Most pro sports organizations are probably more sensitive to an athlete's family situation than Gene Principe of Rogers Sportsnet.Here's Principe blogging, so to speak, about second-time-around Oiler Petr Nedved and the downturn his career took after he left Edmonton in '04 to accommodate then-spouse Veronica Varekova's (pictured) modelling career:
"After being up and down this season in the minors the 35-year-old has another chance and maybe a last one to find happiness for himself after chasing the dreams of somebody else." (Italics mine)Granted, in post-Chris Pronger Edmonton everyone's a little sensitive about how those damn fee-males can cause problems for a hockey team, but in this day and age, men and women move around in their careers all the time to try and make a partnership work. If Nedved wanted to do that, to the possible detriment of his career statistics and Gene Principe's fantasy team, then so be it. It's his life. It just didn't work out.
Principe's blogging, such as it is, is not the issue. Like a lot of journalists everywhere, he's the victim of bad editorial policy, which is kind of fascinating:
(A) that this automatically counts as insight since it's coming from someone who's on TV;
(B that Sportsnet and other sports websites give the impression that if you enlist an on-air personality -- who may not be a legit writer -- to tap out something and it goes on the web, then voilà, it's a blog, no matter how little you post or interact with other blogs. (Ian Mendes, as we've seen, has been a shining exception on this count.)
It's my birthday today, so I get to make the rules. Be it resolved that if you don't write at least six days out of seven (unless there's a stated disclaimer you won't be writing regularly), and if you don't have links and a blogroll, it's not a blog, even with a corporate stamp of approval.
That's Out of Left Field's birthday wish: In 2007, sports websites will stop co-opting the blog form and make some room for that largely neglected type of diversity, intellectual diversity.
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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2 comments:
I haven't RTFA but Nedved said as much today. Robin Brownlee had a good story in the Edmonton Sun:
Nedved says:
"I enjoyed Phoenix, too, but made a personal decision to go back east. I thought it was the right one. Yes, it's been very frustrating. I'm glad I can put that behind me and go forward. That's what I have to do now."
"I couldn't agree with you more," says Nedved at the suggestion he could've saved himself a lot of grief by staying here. "At the same time, it's something you don't want to be saying to yourself because you'd probably go bananas. Life would be too easy. Nobody wants to go through tough times or make the wrong decision.
"You can say, 'What about this? What about that?'
"The best thing is not to do that to yourself because you could go crazy."
Have a great birthday Neate!
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