Exclamation blog: Stories, Ideas and loud noises
Blogger comes out, WaPo not amused
As anyone on the receiving end of one of my link filled IMs, e-mails or Tweets can tell you, I love sports blogs. There’s a small circle of about 10 of them (led by Deadspin, Fire Joe Morgan, Kissing Suzy Kolber and With Leather) that have superlative, hilarious writing and style and attitude that is basically a giant middle finger to the traditional sporting press.
And, as a former sports writer, I can say that gesture is very much needed.
The two worlds collided yesterday after Michael Tunison, aka Christmas Ape on Kissing Suzy Kolber, was fired from the Washington Post after outing himself on KSK. This is interesting in many different ways.
For the most part, the vanguard of the traditional sports press despise bloggers because they aren’t trained journalists who went to school for four years so they can be treated like scum by athletes. For the most part this vanguard is a bunch of self-aggrandizing pathetic writers who couldn’t recognize important prose if it hit them in the face. The Washington Post took offense, not to some of Tunison’s edgier posts on KSK, but to the fact that he said he was “totally f**king hammered” in the picture accompanying his post outing himself. Because, you know, no respectable journalist has ever gotten drunk when his or her favorite team went to the Super Bowl. The parrot may have been a bit much.
It’s pretty obvious that Tunison was canned because of the blog.
Anyway, the reaction has been pretty comical. The fairly sizable KSK and Deadspin communities reacted by taking over Dan Steinberg’s blog at the WaPo online.
The traditional media’s reaction to blogs is a constant source of hilarity. For the sports media to get upset over fans writing about sports is the epitome of stupidity – they are, after all, the people the media is (or should be) writing for. What difference does having a piece of paper make when you’re spouting off about sports? Just because I went to journalism school, does that make me more qualified to write about baseball than the guy with an accounting degree who spends his spare time crunching baseball stats? No. If he knows more than me and can write, well…
There are plenty of reporters who are embracing new media and are doing fantastic work, so it’s very unfair to lump traditional media in one big group, but a message to those who are afraid of blogs: Get over it. You’ll be working for one soon enough.
Technology and the Too-Fast Swimsuit
Despite many lessons and summers reluctantly spent at swim practice I was never much of a competitive swimmer. Perhaps the high-tech Speedo LZR Racer suit could have been of some help?
Introduced in February, Speedo’s new suit and it’s ultra-lightweight technology are transforming the sport while creating a great deal of controversy in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer. 18 of the last 19 swimmers who have broken world records have worn the LZR, and many claim that the groundbreaking technology helps them float and feel as if they are swimming downhill.
Great news or cause for concern? In short, nobody’s quite sure.
Developed based on NASA intelligence, it is clear that the LZR gives its wearers an advantage of sorts — but is this advantage unfair? FINA President Mustapha Larfaoui is adamant that all swimmers be able to access the technology but the issue of accessibility is only the tip of the iceberg.
Who gets credit for world records broken by wearers of the LZR — the athlete or the technology? Should the suits be banned for giving athletes that extra edge? Swimmers already regularly shave their legs before big races, is this really that different? Can this really be considered technological doping (if there is such a thing)?
Questions abound– and in the meantime “swimming’s fastest year” continues.
When Advertising Strikes
There are no Cinderellas…
A recent ad, above, run during the NCAA basketball tournament in the past few weeks aims to dispel the idea of Cinderellas in sports by showing famous “Cinderella” college sports teams such as Boise State (a must watch YouTube video) and Georgetown (alma mater of our own Melissa Biles and Leonora Stevens) practicing hard late in to the night. Cinderella got lucky, these teams didn’t.
I thought the ads were spot on, and gave fair credit to those Cinderella teams for being good, not lucky. The truth is, there isn’t a ton of luck in sports and all of the teams depicted definitely did their share of practicing and hard work to rightfully upset their opponents.
So once this commercial was followed by a CBS montage of number 10 seed Davidson’s run to the Elite 8 that included the recurring image of a glass slipper, I realized that this was an example of when advertising strikes the network. CBS looked clueless and shallow, taking credit away from Davidson’s talent and hard work by attributing their success simply to luck.
And since when are high heel glass shoes and 6′9″, 280 pound athletes analogous?
Advertising may be the lifeblood of tv networks (and pretty much any media for that matter), but in this case, to me, it seemed almost as harmful to CBS’s credibility than, say, a wardrobe malfunction or scandalous GoDaddy commercial.
Other than the lottery and the Lucky Charms leprechaun, when it comes to sports, careers or, say, building a small startup into a great company, it’s easy for other people to chalk unexpected success up to luck… But in reality, there really are no Cinderellas.
The ‘B’ in Baron Stands for Blog
I love the Golden State Warriors, and the addition of star point-guard Baron Davis almost three years ago has helped turn around one of the two hopeless sports franchises I have been a fan of since childhood (the other is the Cubs, yeah). Other than being an amazing basketball player, having Jessica Alba as a best friend, and leading his team to the biggest upset in NBA history last year, Baron is a blogger, and quite a good one at that.
Baron’s blog represents one of the best qualities of blogging — giving people access to information, personalities and insights into things they never had access to before. For example, who would have ever know that the Warriors had a book club if Baron hadn’t written it in a blogpost? Who would have known that he started an education focused foundation called Teamplay? (As a side note, I really like the fact that the Warriors have a book club — as I wrote in my last blogpost, reading leads to good things. Like, say, an NBA title?)
Since he started his blog, Baron has exposed a side of himself that people most likely did not know about — for example, he’s literary (favorite book is To Kill A Mockingbird), he’s a philanthropist and he’s against the Iraq war. For sports stars, marketing themselves has become far more important than ever before. Athletes are traded and signed to huge contracts not only for their skills, but also for how many seats they can be responsible for filling in a stadium.
Outside of sports broadcasts, athletes have only been represented in shoe or underwear commercials (Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan) at the mercy of the sponsoring company. Baron’s blog is a great example of how blogging offers a great way for athletes to reach their fans, market themselves how they want to, and touch their fans on a personal level without the influence of the powers that be. This personal connection will keep fans as fans even if these players get traded, retire or sit out with an injury for an extended period of time.
More and more athletes are jumping on the blog bandwagon, some more eloquent than others, and their blogs will undoubtedly be successful since this is the first time people have really had this kind of access to the professional sports world and to athletes before.
Bo may know football, baseball, soccer, cricket, hockey and golf, but I don’t think he knows blogging.
Baron does.
