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.

Education

My orginial introduction post is still a work in progress, however, a friend of mine proved to be the source of something new.

My introduction to sports was similar to almost every person that calls him or herself a sports fan. I tried to emulate the guys I just watched on the TV screen on Sunday afternoons. My first love, as I tell people, was not a beautiful woman, but the beautiful West Coast offense ran by the San Francisco 49ers. I tried being Joe Montana or Steve Young, Jerry Rice or the underrated John Taylor, Roger Craig or Ricky Watters, pick your poison or era. Of course, it didn't take long for me to see that I was a bit undersized and had too much of a temper to play in the NFL. Yet, I found that I learned much more about football through osmosis than others. I was still curious about the roles of each other player besides the quarterback and wide receiver, so I would ask my father about them. He was his own telestrator for the younger son that didn't possess the physical gifts that his older brother had in order to play. As an engineer or a quality control specialist (had to throw in my business school speak) has to look at the process to find the bottleneck, the young kid was able to see the whole game from the sidelines.

Playing was a passion that translated later on into my stats-keeping and eventually my writing. Over that time, I became less stats-obsessed and more observant of styles and organization. Most fans and media only seen numbers and I would be foolish to dismiss them as they are barometers of performance. My parents are older than most parents of folks my age, so they enlightened me and my siblings on their experiences as participants and fans during the fifties, sixties and seventies. Coming up, we were able to recognize players and feats throughout several generations, not just out own. Fortunately, I never heard my parents utter the words "players nowadays are too _____" because they witnessed the struggles and the progress of sports and society that most of us wouldtake for granted. My dad, in particular, knew of my desire to learn the business. I was designing make-believe stadiums and logos during art class in junior high. I recorded salaries and seasonal stats onto index cards before the Internet became widely available and as my early years were spent without cable. I would grab the New York Times as it was the only paper in the area that would discuss the media and business with some form of fairness.

Especially in places such as New York, Boston or Philadelphia, sports media folks have a tendancy to be know-it-all, jaded and bitter hypocrites in addition to being portly and absurd. Each one of us have our moments of 'ridonculousness' as my former co-host in college would say, but the best are always learning something about the sports they cover. The hacks and loudmouths in this business tend to think that because they are part of the machine that they don't need to brush up on their skills. The sense of entitlement and arrogance that most of us have gets in the way of unearthing good stories and inviting new fans as opposed to making athletes infamous and labeling leagues. You don't get the soul of the game by almanacs and soundbites.

If you want to learn about something, you go to the source. If you want to build a knowledge bank, try your hardest to sift through the clutter and keenly watch your subject. If you want to know the difference between a hard foul in 1997 and a flagarant foul in 2007 or the evolution of the closer, dig deep. Even the experts miss what you might see.

Say What?!?!: Continuing the theme from an old blog and its preceding radio show, I tend to give folks something to think about or to discuss. With recent play during the NBA playoffs, it seems as if the entire world (or at least those who follow the sport) is in an uproar about Amare Stoudamire and Boris Diaw leaving the bench with seconds left in last night's Game 4 between the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs. The uproar isn't necessarily the fact that they rose from the bench to see what was going on after Robert Horry's flagarant foul on Steve Nash, but about the rule that suspends anyone who automatically leaves the bench, regardless of their intentions. It was a necessary rule after the NBA needed to eliminate the fighting in the late seventies, yet it wasn't until the Knicks-Heat rivalry of the late nineties that the rule became re-enforced. It is funny that in the aftermath of a questionable study of race bias by referees that this comes to light. The bias in refereeing is far from racial so much as it is about protecting the superstars. Ten years ago, Patrick Ewing and other Knicks wandered off the bench as Stoudamire and Diaw had done, in order to figure out what was going on. Suspensions were handed down, which cost New York the series against Miami. This time around, there is clamor for going by the spirit of the law, not the letter. While I agree wholeheartedly, how different would things be if there was a bona-fide superstar (or even an anointed one as the league is full of these days) in the Knicks-Heat series? What if it wasn't Nash that was fouled, but it was Speedy Claxton or Delonte West? To keep the series exciting, the league will find a way to maintain the star power, yet the future of the rule is finally in question. Better late than never, right?