With the stealth ombudsmanship of Don Ohlmeyer over (did it ever really begin?), ESPN was forced to announce today that his successor is not just one person but the whole freakin' Poynter Institute.
ESPN's promise of "transparency" could have been more proactive. As Ken Fang relates, it was the authors of a forthcoming behind-the-scenes book about The Bristol Behemoth who broke the news in the first place.
The best sportswriter you may never heard of -- especially if you live outside of D.C. -- is a far more intriguing story than the local NFL owner who's taking legal action about what he dared to write:
"The thing about McKenna is that there are far fewer sportswriters taking interest in the business-y aspects of sports than you might think. As a topic, the intersection of sport and business hasn’t yet been glommed onto in the way that, say, the intersection of showbiz and business are. Yes, there is a trade publication called Sports Business Daily, and there are some reporters that focus on it, like Richard Sandomir at the New York Times and Darren Rovell at CNBC. But there is no Nikki Finke, the relentless blogger who founded Deadline Hollywood, in the sports world. That is: a star blogger, prized by readers and feared by story subjects (in Finke’s case, readers and targets are generally the same people, but never mind) in equal measure, who focuses on the bottom-line and backroom shenanigans over what’s on screen, and who does so ferociously enough to create a distinct gravitational pull within that business.
Funny, that. Sports and money are certainly two of the hottest topics on the planet — and certainly the first runners-up when it comes to hot topics for men — but precious few have delved into the intersection of the two at a local level with the verve that McKenna has."
• The less said about Jason Whitlock's low-class, thoroughly unprofessional rant on Friday against his former employer, the Kansas City Star, the better. And ditto for FanHouse columnist Jay Mariotti, who was arrested over the weekend on charges of domestic assault against his girlfriend.
That said, forgive me this indulgence into the gutter of my profession that I hope I won't repeat all that often. I wish I hadn't succumbed to the temptation to say a few words, but I have.
Whitlock bade farewell to the newspaper business in his usual bombastic fashion, but only after he had lined up a lucrative deal to jump full-bore to FoxSports.com, where he's been moonlighting. For Mariotti, a regular noisebox on ESPN's "Around the Horn" inanity, the knives from his Tribesmen are out, no less from Whitlock, who had some crass fun on Twitter about it all. The same goes for the Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com. The Miami Herald's Dan Le Batard, who like his compatriots seems these days to be more interested in writing about them than actual sports, thinks those wallowing in Mariotti's misery are frightening.
Whitlock has enormous writing talent and not long ago in this space I commended him for this piece on the abusive treatment of a gay baseball umpire. He may very well have some legitimate beefs with Star management, and many of his points about the newspaper business are spot-on. But mindful of the thousands of displaced journalists, most of whom have left the profession for good, Whitlock's lament smacks of crocodile tears. Where was he when his former Star colleagues were shown the door? What exactly was his vision for the future of that paper's sports section that he said was rejected? He doesn't elaborate. I would like to have known what it was.
His three-hour radio tirade -- simalcast on local TV complete with catered barbecue he demanded as part of his agreement to go on the air -- delved into social, cultural and political issues that belie his self-described schtick of being a brave, bold, original voice. If Whitlock wants to traverse the terrain where Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly reside -- and he mentioned both of them by name -- it's a tired, crowded, well-worn path where little that's new or insightful is said.
Whitlock's views on race, culture and class are really nothing special, even if he insists otherwise. He's no Ralph Wiley or Mike Royko, two of the outstanding contrarian sportswriters he openly admires. It was Deadspin -- yes, that Deadspin -- that made the quintessential point about Whitlock the unremarkable non-sports pundit:
"Jason Whitlock is Richard Hofstadter, if Ponderosa were Columbia University."
Actually, Whitlock is a leader of the loudmouth 24/7 sports media Tribe that is being rewarded -- handsomely -- for never shutting up. His chief talent, along with Mariotti, Doyel, et al, is to be blustery enough to generate quite a bit of attention. Their obsessions with one another, and with themselves, overshadow the work that they initially were lauded for, and that's what's different and lamentable now. At one point on Friday, Whitlock declared that "a journalist, by nature, burns bridges." As soon as I had retweeted that, one of my followers offered the proper correction that probably will remain oblivious to Whitlock:
"No, a journalist seeks the truth. All other protocols secondary."
