Virus

There is probably no more undervalued component of business than organizational behavior, save for ethics. When managers, executives and owners set out to add (or sadly these days, subtract) personnel, the core objective is to find the most capable performers of tasks possible. No matter how much we believe in being über-talented individuals with über-reserves of awesomeness, the reality is that talent > awesomeness.

Now there’s no disputing the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace, in fact, this Scribe certainly admits to having a laughably higher EQ than IQ. Emotional intelligence shifts morale for better or worse, allowing or discouraging employees to utilize their full skill sets. However, nothing will cost an employer, regardless of size and scope more revenue, profits, prestige and clients than incompetence or negligence of duties.

Constantly, there’s chatter about teams bringing in ‘players of good character’, ‘savvy veterans’, ‘lockerroom guys’ and my favorites, ‘winners’ and ‘leaders’. You’d be led to believe that every team is like the scene in Kindergarten Cop as ‘Ah-nold’… err, John Kimble has to give discipline to a classroom full of rambunctious four and five year olds.

Yet, for those of us who have been around these teams in some capacity, this isn’t the case, at least while on the job. Despite the singular focus of becoming an elite athlete that they all exhibit and the transgressions that a few carry with them, there are such diverse personalities throughout every roster that the irascible tend to be offset, if not overwhelmed by the affable, reserved and cautious.

That’s the intrigue of Terrell Owens’ fourth stop in his eventual Hall of Fame career. In one of the most surprising acquisitions in recent NFL history, the Buffalo Bills signed the wideout to a one-year deal this weekend. Surprising not in that he was signed or as ensuing details emerge that his agent Drew Rosenhaus may have been 100% right about the interest around the league, but in that T.O. is actually in Buffalo.

Much has been made about his previous stops and deservingly so. His feuds with team personnel are NFL parables on the relationships between coaches and players, between teammates and between players and management. Yet, as many have and will continue to write about until the end of time, the tantalizing talents he possesses, no matter how much of a pain in the ass he may be, are hard for any struggling team to pass up. It’s akin to what most of us go through in our professional and/or academic lives.

When a company brings in ‘that guy’ or has to deal with the affectionately-labeled Dragon Lady in order to jumpstart productivity, the immediate reaction may be moans and groans. This person’s well-chronicled history – be it through news of him or her being a change agent at other firms or word of mouth of interactions with industry colleagues – will present challenges to the current employees. How will this person screw up our lives may be the initial thought, but will this person bring us to the promised land – greater profits, improved quality of work, revamped company culture, stability, etc. – is the fundamental issue that all will consider in some degree.

And so like many others for the next few months, we’ll ask if Ralph Wilson made the right move for his team by bringing in someone considered a locker-room leper in San Francisco, jaded and jealous in Philadelphia and a distrustful distraction in Dallas. We’ll wonder if the mercenary-like one year deal will remind T.O. how much of a precarious position he is now in because of his controversies over the course of his career; that a team will rather use him for short-term gains and force his combative persona to earn a long-term commitment.

We’ll wonder not only about his relationship with Trent Edwards (and for argument’s sake, current backup J.P. Losman), but with Lee Evans, Marshawn Lynch and the rest of his new teammates.

We’ll wonder if Owens’ arrival really helps the Bills supplant AFC East division champion Miami, the defensively-retooled New York Jets and a Patriots team with Tom Brady’s imminent return to the gridiron.

We’ll wonder if Wilson and head coach Dick Jauron can convince him that at least for 2009 that he can trust them to deal with him fairly.

Most of all, we’ll wonder if Owens – despite having a few good years of elite play at the age of 35 – finally gets it or is truly a virus that can cripple the structure and identity of a franchise, as was the case in the past.

Say What?!?!: An interesting take from Jason Cole from Yahoo! Sports.

Thanks

2008 presented all sorts of wonderful and astonishing moments in not only the sports arena, but anywhere there was a camera, a voice recorder and an associated media outlet. Yet, the past 365 (soon to be 366) days also gave us head-scratchers, heart-breakers and fist-clenchers that will reverberate into the next twelve months. While it's not necessary to rehash what made us applaud, condemn, wonder and hope, it is necessary to capture the year as a whole to look ahead.

