First - so I won't be accused of shitting you around and so some of you won't reply "Hey, but you said you loved sportswriters in the title - are you being ironic again?" - I will reveal my singular motive for this post: I want you to respect sports journalists as little as I do. Why? Primarily, because they're not very good at what they do. For some reason, that offends me. When taken collectively, I can't think of a more mediocre trade. And spare me the Frank DeFord/David Halberstam/Dan Jenkins retort already forming in your brain: for every literate, intelligent wordsmith like DeFord who refuses to participate in the daily sportswriting Cliche Bake Off Sale I'll bury you with the names of scores of pathetic hacks who could make the Thrilla in Manilla sound like Low Impact Aerobics Thursday at the Shady Acres Nursing Home. By now you've gathered I don't hold many sports journalists in awe. You are correct. For the same reasons I don't respect waiters who scald me with soup, engineers who build bridges out of yarn and mangoes, ingrate lawyers who solicit their clientele from daytime television, or, for that matter, most people with marketing degrees. I mean, this is supposed to be their job. They are paid to do this. They receive money to educate themselves and talk about sports in a substantive way. Yet most cannot. Doesn't that irritate you? Prone to cliche and solipsism, they write in choppy staccato like some ungodly amalgam of Larry King in a USA Today op-ed tempered by the please-punch-me-in-the-face-repeatedly smugness of Paul Begala; they generally grasp their subject matter as well as Koko, The Gorilla Who Can Talk With Her Hands does Neils Bohr's contributions to physics though Koko, when not busy holding her pet cat to her teat like it was a gorilla baby, has the simian decency to admit as much. They usually stand 5'7" with bird-like physiques yet are constantly calling out athlete's "manhood" and questioning their "guts"; ironic given that their first-hand experience with schoolboy athletics was usually dangling from a locker hook by the back of their collar, their nuts smeared in Icee Hot, a ripe jock pulled over their head like a triumphant shako. By the way, let me make one distinction: I'm mostly talking about sportswriters, not chroniclers. Chroniclers are the guys and girls they send to the Spurs game and they tell you what happened. They dutifully report recruiting information or whether Applewhite's knee surgery went well. They mostly do a good job. I'm talking about the malcontents with actual opinions who are supposed to help our understanding of the game, frame its context, debate its merits. Journalists in general - admittedly not a terrifically bright lot - generally turn a phrase the way a Japanese sumo wrestler turns a double play and sportswriters generally comprise the lowest echelon of journalism. That makes them the weakest soldiers in the French army; the most masculine girl on the field hockey team; the dumbest kid at Sam Houston State. Those aren't good things to be. Example #1: Talent Evaluation/Football Knowledge For me, the proverbial straw that had the camel participating in the Omani Special Olympics was seeing Roger Roesler proclaimed in '99 as an All-American and 1st Team All-Big 12 performer after what could be charitably described as a challenging senior season. Nice guy, good Longhorn. Never a great player. But he was on the preseason lists so he should go on the postseason lists! We call that teleology -- something is because, umm, it just is...because we think it was before. See Jarrod Cooper, who probably cost K-State two Big 12 titles yet was a mainstay of All-Everything teams in his time there. I've decided that most people, particularly sportswriters, rely on peer pressure, preseason lists, hype and Magic 8 Balls to determine who the conference elite are at their respective positions. Thankfully for them, statistics can serve as a useful adjunct to their mongoloid decision making processes and thus they are able to not totally defecate upon their charge when picking skill position players -- assuming they can manipulate their fat fingers in a straight line horizontally across a stat line while dumbly mouthing the words out loud to themselves and deciding that Quincy Morgan is, in fact, good cuz his numbers are, umm, good. Example #2: Independent Thought They're as reliant as a newborn babe on the coaches they snipe at for even the most elementary analysis of game planning and strategy. If Mack Brown told them with a straight face that we won the A&M game 43-17 because of the subtle influence of Matt Trissel, 87.5% of journalists would dutifully report it under a column entitled Do Not Discount the Trissel Factor. These are people almost incapable of forming their own opinions on anything. If they do form opinions of their own, they tend to be adequately summated in pithy cliche with little bearing on what actually happened in the game: Speed Kills! You Must Run The Ball To Win! Applewhite's Gutty Leadership! This lemming-like groupthink is complemented by a profound laziness, a lack of inquisitiveness and a commitment to accuracy as profound as the average A.I.S.D administrator. Example #3: Shameless Frontrunning Sports Illustrated wrote an article about Ricky Williams in his senior year: a deifying and adulatory public blowjob in which he was proclaimed an even better citizen than football player: full of love for his sisters and mother, the ultimate teammate, shy, down-to-earth, endearing. He Is All That's Good About Sports. 