I have just one simple request, realizing it may be too much to ask. Writing as a sports fan here and not as a journalist, all I want from these self-aggrandizing "stars" is only one thing:
Tell me a story.
Make it so good, so compelling, so unforgettable, that I'll keep coming back for more.
And get the hell out of the way of this most excellent story.
Because it most decidedly is not about you.
Quit trying to shock me with vulgarity, or by being self-consciously "provocative" or by throwing hash against the wall to see what sticks.
Just tell me a story.
And make it a good one.
P.S.: If you want to refine the art of the elegant put-down, you'd be well-advised to read Roger Ebert's magnificent take on Mariotti's noisy departure from the Chicago Sun-Times. That, gentlemen, is how you do it. Especially since it prompted a most expected response from Mariotti.
• The column Dave Kindred writes for the National Sports Journalism Center website is always a must-read for me, but perhaps no more so than his latest piece. It's a rather good denuncation of Dan Le Batard's recent assertion in the Miami Herald that the endless 24/7 news cycle has not only dumbed-down the sports journalism profession, but made its practitioners even lazier than they've long been stereotyped.
There is a grain of truth when Le Batard says that:
"It appears to be getting dumber and meaner, a vicious combination. And then, with the instantaneousness of new media merging with the insecurity of old media, the pressure to be first is encroaching upon the duty to be right, never mind just.
"The result is more reckless, and less credible, than anything we've ever seen.
"It leaves sports figures vulnerable and exposed in more than one way, as Portland Trail Blazer Greg Oden learned."
But that's not what got Kindred's "knickers in a decided twist," as he admits while writing between rounds at the PGA Championship. It's the snide "toy department" jabs that those of us in this business have had to endure, and quite often in our own newsrooms, that are coming from within. Le Batard, now removed from the daily grind of sportswriting, gleefully piles on:
"If you consume sports media, you know the best-and-brightest don't go into my profession. They become doctors, lawyers, scientists, owners, whatever. Sports tends to be the place where people go to rest their minds from heavy lifting and . . ."
This is where Kindred, who previously hasn't been afraid to take issue with fellow members of the Tribe, really lays into Le Batard:
"Covering a major golf championship is work at a high level of sports journalism. None of the men and women here for newspapers, magazines, websites, television, radio, blogs – none arrived by being the lazy, ignorant, hypocritical incompetents of Le Batard’s broadbrush insult. For that matter, Le Batard is the antithesis of the stereotype he created in the unfortunate column in question here. Edwin Pope, forever the Herald’s star in sports, long ago told me that Le Batard earned his column by being 'bright as hell,' ambitious, competitive, creative, 'and working like a dog.'
"What’s not to like about a guy like that?
"What’s not to like about Sally Jenkins? The best sports columnist at the Washington Post, she’s at Whistling Straits traipsing up and down steep sand dunes in pursuit of Tiger. I once asked her father, Dan, what made her so good.
“ 'She’s married to the craft,' he said. "All the good ones are."
I posted Le Batard's column on my Facebook page a few days ago, a bit too busy at the time to comment but realizing that I and others had been thoroughly insulted for passionately choosing this as our life's work. But as a fellow Tribesman noted, it's easier for Le Batard to say this now that he's not having to hustle for locker room quotes. To cite Allen Iverson, Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds and Terrell Owens was more than over the top:
"LeBatard is growing into a greater apologist the more he approaches celebrity and further he gets from being a writer. I think it's hilarious that he left journalism to have a talk show about nothing, yet feels comfortable wading back in and commenting as a journalist. He's becoming harder to stomach and I'm generally a fan."
Quoting Mark Cuban as saying sportswriters were "the dumbest guys in the room" is a bit rich for Le Batard, too. This is the same Mark Cuban who not long ago suggested that pro sports teams should hire such writers because of the decline of newspaper coverage. Kindred didn't note that, but he did add this broadside against the Dallas Mavericks owner:
"As if there aren’t idiots aplenty filing lawsuits, defrauding Medicare, and paying Dirk Nowitzki $80 million to keep on not winning anything . . ."