In this year, we've seen our fair share of challenges that may - if they have not already done so - affect our lives in ways that we have not witnessed in quite some time or ever before.

Leaving this year behind, we are well aware of the global recession that threatens the way we consume, produce and entertain going forward. Again, this is not just in the sports realm as the overall economy continues to take Miguel Cotto-like body shots.

This year made it rather clear that no matter how much we clamor for change - and beyond this seminal political moment, many of us do the best we can as individuals day by day - some things (as this, this, this and certainly this) are resistant to actual change.

This year, we were given new faces of realized dreams, vindication and outerworldly triumphs while familiar ones gave us another reason to take notice. Yet, there were new names to file under 'WTF' and the reemergence of people whose singular strength is the ability to tick off the masses.

There was a reason or 55 to fall in love with sports in 2008. There was a reason or likely more than 55 to absolutely abhor the sports realm in 2008.

If anything, the blog has taken a significant part of your sports consumption in 2008 than in the last four years since the medium’s mainstream arrival in 2004. The blogopshere has served your sports sunny-side snarky, scrambled in über-analysis, over-easy fanboy, straight & no-chaser serious and chopped-up speculative. As the folks at Yahoo! Sports put it, this was the year of the sports blog and while few have had the resources and/or success as the folks behind Big League Stew and Puck Daddy, millions of bloggers are doing whatever they can to become famous or more often, infamous.

When I began A Sports Scribe back in May of 2007, the number one goal was to join the realm of the most recognized independent blogs such as Awful Announcing, Kissing Suzy Kolber and the like. Understanding that some of those sites discuss sports in a far different manner than I do, I accepted the challenge of going forward with a less typical media-driven an admitted pro-athlete slant, despite being a member of the most infamous group in the industry, the New York media. This past year, Scribe has found its voice, but not in the way that I expected.

I found that for some people, the allure of the blog is that the content comes from a New York City native that doesn’t exactly kowtow to the stereotypical “Noo Yawk” perspective. For others, the carrot on the stick happens to be the visits to various ballparks in my travels, whether I have attended a game in another city or had the chance to provide construction updates in person. Many appreciate that there isn’t the sarcastic and jaded view of sports that they come to expect from someone who is apparently in-the-know. For all, however, I hope that Scribe has achieved its singular goal; to be a blog that combines the action, discussion, culture, business and politics of sports… without being an ass.

With that said, this long post is my way of saying thank you. The audience isn’t earth-shattering, but there has been a noticeable and steady growth. Some of you are personal connections; family, friends and co-workers who have supported me on this journey to provide the best possible content. Some of you are rediscovered connections; former classmates and colleagues who have wondered if I’m still the kid who made playoff trees and kept index cards of player statistics (before the Internet made that a little bit easier). Others have come to Scribe through the sheer power of randomization or the shameless promotions on Facebook and MySpace, wondering why does this guy have something to say, let alone what. No matter how you found Scribe, I want to thank you for sticking with it and I will do my best to retain your intrigue and trust in this forum.

I want to say a special thanks to Ken Fang and Paul Sen, the respective proprietors of Fang’s Bites and Sports Media Watch. Both gentlemen have not only added me to their blog rolls (which is still unbelievable considering that many on their rolls are well-established writers), but have provided food for thought along with direct and indirect support.

Also, I want to say thanks for the various scribes, talkies and faces of the industry that actually make being a part of the press worthwhile. To those who I have emailed, chatted with and met in person, it’s been a thrill and I hope to approach your levels of talent and experience.

Finally, though they say that they don’t read the papers, watch television, listen to talk radio or check the blogs, I’d like to thank the players that make what I’m doing possible.

To all of you out there, Happy New Year and please celebrate safely. May the challenges, lessons and fortunes of 2008 make us all better in 2009 and beyond. And to bring it back to the college radio show and former blog that helped start it all, take care of your own and they’ll take care of you.

