WORST FOOTBALL ANALOGY EVER, PART 2

Chris Gordon, vice-president and general manager of CHUM Ltd.'s Ottawa media outlets, which include the A-Channel and The Team 1200 sports radio, spoke to us this morning in the wake of last Friday's Worst Football Analogy Ever.

Chris Gordon, vice-president and general manager of CHUM Ltd.'s Ottawa media outlets, which include the A-Channel and The Team 1200 sports radio, admits that panelist Arash Madani messed up royally last Friday. Toward the tailend of The Team's 9 a.m.-12 noon show the A-Channel sports anchor said, "The biggest storm to hit New Orleans since Katrina is going to come this weekend when the Eagles stun them," referring to the Saints-Philadelphia Eagles NFL playoff game that was held the following night. Just one day earlier, New Orleans residents had marched in the still ravaged city to protest a crime wave that had seen seven people murdered in the first seven days of 2007.

"It sounds pretty left of centre on the poor taste scale," Gordon says. "It's unlike Arash and I am going to speak to him about it... he was obviously trying to make a joke, or be sarcastic and it didn't come out right.

"It's not abusive or discriminatory, but it is certainly over the line of good taste."

Gordon says he was out of town last Friday and didn't hear the show. He figures Madani "wasn't making the connection between the destruction and devastation of Katrina and the resulting violence," but was simply trying to draw an analogy which at best fell flat. It was a spark to throw around terms such as "astoundingly stupid" and "breathtaking insensitivity."

Others in the media (most notably in Canada, Stephen Brunt in last Saturday's Globe and Mail) certainly have made the grim connection, though. That's what eats away at the sports nut who can't separate the football team who represents New Orleans from what happened there in August 2005. That's why I went off the deep end.

It would have been journalistically right to name Madani as the culprit, but it seemed fair to pull a punch a) Ottawa's sports media isn't that big and isn't held to the same public scrutiny seen in bigger markets or with national broadcasters; b) CHUM deserved a chance to respond; and c) who said it is kind of secondary to the reality that the talk radio format is wide open to someone saying what Madani did -- that's part of being off-the-cuff and damn the torpedoes.

It spins off into a question about what sports radio is -- is it journalism (information given in a funny way), or stand-up comedy (funny with a bit of information in the way)? Gordon says he leans toward the latter.

"All talk radio is a form of entertainment," he says. "Sports, by its nature, is strictly entertainment. People take licence with things all the time and sometimes they go a little bit over the line."

Gordon adds, "The most popular sports commentator in this country is Don Cherry (on Hockey Night in Canada) and I wouldn't exactly call him a journalist."

That's the operative phrase: "strictly entertainment." That is what The Team 1200 does, plain and simple. Credit Chris Gordon for realizing the error and responding to a mere blogger. Meantime, I've apparently got a lot to learn.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.