15 months later they wrote another article in which Ricky is now a boorish, sullen ingrate, full of hatred and venom; selfish, withdrawn and the poster child For All We Hate In Sports. A few months after that, a diagnosis of clinical depression now swings the pendulum to pity; have no doubt that a triumphant back-from-the-Abyss pre-packaged article awaits should Ricky stay healthy and gain 1,500 yards this year. Absurd. Example #4: Smug Incompetence I am not a good ice skater. If forced to ice skate, I would acknowledge this by falling, looking embarrassed, laughing at my pathetic balance and generally apologizing for my disruptive presence in the human race. Sports journalists, unlike most of us, have little sense of their own incompetence. And strangely, they are smug about it. Kirk Bohls. Micheal Wilbon. Jason Whitlock. Peter Vecsey. Watch them. Read their stuff. They're so used to hanging out with 18 year old athletes that they actually regard themselves as wise, bright and interesting. They've granted themselves the illusion of genius with 1040 SAT scores by hanging out with Prop 48's. And they're actually self-congratulatory about it. Why would Kirk Bohls write such a hurtful article about Chris Mihm - questioning his manhood and commitment and taking potshot after potshot - after he decided to go pro in the aftermath of a dissapointing LSU game, a game in which he showed real guts? Why? Because he can. Na na na na na na! What are you going to do about it? Like most of the new breed of smirking sportswriters, Bohls confuses provocation with being provocative. I could go on. But I won't. If I did, I might have to go to Eckerd's Drugs and get my blood pressure taken in their nifty free screening booth and I don't want to do that because the last time I did it the cuff went too tight and I was forced to scream until various Eckerd's employees (Rod, Tammy and Ken the pharmacist) freed me. Your thoughts?
I must admit that this may be the post you've done that I agree with most completely (and I find little to disagree with in any of them). I've long lamented the very existence of sportswriters with opinions, for much the same reasons you've cited. You may be too young even to be aware of this, but it was not always the case that sports sections were so thoroughly filled with unenlightened opinions. There was a time, in the dim, dark days of my youth before the moon and planets were fully formed, when sports reporters actually went to sporting events and reported on what happened there. Even columnists at the Post and Chronicle in those days in Swamp Country generally gave inside information (e.g., locker room conversations at various SWC schools) rather than simply unburden themselves of ill-formed opinions. Today, even when the sports section contains twice as much verbiage as it did in those days, it often has less than half the useful information. Frankly, I have no interest in the opinions of sportswriters. If I feel I need someone to tell me what I should think on every conceivable subject, I need look no farther than my wife to find a ready volunteer. If I ever find myself so desperate for opinions that I must turn to the sports page to obtain them, I'll know it's time for euthanasia.
Scipio I am a sportsfan. That being said, although I enjoy sports, I lack the hand/eye coordination to hit a baseball well, the quickness to cut in basketball or football. I enjoy sports, but the only ones I am good at are the ones where I can repeat the same motion, i.e. running, biking, etc. Therefore, I have not played many team sports, certainly not above the intra-mural level. Even then, I was the guy the floor team recruited because I would reliably show up, preventing a forfeit. That being said, I am now ready for the following confession (I hope the good it does my soul utweighs the shame it brings): When I watch football and basketball, I have not a clue about assignments and techniques. I watch the guy with the ball. As if at a tennis match, when the ball is snapped, I watch the QB go into the pocket, and when he throws it I my head rotates with the ball until caught or dropped. I could not identify a coverage if my life depended on it. All I know about blocking is I couldn't do it. Anyway, the point is that I suspect most reporters are like me. The only problem is that people expect them to know these things. They have these radio shows and they have to play to the mob, or someone may wander behind the curtain to check on the wizard. These guys can write. If they understood how sports really worked, they should be able to explain it to the masses. However, they don't and can't. Prediction: 1. Texas will have a good year. TAMU will have a bad one. There will be articles written about how Mack Brown "learned" from last year, as if this 55 year old coach is studying football for the 1st time. There will be articles about how the game has passed RC by, as if the avocation that is his lifework suddenly metamorphed while he was working on new tweaks to the swinging gate. You're right. These guys drive me crazy.