Rage

Since I was a kid – okay, so it wasn’t terribly long ago – there was one person on television that I had strong, but unshared admiration for. It wasn’t so much that I understood the topics or knew where the story began, but I was drawn to the style that he spoke to the audience. Without openly flaunting his knowledge or tossing sound bites to move stories along, his newscasts presented the differing sides of conflicts while introducing unfamiliar issues to a mass audience.

At ten years old, I may have learned as much about the world from Peter Jennings as from any teacher or textbook at I.S. 131 in The Bronx.

Over the past week, I’ve been reading a book about him that was published last fall called Peter Jennings: A Reporter’s Life. More of an anthology of reflections about the late anchorman than a biography crafted during his career, the book chronicles his career from aspiring to follow his father’s footsteps as Canada’s most beloved newsman in the fifties and sixties to an icon in his own right. You could look to his experience in the Middle East or his news specials featuring children to see that Jennings’ mission was to present as many sides to a story as possible, even if it challenges our sensibilitues and experiences. Yet, in an interview sourced in the book shows, he showed great concerns about the direction of the media industry:

“Maybe it started with the Robert Bork nomination to the Supreme Court. Maybe it was the 1988 political campaign using the image of Willie Horton, or the Clarence Thomas hearings, Whitewater, the Clinton sex scandal, the Clinton impeachment, the 2000 election. Whatever it may have been, the public dialogue today is often rude and vulgar to the point where I begin to think it’s shameful. It is true that we have been through ugly cycles before. But today I think that it is made much worse by the constant need for the drama of conflict that many broadcasters seem to demand. Our national conversation is very often a shouting match – and too much of it is infected with venom.

“I am not naive and I do not imagine a world in which we all get along. And I do not think we need to single out the right or the left, the talk radio ranters or the angry columnists. To some extent we are all culpable – including the staid center,
which if only by its silence is not without responsibility… Our modern communications system and other technologies have increased the volume of public argument to an unholy racket. Our national conversation sometimes feels
impoverished as a result… Civility doesn’t just promote decency; it also leads
to a fairer exchange of ideas and a greater chance of finding workable solutions
to the kinds of problems we face.”

While it would be strange to think that the words from one of the most revered journalists of all time would apply to the sports arena, they struck a chord in relation to the national and local conversations that take place daily. After reading it over and over again, so many questions regarding the sports media industry came to mind. I wondered where the rage came from in sports media. I wondered when did someone’s performance on the field lead to diatribes about his personal life. I wondered when did reporting the goings-on with sports become an athletic-themed version of the Geraldo At Large or the Rush Limbaugh Show.

Much of the venom that Jennings described comes from economics. There is no doubt that the growing divide between multimillion dollar professional athletes and fans has played a significant role. The idea that someone can make more money in a day as an elite athlete than a teacher does in a year keeps the distance fairly lengthy. Yet, when the folks that travel the globe to cover what’s essentially someone’s typical day at work, something more is added to the fray.

Whether we care to admit it or not, most – if not, all – of us wanted to be athletes, playing at the highest level possible. We wanted the adulation, the last name and our favorite numbers on the back of some jersey and the contract offers to go along with the joys of winning and the pains of losing. Some of us may have played at some point, but we’re holding cameras and voice recorders to those who are playing now as a way of life. We learn about the lives of these players and some of us develop relationships with them based on personal interaction and an understood professional agreement between media and subject. As we learn about these players, we begin to find those quarks, those words, those looks that remind us that they are emotional beings as well as physical marvels. It disappoints many in the business, especially those of us who have never played beyond junior high school.

It disappoints because the men and women who look to be above the flaws of flesh and blood are still just flesh and blood. The disappointment turns into judgments on his or her character. The judgments can become a nasty discourse where Terrell Owens, despite his gross shortcomings, can be mocked for anything genuine that he does, such as his emotional postgame comments about Tony Romo. The judgments against the surly persona of Barry Bonds become a near-decade of vitriol coming from coast-to-coast. The judgments become manifestos of the usual “he’s not worth that much money” line of at least half of the players in the NBA.

The judgments make stars out of some columnists like Jason Whitlock, Skip Bayless and Mike Lupica.

