Triplett's draft preview
It takes an hour of reading to write a respectable article about a team that you don't follow regularly. You throw in some cliche's and shop talk, browse over the last two months of articles (which all basically say the same thing) and regurgitate a summary of those articles.
If you're not too much of a tool, you throw in your opinion at the end. If you're an extreme tool, you make a bold prediction that you know will happen only under the craziest of circumstances.
Multiply by 31.
If it wasn't so damn dull, I'd be a sportswriter.
There are just too few original guys out there. The local beat writers that no one outside of their team's reading area are usually solid. The national guys just seem to coast more, probably because they're expected to produce more. They don't just cover one team; They cover them all. I imagine it gets tedious after the "new job smell" wears off.