section and join its subscribers-only (coming soon) Facebook group to discuss your favorite teams, players and coaches while promoting events. Members also receive invitations to occasional virtual and in-person events. Yes, in-person!
A Founder membership costs $150 a year. In addition to receiving the basic membership benefits described above, Founders will receive a limited-edition annual book of collected stories from the Human Side of Sports as soon as it’s published. They also get major investigative reports, personal essays, exclusive interview and sports histories in their inboxes before the general paying public. A founding member also receives invitations to occasional virtual and in-person events.
Another perk of a Founder membership? Two student athletes receive subscriptions to the newsletter.
The 411
Suzi Parker is a national and international journalist and author whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers, websites and magazines including The Economist, The Daily Beast, The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post.
Her stories have also appeared in The Dallas Morning News (where she served as Arkansas’ correspondent from 1998 to 2004), US News and World Report, The New York Times Magazine, The New Statesman, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The San Francisco Chronicle, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Salon, American Football, Washingtonian, Penthouse, Politics Daily, Grist, Town & Country and many others.
She is the author of the cult classic non-fiction book “Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt” as well as “1000 Best Bartender’s Recipes.”
In 2015, she self-published her first novel, “Echo Ellis” about a reporter who thrives on danger while on the hunt for her next big story. Her latest book, “Trumping And Drinking: 100 Cocktails For Donald Trump’s First 100 Days” was self-published in January, 2017.
Parker graduated from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and earned a master's in journalism at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock.
She began her journalism career in high school. As a freshman in college at Arkansas State University-Beebe when she was selected to be the college newspaper editor – the youngest college newspaper editor in the state at the time.
Her journalism has focused heavily on national politics and hard news especially all things Bill and Hillary Clinton. She has covered numerous presidential campaigns including George W. Bush, Al Gore, Wesley Clark, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and more recently Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. In 1999, Parker won a Society of Professional Journalists Award (California chapter) for her Salon investigative story about tainted Arkansas prison plasma, Bill Clinton and its connection to dying Canadians.
She has also covered plane crashes, crime scenes and disasters and everything in between from psychic fairs to going undercover to a bondage club.
In college, she attempted to cover sports and uncovered NCAA violations at Arkansas State University in its basketball program. But as she pursued college sports journalism, her male professors told her because she was a woman that she would have a hard, almost impossible, road covering sports. Her mother disagreed but Parker listened to those stupid men. It just so happened Bill Clinton became president, Parker, who also wanted to be a music writer, followed his political career and covered Clinton for decades.
If Bill Clinton had not become president, Parker would have had an entirely different life. Funny how that works.
Now, she has returned to her roots in south Arkansas and plans to pursue her dream of sportswriting. Although it is 2023, very few women cover sports in Arkansas. Parker is on a mission to shatter that glass ceiling with as many balls as it takes. She also wants to tell the sports stories in south Arkansas, especially in and around her hometown of Pine Bluff, that are seldom, if ever, told.
She is a member of the Association for Women in Sports Media and the Society of Professional Journalists.
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