Update: I think this guy is improving.  I enjoyed his article today about his unwilling slide towards being a Celtics fan after years of despising them.

Original Comment: Not a particularly good writer, and not particularly insightful. I'll hold off saying he's 'terrible' until he has a couple of years under his belt - but clearly not in the same league as Bill Simmons, Ralph Wiley, etc.

Eric Neel writes literature.

He is slightly above average. When he's on, his writing rivals the best in the business. When he's off, well....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. I like how he gives equal treatment to every city, every team.

I doubt that this guy could write a shopping list.

Eric Neel has no brand. He essentially takes statistics that provide for his point and uses them, throwing out most of the evidence against his argument. Which makes him, in essence, every other editorial writer cloned. He makes very few points that warrant any further thought than what is on the paper. I read an editorial on him about the Cardinals once, where he essentially made the point that the Cardinals were only temporary contenders. To back this up he rattled off a slew of overachievers that he was assuming would drop off. One thing that stuck out in this was the fact that he listed inordinately high ERA's for Matt Morris and Woody Williams (the team's two best starters at season's beginning) as a reason for Cardinal fans to worry, yet listed risk of the other starters falling off of their great start in the same sentence. You can't have it both ways. Bottom line: he wanted to prove his point by any way possible, no matter how transparently biased.

Eric Neels brand of sportwriting is a threat to the old gaurd, which is why the ignorants above belittle him so. He's not a good writer he is a great writer. He writes outside of boxscores, and relates well to pop culture. His sense of humor is always on point. Sport is fun and so is Eric Neel, thank God! His article on the soul of Detroit was all time. Neel is the reason the Martzke's and Vescey's need to retire already.

A mediocre writer at best. He speaks of his experiences as if he were a fairly literate teenager and his evaluations are marginally better. He needs to go back to writing for his college newspaper-- in LA.

jocksniffer is right.

Not your typical simplistic, herd-following jocksniffer. Funny, clever, different. He's a brand new sort of jocksniffer.