How's that for an old-school sportswriting barb?
• The usually low editorial standards at Deadspin don't normally generate much than a snicker and head-shaking. But Bill Krueger of Poynter Online wonders if the snark-infested sports site went over the line when it published a post about Brett Favre allegedly transmitting photos of his private parts to a New York Jets sideline "reporter."
Not because it published a post contending the quarterback allegedly transmitted photos of his private parts, but rather that Deadspin blogger A.J. Daulerio broke the confidence of his source. Jenn Sterger doesn't exactly fit the definition of a traditional journalist, having been a former Florida State "Cowgirl." Still, you have to wonder what she was thinking passing this along to the likes of Deadspin, asking for confidentiality and expecting her request to be honored. And then getting this e-mail from Delaurio, as cited by Krueger:
"I'm very close to running your Favre allegations today. I've spoken to the Jets about this. So let me know how you want to proceed, please. I'd prefer you were on the record about this stuff, but I understand if you don't want to be. However, I do have our email conservations we had and, frankly, that's enough to get this started. Not trying to dick you over, but, there was no way I was going to sit on it forever, either.
"So lemme know."
Lovely choice of threatening words, eh?
Le Batard was wasting his energies in the wrong precincts of the sports media universe.
There's still more griping about the alleged paucity of women's sports on TV over at Salon, which has now given us two takes on this subject with no more perspective than the thinly researched survey it cites:
"Do men have a greater inherent interest in sports or is it the result of cultural influence? If there were more female athletes featured in TV sports coverage, would more women watch sports? It may be impossible to untangle these various factors, but, as the USC study smartly points out, there is no denying that TV sports coverage not only reflects viewer interest, it also helps to generate it."
Readers answer this nonsense rather sharply, with one reply pointing out one of the sad legacies of sports feminism:
"It's all boring and PC and nicey nice and no surprises or controversial players or plays."Women athletes just ain't got flavor. They've been PC'd and role-modeled out of any suggestion of it.
"Nowadays you see some male athletes shilling for marijuana reform, even.
"Would a female athlete ever step out of the PC role-model line to do something like that?
"Eff no. They're as boring and authority-sucking in real life as they are on the court or on the field."
The reader would have done well to stop after the second sentence. But as I wrote here last week, to focus on a small handful of sports highlights shows to the exclusion of the vast array of women's sports programming on the ESPN networks, Fox Sports Net and other outlets is to ignore its astonishing growth and availability just in the last decade alone.
Last night is a good example. I caught the end of the Los Angeles-Tulsa WNBA game on ESPN2, then switched over to ESPN to watch some of the USA-Sweden women's soccer friendly. As I was doing this, I didn't think it the least bit remarkable, because I've been channel-surfing like this to watch women's sports for several years. It's become a routine in my life and my work as a women's sports journalist, and any fan eager to watch his or her favorite team or an academic interested in actual empirical research can do likewise with little trouble.
Yet here's a claim that ESPN's 2007 contract renewal with the WNBA is "looking like hush money to keep the league in the dark."
Not a single ESPN official was quoted in this story, and there's no indication one was contacted. Say what you will about the Worldwide Leader's LeBron-A-Thon, but its expanded portfolio of women's sporting events is hard to beat. ACC women's basketball will be the next beneficiary following the recent announcement of that league's $1.86 billion multi-sport deal. It's not quite as lucrative as the SEC package, but women's sports is not being cheated.
(The extremely lucrative Big Ten Network -- which paid out a reported $8 million this year to each of the league's 11 schools -- devotes 50 percent of its game programming to women's sports.)
This morning, ESPNU aired the USA-Ghana match in the Under-20 Women's World Cup. We're at the point where women's age group competitions are being shown on national television, and the Cassandras who fixate their ire elsewhere are missing some pretty good games.
But that would shatter their assertions that women's sports are invisible. To turn on the telly is to discover otherwise.