Sportswriters are as clever as (checks daily similie calender) a bowl of Dumb-o's. I may have a future. "To start press any key. Where's the any key?" - Homer Jay Simpson
"Scips," I've often said that YOU should be a sportswriter. Forget the weekly piece I did at one time for a now defunct independent site; I even attempted to get the owner to try to sway you on board. Oh well. Anyway, I feel a LOT of what you say is right on the mark. I've looked closely at much of the "work" I've seen coming from the more popular writers, and come away thinking "ya know, I can do as good a job as these guys; why am I not being given the same opp.?" And that's coming from a guy who had no real journalism in college. Hell, maybe I'm deluded---my wife thinks so at times anyway In all seriousness, you possess all the traits the vast majority of writers are lacking, including a deep understanding of the game, and certainly a better propensity for turning a clever phrase. Maybe your opinions are too strong and solidly placed to allow you to "fit in to their clique." (spelled the damn thing "cliche" at first---serious lack of sleep!) Anyway, interesting and unique post Scipio. Always great to hear from ya. "Go ask Alice, when she's 10 feet tall." Edited by SlickStreet on 6/2/01 05:53 PM.
Worse than sports WRITERS are sport BROADCASTERS, especially those dickheads on ESPN Radio. At least when you read the newspaper, you can skip over sports columns. When you're listening to ESPN Radio you have to wade through the ******** if you want to hear something abouts sports.
Scip: I've blabbed on forever about my distaste for their written pablum. As I've written before, another problem many have (in addition to the many you've outlined above) is that they don't really love sports. They were journalism majors in college when they loved sports. Most couldn't have obtained anything but the lowest news journalism jobs, and didn't care, as they loved sports anyway. Unfortunately, their love of sports faded for many as they got older (as it does for many non-sports writers). Others have seen the acclaim that their "news" brethren have gotten, are facing midlife crises, and want the same kudos. As a result, a huge number of sports journalists just really aren't interested in covering sports. They want to cover news -- which, in sports, means off the field crap surrounding players, management and owners. The details of what happens on the field, and the stategy behind it, take a back seat to boring, irrelevant stories about drug addiction, childhood adversity, traffic charges, lifestyle interests, performance enchancing drugs, player salaries, etc . . . In fact, they slap each other on the back for writing these non-sports "sports" stories more than anything else. Numerous awards are given to those churning out this crap. And the "news division" people who run newspapers love this stuff much more than actual writing about sports.
Scipio- One thing I think you may be forgetting is that sportswriting, like Hollywood movies, is written for mass consumption. Most readers are different from the people on this board- they are not fascinated with the intracies of different defensive schemes or interested in hearing about the low-profile players who are getting the job done. They want what they've come to expect from mass media, namely simple, cliched themes that put events into a framework they can understand. It's probably part of the overall dumbing-down of our culture. It's too bad there's not enough of a demand for substantive sportswriting. But that's why I spend a lot more time reading this board than I do reading sportswriters.
billu: Thanks. Regrettably, I'm too young to remember the old days first hand, but I do catch glimpses of the old ethic when I read Bert Sugar in Ring Magazine. The evolution of the various electronic media has deprived sportswriting of the need to act solely as a descriptive medium -- so I don't mind some opinions -- but the tabloid pablum we have today is simply absurd. Most of it is just so ill-informed. I thought Mark Wangrin from the AAS did an excellent job. He was always fair, consistent and well-informed. Unfortunately, he's now in San Antonio and I don't see his stuff much anymore. Taylor T-Room: Great post. No shame in being a layman. Watching hockey with my Canadian friend makes me feel like a moron, particularly when he has to remind me of the significance of the blue line for the fifth time. I'm a little more knowledgeable about baseball, but when I found myself recently at a Cubs game with a pal who had played college ball, I kept my mouth shut and enjoyed the game immensely because of the things he revealed to me. I don't think many sportswriters share that ethic. I do disagree with one thing you said though: a lot of these guys CAN'T write. And they exacerbate writing poorly by writing wrongly. Slick: Thanks for the compliment. I always enjoyed reading your columns under the old BevoBert nom de plume. It's quite possible the internet will undermine the sports media as it's already done the general media. I think most diehard fans realize they'll learn more about their favorite team on its bulletin board than by reading sportswriters. Interesting, given that we're all amateurs while this is how other people ostensibly make a living. uthornfan: You've got that right. Jim Cramer leaps to mind.
