Letters to the Editor
kevred
Published Letters: 92 Editor's Choice: 8
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What it all comes down to is...
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...whether he deserves praise or scorn, whether the nature of the record has changed over the years or not, it resulted in this: possibly the most significant and storied (or at least widely seen as such) record in all of sports was broken, and hardly anybody cared. It will be on and off of the headlines in a day, and forgotten as quickly. And those who did care about it were evenly split on whether to love it or hate it.
The details can be argued to death, but when something this momentous happens and you can hear the crickets chirping, there's no stronger indicator of what it was really worth.
Will anyone remember this day years from now with nostalgia, with affection, with anything at all except numbness? I doubt it, as the increasing specialization (and decreasing personality) of leading athletes has turned into an increasingly boring pursuit of simple numbers, a never-ending race against a stat.
It seems to pervade most sports. I love football, but have to admit that most NFL teams are like large machines now, scientifically optimized to leave little to chance (and thus little chance of excitement) and playing not to win, but instead not to lose. I like Roger Federer a lot, but when he won Wimbledon this year, I saw Borg in the stands and thought, "now that was a time for tennis"--will I ever think that about today, or the Sampras era for that matter? And pro basketball and baseball--talk about two sports that sleepwalk through their seasons.
I can't draw conclusions about this, but even as sports has further cemented a place in our culture, that traditional role is breaking down. I think the whole Bonds thing says a lot about the man himself, his sport, all sports, and our culture as a whole. The net result seems to be that another little piece of what we've loved about all this nonsense over the last century has been chipped off and lost.
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Sad
[Read the article: How bots rigged D.C.'s "hot" reporter contest]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe this is an easy target, but the whole thing strikes me as sad. It's as though all the nerds got together and had their own prom and elected their own homecoming king & queen. (I'm a nerd myself, and I'm embarrassed of such a spectacle.) The results page linked from the article was like a page from a high school yearbook with all the jocks and cheerleaders neatly cut out.
The insider-blog community, the social media-obsessed, the screen-name crowd--it seems to me like some kind of alternate-reality experiment where the uncool can become cool and end up just as stupid and ridiculous and cliquish as the cool crowd from whatever level of schooling formed in them this trauma and need to be part of 'the scene'.
There's a tongue-in-cheek aspect to all of this, and maybe this is too harsh an analysis. But it seems like a setting and age group that's just dying for seriousness and dignity and is instead plagued with self-referential in-crowd nonsense. I saw a sense of desperation, insecurity, and immaturity in so many of those photos; we all possess it--I'm not absolving myself from it--but we can all aspire to something better, especially in the public arena.
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The purpose of MNF + game analysis
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All this talk about Jaworski (who I like a lot) and Kornheiser (who I don't care for) makes me think about the angle ESPN is taking (or could choose to take) with the MNF broadcast. Sunday afternoon is the regular, familiar, popcorn-fare football--for the typical fan it means watching the local team and jumping between whatever games are available. Then you have your razzle-dazzle Sunday night game, with marquee teams and Faith Hill and assorted spectacle.
So what is the purpose of MNF now? Seeing as how they've added a real expert in Jaworski, and it's shown on the sportaholic's channel, having a glorified fan like Kornheiser on board seems meaningless. They're no longer the big weekly showcase, they're no longer needing to appeal to the same broad base as they were trying for back in the Dennis Miller days (shudder). In other words, they're suddenly a sort of niche market--less important games on a less important night.
Which is the perfect opportunity to make MNF the broadcast for hardcore football geeks. Cut everyone but Jaworski, bring in someone just as sharp and deeply knowledgeable for him to partner with, and have similar specialized analysts on hand to go to for breakdowns of certain aspects of how the game is developing. There's not much drama in Cardinals-49ers, but the lack of resulting distractions leaves a big opening for "here's why what these guys are doing matters"--understanding the nuts and bolts. It could be great branding for this weekly game, and could generate a lot of interest in the die-hard fans who are probably also a good demographic for advertisers.
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And one more random comment: I understand why analysis of the media is good fodder for columns at the start of the season, but I hope King spends a lot of time this season on actual analysis of the preceding week's games. This was a heck of a first week in terms of important games, and I wanted to hear more from him about it. (Really, I just wanted the chance to comment on how, for at least the third year running, the Cowboys are woefully exposed to the long-down-the-middle pass, which has helped their division mates pick them apart the last couple years. If I see Santana Moss blowing by Roy Williams left and right again this year, I swear...)