• On the global edition of The New York Times website today, Richard Bernstein pens his "Letter from America" piece on the subject of the Quinnipiac Title IX trial, trying to explain for non-American readers the curiosities of both cheerleading as a sport and the U.S. gender equity law that confounds natives such as himself thusly:
"It’s easy to understand the feelings of those who brought the suit over the loss of their sport. But the case has provoked the argument among some Title IX critics that there’s something a bit off, 38 years after the passage of the law and the tremendous progress that’s been made in women’s athletics, for a college to get sued by the A.C.L.U. and accused of discrimination for essentially trying to balance its budget."
I'm curious to know why don't know why this item wasn't in the Times sports section. Could it be that it is not the usual -- ahem -- cheerleading, or should I say uncritical coverage occasionally found there on this topic?
Nothing like tackling the dicey nexus of women, sports, gender, their bodies, media treatment of them, etc., with triple-figure temperatures all up and down the East Coast, and writing this with the air conditioning turned off. I didn't do this for dramatic effect, but rather, I'm saving up for the whopper of an electric bill to come.
What follows has further crystallized ideas I've had about these matters for close to two decades now, and shortly I will be realizing them elsewhere, and at long, long last, on a different site.
• My avid Twitter follower Clarence Gaines passes along this link to a story in Harper's Bazaar about newly crowned Wimbledon champion Serena Williams, her new bob and how she finally came out from under the shadows of her equally famous sister:
"I was 23 when I realized that I wasn't Venus. She's totally different. I'm super-curvy. I have big boobs and this massive butt. She's tall and she's like a model and she fits everything. I was growing up, wanting to be her, wanting to look like her, and I was always fitting in her clothes, but then one day I couldn't. But it's fine. Now I'm obviously good, but it's a weird thing."
We need more women athletes with such bracing and refreshing honesty, who accept their bodies as they are, their femaleness, sex appeal and yes, their glamour! Perhaps it's easy for Serena given her place in women's tennis, but unlike Anna Kournikova, she's actually won tournaments. Still, women athletes in other sports (example: Brandi Chastain) have caught plenty of flak from sports feminists. Instead of proudly displaying their bodies as healthy examples of women's increasingly powerful athleticism, they are seen as victims:
"There are just a lot of men there, including, I'm sure, in the newsroom, who just kind of resent women's success. And so to sexualize her and sort of treat her as a pinup is a way of cutting women down to size."
That was from a media studies professor 10 years ago. Such maternalistic views -- these women don't realize how they're being used -- have only hardened since then.
• LPGA golfer Cristie Kerr, 32, the top-ranked American player and recently the winner of the LPGA Championship, admits to The New York Times that she is delaying the start of a family to help the struggling tour. Says her husband, quite revealingly:
“There’s a little pressure on her. The LPGA needs its stars right now.”
The complicated issues facing Kerr, as well as Lorena Ochoa, Annika Sorenstam and Nancy Lopez before her, are agonizing. This week, Kerr will be one of the biggest names at the U.S. Women's Open, which is only one of 13 official domestic LPGA events.
• I've been sparring with UC-Riverside "gender studies" professor Jennifer Doyle and those who've been railing about a Nike U.S. soccer ad that doesn't contain any females. Jenna Pel, the proprietor of the women's soccer blog All White Kit, has been very polite to let us do this on her turf, so I'm promising to be on my best behavior.
• Doyle, who has some occasionally interesting posts on From A Left Wing, her soccer-culture-politics blog, has been grousing about the paltry coverage of women's sports on television highlight shows. Her citation of a rather bogus survey by Michael Messner of Southern Cal -- naturally, another gender studies professor -- and an uncritical Q & A with sports-and-politics poseur Dave Zirin ofThe Nation are typical of the monotonously mournful takes on women and sports that I'm trying to combat with my forthcoming project.
The truth is that the airing of women's sports is flourishing on television, relative to the situation even five years ago. Messner, et al, could have looked at how ESPN has vastly increased the number of women's college sporting events with its women's college hoops and Olympic sports package. I've been amazed at how much women's softball is shown on its networks, including during the regular season. ESPN.com has dedicated year-round writers who follow these sports very passionately. AOL FanHouse has added two women's hoops writers who, like me, are refugees of the newspaper business. I belong to a new blogging network, WomenTalkSports, that is the first of its kind and where I probably I aggravate other bloggers there on a daily basis. Doyle, among others. I've also appeared on Women's Sports Talk Radio on a few occasions to talk about women's hoops.
