Results tagged “Sports” from eHub

A little pill.
A soothing cream.
A needle filled with fluid.

Steroids have dominated the field of sports media for far too long. The newest entry in a lengthy list of things people care too much about is New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez. The pinstripe player recently admitted to using a "banned substance" about five or so years ago. At the time he used whatever it was, there were no penalties for it.

Now there are, and A-Rod's interview with ESPN's Peter Gammons has run almost every day since it first aired.

I don't care, and neither should the millions of people who watch baseball. I know I'm not the only one who thinks the sport is one of the most boring in the physical activity spectrum. The players rarely have to move (especially the outfield), and the teams play 162 games in one season.

What other sport could have that many games and not lose nearly all its players to injury?
Hockey -- no
Football -- no
Basketball -- no
Rugby -- no
Soccer -- no
Tennis -- All right, they can get pretty close

The point is, baseball is one of the least physically demanding sports in the world. Games also have no time limit.

Baseball is boring.

So why wouldn't you want something to spice up the game? Why wouldn't you want Bonds juicing so he can crank little white balls out of the stadium and into the drink? It's more fun to watch. Nobody gets excited about a ground-ball single. Watching someone get thrown out doesn't get anyone's blood pumping. It happens countless times in every single game.

Steroids makes the game interesting. It gives people something to talk about. If it weren't for the drugs, baseball would be taking a back seat to nearly every other sport right now.

So as far as I'm concerned, if you're a professional baseball player, keep trying to make your sport interesting during the overplayed regular season. But please, do it quietly.

Very sneaky, Uncle Rick. Asking us whether the Web will replace sports journalists, when we're still struggling to define "the Web" and "journalists" (and maybe even "sports").

Let's say the Web is compared to a non-stop flight between the fans (in New York) and their favorite star athlete/team (in Lawrence, Kan.) with sports journalism just being that inconvenient stopover in Connecticut.

Well, then, Barry Bonds is innocent (according to Barry Bonds).

And there was never anything rotten in Durham since in 1,295 press releases, the first ones to address the lacrosse controversy were on April 11, 2007, when the players were cleared of all charges (according to the official Duke Athletics website). Of course, anyone just following the situation on the Duke website might be a little bit confused by these sudden victorious posts, as nothing about the situation was mentioned earlier.

But at least, little Tom can talk directly with Ben Gordon on his MySpace, or if that's not enough, he can follow BG on his personal website.

And if, by chance and not wishing anything bad to come to him, Gordon does screw up, I am sure that he will use both of these outlets to accurately report all sides of the story.

Here come the journalists (aka the stopover in Connecticut where there's probably five inches of snow and one hour turns into four…).

Are journalists really as inconvenient as all that? In an age where all relevant statistical information on a team can readily be found on their site, the commentary of the players can be found on their sites and Digger Phelps is hailed for his opinion, why does sports journalism still exist?

Because a huge part of sport is opinion. And passion. And rumors. And bashing Missouri. What does all that sound like? I'll give you a hint: it starts with a "b" and rhymes with "Phog."

Someone once made a case that bloggers are journalists, too. And bloggers are doing a pretty good job of sharing commentary and opinion and passion and rumors and bashing MU. They even set up interviews and exchange opinions with other bloggers as was the case with Rock Chalk Talk and Bring on the Cats prior to the KU-KState matchup at Allen West. Sometimes this "amateur" commentary is even more enlightened than that of paid professionals *cough*ESPN*cough*.

Sports journalism isn't going away. It's just changing like all other aspects of media. And just like sports has been on the cutting edge of new media in the past, it still is today.

Of course, if I want to know what time the game is on Saturday, I'll go to kuathletics.com. But if I want to know if anyone else thinks the ‘Hawks looked a little sluggish against Colorado, I'll read Mark Dent or any one of the seven blogs on kusports.com or any one of the 774,000 on Google.

So maybe the new sport journalism isn't like that inconvenient stopover in Connecticut, maybe it's more like getting on the plane and finding out that everyone else is also a fan of your favorite team.

P.S. Google search "MU Tigers blogs" - there are only 214,000.

Rick Reilly, Bill Simmons, Joe Posnanski, three reasons why sports journalists will never be considered irrelevant. Telling a story and creating images with words is what these men do best. They can create emotion by telling a different side to a story. The thing about them is that they use sports as the subject of their stories. The majority of the people that read their articles get them in magazines and newspapers.

Sports journalism has transitioned from being statistics and data to being another way to express artistic talents. Gone are the days of sports shows that only show the scores and the statistics. In present day "Real World", sports shows give the viewer a reason to watch television. They have video montages displaying phenomenal plays of the week and stories about people who have overcome huge obstacles to persevere through sports. All of this comes about because we the people of the United States and the rest of the world have sports journalists out there who care about getting a different story to us, the fans. There are so many feel good stories out there involving athletes that get overshadowed by all the negative things going on in the world. Many of the positive acts that they do, get overshadowed by the negative acts that take place and by the amount of money that athletes make. Every so often though, one person takes their time to find a story that will inspire thousands of people to take action, and it's those stories that make sports journalists indispensable.

The internet can't replace these fixtures as the new middleman, it just doesn't work. It doesn't go sport, internet, story. It goes story, journalist, journalistic expression. Sports is one entity that will never be relevant if people aren't involved.

Sports journalists aren't going anywhere. They can't, without them there is nothing else to sports besides the sport itself. Sports are the lifeblood of American culture. America needs sports, and sports need people to tell their stories. Without sports, there would be no next year. And without sports journalists, there would be no story.