rpongett: Really a perceptive point. There has to be some resentment in a 40 year old man making 35K a year covering coaches and athletes who are more successful, less educated men who hold the journalists in some degree of contempt, if not suspicion. The only way to get kudos in the sports journalism world, and to be taken seriously by their more respected colleagues in other fields, is to write an expose of the grimy underbelly of the game or discover (invent) some broader societal context - almost always negative. All too often it falls in to the formula you describe. They get no acclaim for showing Texas fans how the Nebraska option works, besides, they don't have a ******* clue anyway. FatCat: That point is certainly not lost on me. It's a good one. However, there is a large popular audience that exists above the level of Jerry Springer. That's why The Sopranos exists and why the Coen Brothers have a career. I'm not asking for them to pen the Illiad about the '01 Longhorns -- I just want something on the level of the Discovery channel: mostly factual, of dubious scientific merit, informative, entertaining, educational. Now that's not so hard, is it?
Tell me you don't mean it, Scip. Christ, man, let a guy make a living. I just read Lindy's, and I promise I'm not offended. BTW, how do you feel about DCTF? OK, OK, I'm happy right now. I'll actually read your post in awhile, and get back with you later. (You have to admit that the MF is pretty fukking long to absorb on a Saturday night.) Doctors . . . . Can't live with'um. Can't live without'um.
I forgot. One sportswriter I do like... Doug Bedell of the Dallas Morning News. He brought down the ags almost single handedly. Of course, he did some real investigating.
Funny, I remember thinking back when I was a sportswriter that all those guys that complained about it 1. were jealous of my job, 2. couldn't write a complete, coherent sentence, 3. couldn't keep their love for their team or the sport from obscuring their viewpoint and/or 4. had no friggin' clue how to do my job, just as I had no friggin' clue how to do theirs. I see now that I was wrong... Lionel Hutz: "Mr. Simpson, you don't believe your son could be the leader of a murderous organized crime syndicate, do you?" Homer Simpson: "Well not the leader..."
Scipio, Mark Wangrin actually still lives in Austin. Hearst threw a bunch of money at some of its newspapers awhile back (including the Express-News) and they made Mark an offer he couldn't refuse. Mark covers in Austin the same things he did for the Statesman. But now, he just ships his stories to San Antonio. You can follow his reporting at: The Link I notice that during football season, Katy frequently headlines some of his Express-News articles. If the Statesman had any smarts, they try like hell to get Mark back, but we know what's happened to the Statesman's sports section the last year or two. They even think it's too much trouble to put the time zone next to away game times. Must be that journalistic IQ you talked about (or an incredible amount of naive colloquialism).
Scip- great post(as usual) i have to disagree on a few points. many sports writers are HORRENDOUS. the next time Kirk Bohls writes a story i agree w/ will be the first. Whitlock in KC has some HUGE hatred for TX(i have no idea why). they f**k up PLENTY of times, but they do have a 1/2 vote in the rankings. actually, their rankings are usually closer than the coaches(vote)poll. in reality, they're usually pretty close. yes, someone shits the bed every year(AL, Wisconson) and someone suprises(SO CAR, OR ST, etc.), but they usually aren't that far off. there are terrible sports writers, but looking at the entire segment, they're not that bad. i disagree. __________________________________________________ Recruiting DOES Matter
For someone who does not like sportswriters you sure do read a lot of their work. I say relax. It's only one persons opinion. You don't have to agree, but don't tell me not to. What if someone put your work up under the microscope? It is easier for sportswriters to write a negative opinion than a positive one. Just as you were able to write a lengthy negative opinion about sportswriters. Some are bad and some are good. I am glad we don't live in a freaking Utopia.
Consider the NBA: You have athletes who couldn't spell SAT being paid millions to throw a round ball at a hoop. Then you have reporters who have not made any contributions of their own to society -- their only gig is to tell everyone what *someone else* did, namely making the ball go through the hoop. Then you have fans who have somehow been conned into thinking it really matters. How many of you have tried to read those "Entertainment Weekly" columns, where the writer goes on and on about how Brad Pitt is rumored to be dating Whoopi Goldberg (or whoever), or that Barbra Streisand is putting off motherhood so that she can play the part of Anne Frank (or whatever). Excrutiating, isn't it? Yet entertainment columnists and sports columnists pretty much have the same job description. They don't call the sports department the "candy store of reporting" for nothing.
I like Dick Schaap. When I want to see reporting that is reflexively fellative, I read the financial press.