These are just a few indications that those journalists, bloggers and fans of women's sports are creating their own media, just as disenchanted American soccer fans have been doing. Whining about the mainstream media didn't do them any good; now they've created some of the smartest, most passionate sources of soccer news, information and commentary that exists on the Web, and are building vibrant communities of fellow travelers around them. Niche sports have never had a better opportunity to thrive as they can online, and the chances for those following women's sports are there for the taking.
Alas, Messner sidesteps all this as it does not conveniently fit his perpetually gloomy narrative. He presumes that sports TV highlight shows have the same force they did before the current on-demand media world in which fans can download video highlights of games they want, and not sit through a long, commercial-laden program. To throw local television news into the mix is also dubious, since the time devoted to all sports in that format has been vanishing.
Also missing from his analysis is the fact that some men's sports, such as pro lacrosse and Arena football, don't make the highlight shows any more than the women. It's rare to see regular highlights from horse tracks and only the biggest boxing matches get any coverage at all. These are niche sports, and regardless of what you think about the mainstream media's increasing emphasis on "big" stories -- such as the absurd papparazi tracking LeBron James' every move -- niche sports have never rated much time on highlight shows.
Until the WNBA, LPGA, et al, generate more of a buzz among the audience that watches SportsCenter and other highlight shows, the disparities will continue to be great. This is the unforgiving media world where audience and readership size matter, and I can speak from experience, having pushed for more coverage of women's sports, with varying degrees of success.
• The International Association of Athletics Federations on Tuesday cleared South African runner Caster Semenya to return to women's track and field, but didn't reveal any of its methods, nor did it comment at all on the matter. While Semenya's privacy is a concern here, the IAAF didn't provide any guide as to how it resolves such sensitive matters as determining gender, and how it might proceed if something like this happens in the future:
"Speculation as to what that 'process' might have entailed has been rife, with unconfirmed reports suggesting that rather than waiting for the results of a gender verification test – as had been claimed by the IAAF – she has been undergoing hormone-based treatment for what is widely accepted to be an intersex condition. As Pierre Weiss, the IAAF general secretary, indiscreetly termed it: 'She is a woman but maybe not 100%.' "
• Another women's sports observer with a reductively angry, dour gender-studies bent is Anna Clark at Salon, and her predictable angst over Semenya is amply rebutted by more than a few wise readers. Clark, of course, never responds to any of her critics.
• The major league debut of pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg for the Washington Nationals tonight has been covered breathlessly ever since his callup from the minors a week or so ago, but I don't believe anyone can top this long, rapturous "Christmas Day" piece of giddiness from Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnanski.
Perhaps Strasburg will be everything Posnanski and the other fan boys of the American sports media say he is. But this hype is absolutely over the top, and Posnanski realizes that. He just can't help himself:
"We’re different not because we hype Strasburg — you see the long history of hype in baseball — but maybe because we so desperately want to believe the hype. We want something new. We want something exciting. We want something fresh. The sports world is inescapable now — 24-hour news, 24-hour talk, 24-hour message boards, 24-hour blogs, 24-hour highlights, 24-hour updates, 24-hour golf channels and tennis channels and baseball channels and football channels and NBA channels and classic sports channels — and so we find ourselves lost in endless and meaningless discussions in June about whether Brett Favre will play another season and who will be the preseason No. 1 team in college football and where LeBron James will sign. They are meaningless because we don’t know, but we have to fill the air, have to punch at the uncertainty, have to excite the senses. Our sports world, in so many ways, feels like Christmas afternoon — the toys are unwrapped, and they are exactly what we wanted and they are great fun… but there are also too many of them, and many are not as good as we hoped, and a couple broke right away and even the best ones, after a while, can feel ordinary. "And, again, we long for the next Christmas morning and the endless possibilities of a box wrapped in paper."
Aside from the self-justification at hand here -- the writer wants you to know he is just feeding the beast, don't blame him for giving you what you want -- is it too much to give the kid a chance to breathe just a little bit before pronouncing him the second coming of Walter Johnson?
