Friday (Not So) Quickie [Nick Cannon Mariah Carey ASU Cheerleading Team Deadspin Buzz Bissinger Costas Now Matt Leinart Dirty.com]
I’m going to lead with the stupid shit and get progressively more intelligent as we go on, so stick around.
Mariah Carey apparently married Nick Cannon (despite nobody even knowing that they were dating or even friends. Good for Nick Cannon though…a really hot older chick that is cerifiably insane and has piles of cash…maybe he’s smarter than i originally thought.)
Remember when gas was like $2 a gallon and we thought it was expensive? Well these guys are never, ever going to let it get that cheap again.
Some racy pictures of a few ASU cheerleaders surfaced (kinda NSFW) a few days back and apparently ASU is responding rationally by disbanding the team… Listen, Michael Crow and Lisa Love, I know you’re trying to build the “new American University” and i’ve always taken your cute little plan with a grain of salt because you’re both asshats. But you hired Dennis Erickson to be the football coach, be glad a picture of girls in the underwear is the only thing that got released. With Dennis involved, you’re lucky you didn’t get the entire football and cheer teams in a 75-way bukkake fest with Erickson viewing above on a boom lift, mapping out the X’s and O’s. In fact, if the two of you knew anything about marketing, you’d release a sex tape together. If ASU doesn’t have cheerleaders, i’m burning my diploma…although it’s not worth a ton anyway when it’s from the 124th ranked school out of, yup, you guessed it, 124. (it is probably important to point out that the only news organization reporting this is Fox, so it’s probably inaccurate. I will update as more info comes available.) Update: As i suspected, the Fox report was unverified drivel and the team isn’t being disbanded.
Airlines save gas by slowing down. Hmm, interesting thought. I bet it won’t make ticket prices any cheaper though.
Mainstream Media vs. Blogs
Earlier this week, one of my favorite blogs/bloggers (Deadspin.com and it’s editor Will Lietch) went on Costas Now to discuss the role of blogs in the world of sports. He was, as you can see in the video below, attacked pretty vociferously by Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, and Bob Costas over the content and tone of his blog. Bissinger, acting like the old man screaming at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn, basically blamed Lietch for the downfall of American society.
Video Here (language NSFW)
Much has been made of it, with some eloquent pieces being written here, here, here and here. And maybe it’s because i’m not a popular sports blogger (or even popular for that matter) but i feel like some of these guys have missed the point a bit. Sure, Bissinger attacks Will and blogs in general because he feels threatened by a new medium. Sure, Bissinger is correct in saying that blogs have a vindictive tone. Sure, Bissinger is correct in saying that bloggers post reactions to things without thought, research or repercussions. But guess what? That’s the frigging point!
What i love about blogging, what got me into it in the first place was that i was a frustrated writer. I went to college, got my journalism degree and wanted to write in sports. But i didn’t feel like spending my 20s following the Toledo Mud Hens around for 12k a year before i got a chance to follow a team i loved or write an opinion column about how the manager should have pulled the pitcher a few innings earlier. I didn’t want to wait and i didn’t want to put up with bullshit from the old guard to earn the right to express my opinion. So i found that i could read a story or watch a game on TV and then share on my blog, instantly, my feelings about it. A few people read it and that was satisfying to a frustrated wannabe journalist. Bill Simmons parlayed this idea into a mainstream job and insane popularity as one of the biggest attractions on ESPN.com. It was in the opening chapter of his book…i’m paraphrasing but he basically said, “Working my way up the ladder to write about Boston sports sucked. So i started my own web site and people liked it.” (read his brilliant and heartbreaking piece on The Suns here.) Deadspin’s motto is Sports Without Access, Favor or Discretion…a genius idea that holds a lot more meaning than it first appears. To me, after that elipse (…) it should say, “because professional sports won’t let us have any.”
Let’s face it, mainstream sports could give a shit about the everyday fan. The teams, the players, the media — owners and members, the gatekeepers to our fandom, are mostly insanely rich people who live in a dream world of $10 beers and constantly rising ticket prices who will move your favorite team without warning or cut your favorite player two weeks after you spend $75 on his jersey. To get access to that which us sports fans love, we used to have to be either extremely talented (play on the team), extremely rich (own the team) or a thick-skinned sadist (write about the team), or listen to what the MSM dictated to us about it. Being a talented writer didn’t get you there because the guys holding the keys don’t always give a shit about writing talent when it comes to sports (and i would include movies and music at this point as well) because there’s a ton more that goes into it. So blogs come about as a chance for us to write about what we love and find an audience and a community and take a little bit of the power back. Lietch’s book, God Save the Fan, is about exactly this. We love sports and we want to hang out and talk with other people who love sports without having to listen to talking heads yelling at each other all day (ie Around The Horn).
So forgive us Buzz…we’re really not trying to take away jobs from newspapers or magazines (you’re doing a good enough job of that yourselves), we’re not trying to hurt you and we’re certainly not trying to get Matt Leinart or Dan Majerle in trouble when they take pictures of themselves canoodling with underage girls. We just want to enjoy sports again because you guys, you mainstream media guys, have kinda ruined it for us. We don’t want access or favor or discretion…we just want our sports back.
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