The second week in December is big in the sports world. The NFL season is peaking. The NHL, NBA and NCAA basketball seasons are well under way, NCAA football bowl match-ups are set and a new trade or free agent signing seems to be coming out of the MLB Winter Meetings every hour or so.

So there’s no better time to take stock of some of the excellent sports journalism resources available to journalism students. The Sports Business Research Network is a great database available to Columbia students with an interest in market research and industry news on all aspects of sporting goods and sports marketing.

Another excellent resource is the always-reliable U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 Statistical Abstract, in particular the Recreation and Lesiure Activities page of the Arts, Recreation and Travel section. Here you can find tables and other information on wide variety of sports-related topics, such as Participation in NCAA Sports and a College and Professional Football Summary.

Finally, an amazing set of resources for the statistically inclined are the Sports Reference family of websites. My favorite is Baseball Reference, which offers a mind-bogglingly complete look at the statistics of baseball, both simple (home run leaders for any given year) and sophisticated (bet you didn’t know the highest single-season defensive WAR belongs to Adam Everett for his 4.0 posted in 2006). Sports Reference has sites for the NBA, NCAA basketball and football, NFL, NHL, and Olympics as well, so there really is something here for any sports fan.