• I've got a blog post in the works about all of this, especially as it relates to the dearth of highlight coverage of women's sports. At the National Sports Journalism Center site, Eric Deggans follows a meme started last week, stemming from so-called "feminist scholarship," about how horrible all this is. But Deggans, the media writer for the St. Petersburg Times, smartly points out that this exclusion is not just limited to gender:
"Sports journalists should be concerned over the myopic focus of reports on just three professional sports leagues, even at local TV stations. For years, we have heard that the local audiences can get pro sports news from ESPN and online – so why should local TV sports departments keep focusing on the same stuff as the big boys? "The study also noted that sports departments can spend precious minutes focused on trivial stories such as supremely unhealthy hamburgers on sale at a minor league baseball park or basketball star Shaquille O’Neal’s contest with a 93-year-old woman to pick the most NCAA basketball tournament winners."
I had no sooner posted this last week about breathless media moralizing and athletes charged with violent, gender-oriented crime that the Washington Post's Sally Jenkins reopened the "code of silence" theme. It's as though nothing has been learned from the worst media excesses of the Duke lacrosse debacle.
Jenkins recounts the murder charge against Virginia lacrosse player George Huguely, as well as episodes involving Lawrence Taylor and Ben Roethlisberger, and questions whether women should fear male athletes.
With all due to respect to one of the sharpest sports commentators out there, and one of my favorites, I have only this brief response: It is not "reasonable to ask." It is slanderous. It is a blanket condemnation of the majority of male athletes who, despite the supposedly debauched sports culture they inhabit, commit no crimes against women, men, children or animals, and don't engage in otherwise repulsive acts.
(Thanks to John Gasaway, maven of the fabulous Basketball Prospectus, for the heads-up on this. I've been called a lot of things, but "Nostradamus" is a first.)
I suppose I'd rather be a seer than a moralizer, judging by the pontifications coming from The Tribe this week on a variety of other topics that can't seem to escape haughty pronouncements.
The sports news cycles have been filled the last couple days with the re-vote mandated by the Associated Press for its NFL defensive rookie of year award after the 2009 winner, linebacker Brian Cushing of the Houston Texans, tested postive for performance-enhancing drugs and landed a four-game suspension.
The writers voted to let Cushing keep his honor, which created even more outrage:
"To me, you just told millions of kids that it’s OK to cheat and there will be no repercussions if you’re caught."
But is that really the job of The Tribe? As prone as we all are to scolding bad behavior, the NFL is responsible for sending that message in the case of Cushing. It just took a while.
So bravo to Gary Myers of the New York Daily News for explaining why he didn't change his vote in favor of Cushing:
"There is something wrong with him testing positive in September, the appeals process dragging through the season and beyond and the suspension not being handed down until last week. The fact is, the NFL put the AP panel in the untenable position of voting on Cushing when it knew he tested positive months earlier.
"Why should I clean up the NFL's mess?
"The AP should adopt a policy that automatically disqualifies players who test positive, even if the positive test is not made public until after the season. It must be a uniform policy."
Some badly needed common sense in a thicket of self-righteousness. Another, very unlikely one: Can't Stop the Bleeding, in rounding up the reaction from inside The Tribe.
And when Deadspin is a voice of reason, well:
"Surely they know, on some level, that if it weren't for the contributions of various chemical synthetics — some legal, some banned, some banned but nevertheless countenanced — the NFL season wouldn't last beyond mini-camp.
"It's an impossibly brutal game, and these writers know it, and all their fatuous outrage over Cushing's award is just a lame attempt to pretend they're covering something more noble than an organized bar fight."
But it's going to be hard to top Dave Zirin, who continues his bombastic crusade for boycotting sporting events in Arizona because of the controversial new anti-immigration law in that state.
