A senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine, as well as the sports correspondent for NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, guest editor Howard Bryant has selected a remarkable range of sports articles that appeared in 2016. The 27 pieces here include contributors like Roger Angell ("Almost There"), John Branch ("Why Steve Kerr Sees Life Beyond the Court"), Luke Cyphers and Teri Thompson ("Lost in America"), Bomani Jones ("Kaeperkick Is Asking for Justice, Not Peace"), Alexis Okeowo ("The Away Team"), and Ruth Padawer ("Too Fast to Be Female"). Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Glenn Stout, the series editor for The Best American Sports Writing since it was launched in 1991, surveyed hundreds of national, regional, and specialty print and digital publications, selecting scores of outstanding works, from which Bryant chose the very best pieces.

"Bryant has culled these 27 pieces as a fierce response to the ever-higher barriers that working sportswriters must surmount to deliver great stories, whether from shrinking budgets, time constraints, or the increasing distance athletes set between themselves and their fans. Thus, Pat Jordan finds himself cruising Norman, Oklahoma, in a black Mercedes with football legend Barry Switzer, who coached both collegiate and Super Bowl champions; the Washington Post's Dave Sheinin finds himself in Dusty Baker's home—full of the aroma of the collard greens Baker is nursing on the stove—on the way to revealing the complexity of the Washington Nationals' manager; and the New York Times's John Branch teases out the compelling story of the Golden State Warriors' coach, Steve Kerr, which begins in 1980s war-torn Beirut, where Kerr's father, Malcolm, president of the American University there, was murdered. Sports here are merely the jumping-off point for an exploration of the humanity at the core of it all."—Booklist