Unlike many of the political jousts that Jennings and many past and present journalists have narrated, these subjects aren’t directly responsible for money towards stem-cell research or alleviating homelessness in America’s cities. As much as we love and consume sports, at times, we protest too much. Sure, the media is responsible for much of the tenor towards the players and the business of sport. Yet, it is also responsible for not doing enough to remind fans that there has to be a separation between the job and the person. For as much as athletes do contribute to society in terms of entertainment and community outreach, their job functions do not reflect the human condition as much as those you’ll see on the evening news.

Before playing Game 7 of the 2005 NBA Finals, Rasheed Wallace, the forward/center for the Detroit Pistons who is known for an irascible demeanor on the court, was asked about the pressure of this winner-take-all game against the San Antonio Spurs. Maybe the media at the stadium clamored for him to say something that would invite a fine from the league or bulletin board material for the Spurs. Yet, in the spirit of the day, he said;

“Pressure? This isn't pressure and this is not pain. Afghanistan, Iraq and that other place, Croatia and Bosnia - now, that is pressure. This ain't nothing but a little hoops.”

It was hard to debate the next day on the local sports shows.

Sensationalism

For once when Terrell Owens says something, it wasn't illicting hoards of hate in his direction.

In fact, it seemed as if when Owens jokingly referred to Jessica Simpson's appearance in a Texas Stadium luxury suite at Tony Romo's worst game this season as a distraction, people laughed it up.

And went too far.

Days after losing to the Philadelphia Eagles, folks began to have a field day with the fact that Romo hadn't performed well with her or former girlfriend Carrie Underwood were in the suite. While many in the media used the excuse of 'T.O. being T.O.' to run with this story, it already had legs of its own thanks to someone... something else.

FOX.

It's no secret that FOX fashions itself as an entertainment network, from its success with staples such as The Simpsons and American Idol to its monumental emphasis on sports programming with its coverage of NFC games. The slant on sports is similar to anything else under the helm of Rupert Murdoch; make it sexy, salacious or scandalous. FOX is a master of cross promotions in their sports programming... not so much on their technological innovations (that failed tail on the hockey puck during their five minutes of NHL coverage). Yet, FOX wants to show their games to more than sports loyalists, but to the ultimate casual fan who probably doesn't have a clue about what is happening on the field.

Enter Jessica.


Somehow, the pop singer who lagged behind Britney Spears, Christina Aguliera and the boy-bands of the mid-to-late nineties has survived it all to become something more than relevant in a new era of entertainment. She has the music, movies, magazine covers, Pepsi campaigns and likely, the best publicist in the business (the latter is the only logical explanation of how she has made it to 2007 without becoming an answer to a trivia question). And now she has the quarterback of the most popular team in the country's most popular sport. Though this wasn't her first appearance at a Cowboys game at home, this was the first time that FOX noticed this. Just when you thought that you were watching a football game with a few bells and whistles, you found yourself wanting to throw the remote at the TV because of the constant references and attention to Simpson's relationship with Romo.

Outside an October loss to the New England Patriots, there was little for Cowboys fans to get riled up about this season. Of course, considering that any mention of her brings out the gossip pages, trashy tabloids and Perez Hilton-wannabes, this gave Cowboys fans something to be quite miffed about. One fan was so incensed that he felt that this story is the reason why women shouldn't watch football. While this isn't or shouldn't be a reason to call upon women's right advocates, this is a reason to wonder if this would happen with another network. Well...

This wouldn't happen on CBS. CBS' sports coverage is as no-frills as it gets.

Maybe on NBC. The Peacock has its hands in many forms of entertainment thanks to its parent, General Electric, yet they have some limits.

ABC? Well, it happened already. Someone by the name of Eva Longoria.

If you are tired of hearing about Jinxing Jessica, don't blame Owens. Don't even blame the media at-large. Blame FOX.

Because the camera could have shown the Eagles enjoying this upset. Or maybe Romo, himself.

If there's one thing to appreciate about this overblown story, the sales on pink-colored jerseys may decrease. It's about time.

Say What?!?!: Call this an early present from Scribe. I remember watching this game in my dorm room. There was no doubt that this was one of the worst officiated games I have ever seen, but the nation only knows about this because of color commentator Tommy Heinsohn's brilliance. Enjoy!