I think everyone here is missing the point. Being a newspaper man myself, I can tell you that the days of "chroniclers," as Scipio puts it, are going by the wayside, because such stories don't sell newspapers. So-called "hard-hitting" stories or well-known columnists do. Let me let you in on a little secret about the news business -- we now have to think about what sells. It's a philosophy that pervades all media. Check out your 6 o'clock news. You'll find some tawdry story about sex, murder or the like lead off the newscast, then 10 minutes later hear about the new tax cut. Which affects more lives? The tax cut. But what's going to draw in viewers? The tawdry story, and drawing viewers or readers is the name of the game. Why? Because without viewers or readers, you don't get advertising, and without advertising dollars, you can't stay in business. To say that it isn't right is Quixiotic argument. I work as an editor on the news side of a large newspaper in Ohio, and I've taken a few calls in my time about why we supposedly only print "bad news" and not "good news." We actually did a story count for month, labeling stories as "bad news" and "good news," and found that we printed more "good news" stories on than "bad." But, most of the "bad news" stories appeared on the front page. Why? Because that sold papers. Because people were interested in that. When our top story is crime-related, our sales shoot up. When it's about Joe Blow winning a community service award, the sales go down. It just doesn't sale. "Peace sells, but who's buying?" Which brings me back to the sportswriters debate. People can easily see a chronicle of the game on Sportscenter or their local TV station, and TV has the luxury of game highlights. If newspapers simply wrote about what happened in the game, then we're basically just rehashing what you saw earlier on TV. But newspapers have the luxury of having columnists whose opinions -- liked or not -- spark debate. Whether I like or dislike what Bohls says, I'm more likely to pick up a Statesman the day after a UT game just to see what he says. To boil down this long post, you should be opinionated about sportswriters -- that's what they want you to be. Agreeing or disagreeing with them is irrevelant. Columnists want to spark debate and make you read them, and it seems many of you are.
I agree with you 100%,and these are the dumbasses that vote on the teams that end up playing for the MNC, they do seem to vote with the intention of sparking a debate,but what else can we expect from journalism majors who probably never followed football untill the got a job as a sports editor.--utx
Lawyers are crooked. Accountants are dull. Athletes are stupid. Doctors have bad handwriting. Pilots are dashing.
StuckinOhio,You may be more likely to pick up a copy of Sunday's Statesman just to see what Kirk Bohls thinks about the prior day's Longhorn game, but not me. In fact, Bohls' sheer idiocy is one of the primary reasons I let my subscription to the AAS lapse several years ago. Nowadays, when I do pick up the occasional copy I simply skip his column. It's not worth the aggravation. I suppose I must be in the minority, since the AAS doesn't seem to care to address the issues that led to my current shortage of bird cage liner. I don't watch Jerry Springer or other shows of that ilk, and actively turn them off if given the chance, but the networks don't seem to care about that either. Nobody in charge has asked for my opinion, so all I can do is vote with my wallet. At least I have options. Hornfans and the like provides plenty of opportunity to satisfy my sports cravings, and cable offers other channels for my viewing pleasure. Let Bohls and his compatriots have their audience. I suspect they deserve each other. ----------------------- HOOK 'EM!
I don't think I can name a current, younger sportswriter that I like, but there are a few older ones. Mickey Herskowitz comes to mind, as does Blackie Sherrod. I have come to really despise the sportsbroadcaster now. Each tries to be so hip it's annoying. The overuse of initials is byond annoying. It started with MJ, now everybody is an initial. Enough already. I like Dick Schaap, but his son Jeremy needs to be weened and find another profession. The little wiesel and his lisp have to go. "Jeremy Schaap, E - Esch - P - N."
Bullseye, Blackie Sherrod was one of the my favorites, too. But to me, Lou Maysel was the best: a master of his craft who lifted his profession to an artform; a storyteller without exaggeration or lack of reliable source--in triplicate if necessary. Maysel could go off-the-record and could be trusted without exception. If Isaac Walton was the complete angler, Lou Maysel was the complete sportswriter. He appealed to the brain and the heart equally well. The brain read his thorough grasp of detail, his succinct handling of words, his entertaining spins which left no age or educational group out in the cold. The heart read his reverence for the humanity in sports, the humble and respectful spirit with which he addressed those inevitable failures and foibles. Above all, Maysel was entertaining but didn't write just to hear himself talk. Some people might pass off this sportswriter with he was of another era or his character-first-style wouldn't sell today. We're all worse for this kind of thinking. Scipio, have always admired your blend of fact and lore, too. Would you ever consider replacing Kirk Bohls?
A world robbed of John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix, and sure as hell Mike Lupica and Mel Kiper will live another 80 ******* years! "Hit it where they mow".....Harvey Penick