Zirin, who's the sports editor of The Nation, uses his many media platforms to proclaim that sports can and should "be an effective platform for social justice:"
"Maybe this will be the start of a new trend where teams see the unifying benefits of going out on a political limb and taking a stand. Maybe players across the sports leagues who oppose SB 1070 will be inspired to come together in a common organization and demand Arizona cease the imposition of 'Juan Crow' on the Latino population. Maybe the major sports unions, all of whom have voiced opposition to the bill, will release a joint statement saying they will support any player or team who boycotts the state as long as SB 1070 is on the books. Maybe this is all utterly unrealistic. But it seems a hell of a lot more possible this morning than it did last night. Viva Los Suns."
Hey, look. I also find that law repugnant, and I think it rather plucky of "Los Suns" to protest with their impromptu name change. Bully for them and good luck against the Lakers.
And I get how Zirin has fashioned himself as the social conscience of sports journalists. There's a long history there, most notably former New York Times columnist Robert Lipsyte. He's one of the writers Michael Novak pegged in "The Joy of Sports" as coming from a generation influenced by the social tumult of the 1960s and viewing the world of sports through that prism:
"Sports are symbolic realities, but somehow in these writers sports begin to symbolize political evils. It's as though their rage against the nation, and perhaps against themselves, had been misdirected into sports."
Neither do I dispute the social impact of sports, especially because of my many years of covering women's sports. I realize how effective the sports boycott was against Arizona in the 1980s in the wake of the legislature's refusal to make Martin Luther King's birthday a state holiday.
But the current wave of moralizing from The Tribe -- an offense to which I've pleaded guilty myself -- smacks of a troubling new level of sanctimony that appears to be getting worse in the age of the 24/7 news cycle.
And we need that like The Nation needs a sports editor.
A college lacrosse player is tragically found dead on campus, an NFL Hall of Famer is charged with raping an underage girl and two hot blonde TV types with sports connections are putting on a rather good "catfight."
In the dangerous, eerie confluence of sex, sports, violence and pop culture, some in the national media have been having a field day.
And not in a good way.
George Huguely sits in a jail cell in Charlottesville, Va., charged with the murder of Yeardley Love, a young woman he used to date and who like him played lacrosse for the Cavaliers. Unlike the Duke lacrosse fiasco of four years ago, the reporting on this developing story generally has been sobering and responsible.
Unfortunately, commentators of the hyperfeminist variety haven't hesitated to jump to conclusions about the nature of male athletes, make wild, broad sociocultural generalizations and stigmatize an entire sport.
A couple of tame versions here, and here. A nasty, snarling and scurrilous one here.
A national sportswriter Tweeted almost instantly after the story broke that Huguely attended the same prep school as the three Duke lacrosse suspects. He did not mention that Duke charges were later proven to be false and the prosecutor was disbarred.
When I replied to him about his omissions, and those of some media outlets, here's how he responded:
"I only have 140 characters! And none of the notorious was ME."
A follow-up Tweet could have solved that dilemma.
Nor have some news organizations that essentially convicted the Duke players before the truth was revealed offered much in the way of a mea culpa.
Yet the Duke story still haunts what is transpiring today. Huguely has just been charged, but the gender/cultural aspect of this story threatens to overwhelm the heartbreaking crime that was committed, and the question of what Virginia officials may have known about Huguely's past troubles.
For some, it's impossible to resist going back down the Duke rathole.
When one of the best sportswriters in the business (and someone with whom I'm acquainted) Tweets this, it's more than lamentable. It reflects the go-go world of 24/7 media, to be sure, and to feed our insatiable lust for scandal.
The sagas of Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger are fading away, and there's never a short supply of athletes whose behavior -- alleged and verified -- justifies the recent creation of TMZ's sports site. Ditto for Huffington Post.
Excellent timing for them. But for truth, probity and thoughtfulness, not so much.
The arrest of linebacking legend Lawrence Taylor a few days later has involved more of the same. The accusations are sordid, and growing worse with every new revelation.
But they are accusations.
Another excellent sportswriter instantly demanded that Taylor be booted out of Canton if he's convicted. Should we put 'em in the athletic Hall of Shame -- along with O.J.? You decide!
They are only accusations, but that didn't stop an anti-prostitution organization from claiming the Taylor case is "yet another example of the most powerful, respected and privileged among us demonstrating the normalization of the sexual exploitation of women and girls."
Can we all calm down here?
Lord knows L.T. hasn't been a prince. Many moons ago, he threatened to choke a beat scribe, who seems to be proud of the incident. If I had been a witness, I'm not sure whose side I might have taken.
But this breathless, insane churning of speculation, sleaze and character analysis has been missing one very important element:
The actual guilt or innocence of these athletes.
Can we wait to find out what really happened, and not pontificate on what fits a convenient narrative or serves a propaganda interest -- even if it's a worthy cause?
Is that too much to ask?
These are very serious criminal allegations, but nobody's been convicted of or pleaded guilty to anything.
What's being played out daily, almost around the clock, has little to do with what these athletes may or may not have done.
Instead, the compunction is to engage in morality plays based on what we think of them as human beings -- in the context of the charges brought against them -- and about what their alleged actions indicate about the culture of sports they inhabit.
How justice is resolved in their legal cases is of incidental interest.
There is a place to discuss morality in sports, although I'm amused when some members of my sportswriting tribe try to take the lead on this one.
Maybe I should have just sat back and relaxed, like Jason Whitlock -- another top-notch writer -- and taken in the Elizabeth Hasselbeck vs. Erin Andrews imbroglio.
He likes to pride himself on being more courageous and provocative than his rivals, and for the most part he is. Not here, however.
This is funny, free-and-easy and more than borderline sexist, but I'm not really complaining about the latter.
It's an unfortunately typical example of a sports media culture that too frequently descends into the trivial when not obsessed with trying to show how serious it is about examining athletes through a sociological prism.
This is mostly hot air and conjecture, all designed to draw attention, ramp up page views and stir "debate."
Occasionally, I'm guilty of it too. Perhaps this is one of those occasions.
At least Whitlock is honest here in admitting that "it's depressing sifting through the muck of someone else’s failure."
With all due respect, why does he assume it's incumbent upon him to do that?
It might be too much to ask whether he, and the rest of us in this profession, should stop and rethink what it is we're supposed to be writing, Tweeting, blogging and talking about.
About what drew us to writing about sports in the first place.
Sometimes I've forgotten what that is.
A bad week all around.
* The provocative Alabama sports talk show host Paul Finebaum has a terrific interview in today's Mobile Press-Register with former SEC commissioner Harvey Schiller, who's the real daddy of present-day college athletics expansion. Schiller recounts how close the SEC came to snagging Texas, along with Arkansas and South Carolina, when it first expanded in 1991. Then the boys over at the Texas state house prevented the Longhorns from bolting because the Aggies weren't going with them.
Schiller also recounts how then-NCAA boss Walter Byers called him an "SOB" for daring to create an SEC championship game.
* Andy Staples of SI.com rounds up last week's BCS meetings, including the implications of Big Ten expansion on the SEC, among other leagues.
* The New York Times' Pete Thamel writes about football's role in shaping the future of the Big East, something that doesn't sit well with longtime Syracuse men's basketball coach Jim Boeheim:
"Boston College is in the A.C.C., and no one cares about it there. They have hung on in football, but Miami and Florida State will get strong again and they’ll be an afterthought in football.
I don’t think we’ll do well in the Big Ten. It’s possible, but I don’t think we’d do well at all. I just don’t see how Syracuse or Rutgers fits in with Iowa and Illinois.”
* Media observer Eric Deggans, writing at the National Sports Journalism Center website, explains that the CBS/Turner deal to air the NCAA men's basketball tournament illustrates how "big sporting events have gotten bigger than even network TV can handle:"
"While broadcast networks struggle to balance a full week’s worth of programming on an economic model that’s sinking fast, cable channels once seen as focused diversions to the overly broad fare on the networks are getting pretty broad themselves.
"Sports has become a major part of that transformation, with cable channels offering the shelf space and pocketbooks to feature multiple nights of popular contests, while broadcasters must shoehorn the biggest events into their relatively limited programming openings."
He also points out the steep hike in cable fees that are expected with Turner's entry into the NCAA fray, along with the arrival of Conan O'Brien:
"So fans better hope the NCAA board of directors votes Thursday to go along with the expanded, 68-team field. Because sports fans deserve maximum bang for their buck if they’re paying the association’s tab more directly."
