Defeating the cliché ...

It was a privilege last night to take part in a sports journalism seminar at Carleton University (thanks again for having me).

One of the questions that came the bright-eyed J-schoolers posed was how get away from the clichéd answers athletes usually give in post-game answers. Well, under the heading of, "Once again, things that could have been brought to my attention yesterday," Bryan Curtis is wrote a piece for The Times declaring War On The Locker-Room Cliché. (Is it not cliché to be declaring war on something?) His opening salvo is pretty direct.

"Let's ditch the hackneyed, almost-useless tradition of the locker-room interview. There’s plenty to write after a ballgame without interrogating the players. The whole ritual proceeds from the idea that the sports press has gotten so professionalized that it feels it has to enforce the same standards of accountability as the political press. This is nonsense. If a political candidate makes a gaffe on the campaign trail, reporters ought to wring an explanation out of him. If (Derek) Jeter flubs a grounder, he doesn’t owe anyone a statement.

It's kind of like what Barry Bonds said 15 years ago about the obligations of athletes to the public compared to other entertainers: "If people pay $8 to see Batman, they don't get to hang around to get Jack Nicholson's autograph." (Remember, like Chuck Klosterman once wrote of Bonds, what he usually says is true, and this usually makes things worse.)

Curtis is might have been playing off the chapter in Will Leitch's God Save The Fan, specifically the chapter on the reporters who have to go into locker rooms. It sort of hits at a big theme, at least for us Gen Xers: Defeating the cliché.

There is admiration for the sports journalists who go into locker rooms as part of their jobs, get what they need and turn around something quickly on deadline. To some extent, we want them talking to that half-naked man. We need them talking to that half-naked man. More to the point, the 24-hour news cycle needs it -- actual people, maybe not so much. Like Leitch says someone , you only need three things if you follow a particular major-league baseball team:

1. Digital cable and the MLB Extra Innings package.
2. A Web connection.
3. A mute button ("Vital. This takes care of the hometown announcers.")

The point is valid. It's obviously of narrow interest, but if you're ever dropped a STFU after hearing another talking head go on about some team that is reeeeeellllling, you should understand why sports clichés are so noxious. It is also unclear how you get away from it, other than to change the entire model of daily journalism entirely as per Curtis' declaration.

That does not sound all that bad to a guy like me who is more of a features writer, which is newsroom code for "can't write on deadline to save his life."

Related:
Wake Me When You Say Something Interesting (Bryan Curtis, The New York Times, Nov. 2)

Snark break ...

The AHL's Syracuse Crunch is paying tribute to Paul Newman by raising Reggie Dunlop's No. 7 to the rafters at the Syracuse War Memorial, where part of Slap Shot was filmed. Any chance they will invite the actor who played Tim McCracken, the head coach and chief punk on that Syracuse team?

You are forgiven for thinking the A on Chris Pronger's sweater stands for something other than "alternate captain." Everyone had that same thought.

There's still a desire to see The Express, but evidently the film depicts West Virginia fans heaping racial abuse on Ernie Davis in 1959, even though Syracuse didn't play them that season. (Why pick on people from West Virginia, Hollywood? Because you can.)

More great headlines that can never be written: "Carpentier getting the f--k out of Dodge."

Patrick Carpentier will probably be fine, so please don't joke that he'll end up in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, which is a lateral move from driving a tour bus. By the way, is it true the drivers' purses on that circuit are paid out in Canadian Tire money?

(A Francophone driver in NASCAR? That should have been the premise for a summer comedy.)

Thank god that Ottawa teen hockey phenom Ryan Spooner was drafted by the Peterborough Petes instead of the Kingston Frontenacs, who chose one pick earlier. If he'd gone to the Fronts, there would be no NHL superstars to compare him with.

(Erik Gudbranson will be the first. Pinky swear it.)

Yes, not-so-presidential John McCain did refer to Senator Barack Obama as "that one" during the presidential debate.

Time for a game of, "Who is this?" Two years ago, you couldn't turn on a TV without seeing his face or hearing his nails-on-a-chalkboard croooning. Last week, he put out a press release touting his triumphant return to "singing and raising money for breast cancer research," but no serious news outlet paid any attention.

Not that anyone asked, but: It's quite simple why this site has never made a Jägerbombs/Sagerbombs joke. No one wants to be associated with a drink favoured by bitchy bachelorette parties, moronic millennials, fauxhawked fancyboys, overstressed and undersexed office workers and myriad others who have to be seen having a good time.

Shame on anyone for making a joke that panders to those types. A man worthwhile is good with Jack and coke. If it's consumed alone, even better.

On the plus side, the Jäger/Sager connection might put an end to the pain of being of a Sager and forever hearing your last name pronounced Seger. That hasn't been cool since 1978.



This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Michael Lewis of Moneyball and The Blind Side fame (and other books which were also not really about sports) is going to be writing for Vanity Fair.
• Do yourself a favour. Buy Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl. It's the first book I've read in a long while where I only laughed a half-hour straight after getting to the end.
• Please add Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician to your Google Reader, even if you don't follow the Syracuse Orange teams. This might be the greatest bad roommate story ever told.
• Ottawa's Tyler Holmes, who is starting at left tackle for the Tulsa Golden Hurricane as a freshman, could end up playing in the Liberty Bowl.

State of the Franchise

Sometimes the most casual, unintentional comment can sum everything up perfectly.

At halftime of Game 5 last night, in what looked more like an attempt at holding back on making negative criticism, Bill Walton stated the Lakers would pull out the win because it was a solid franchise that wouldn’t let this one slip away. You could tell Walton didn’t even really believe it himself when he said it, but who knows maybe the Father’s Day spirit got to him and he decided not to bash his son’s team.

That 19-point first-quarter lead that HAD slipped away, just like the 24 point lead they lost late the previous game, became irrelevant when Walton reassured everyone a franchise like the Lakers were better than that. I have never been a fan of the franchise tag in basing outcomes; to me it’s the players in the game at that time, not a compilation of that organization’s past accomplishments that dictates success. Never stops the facts from being presented though: Team A has never lost at home versus Team B in the playoffs over the history of the franchise, and while they haven’t met in the playoffs over the past decade this still clearly puts Team B at a disadvantage heading in!

Since neither of these groups of players have had much of a history together before this season, it’s really quite useless to point to the franchise past as support for either of these teams in any game. But everything has turned that way, almost as if it was always meant to. Beginning with the hype leading in and further enforced with each game moving forward, the teams are taking priority over the highly recognized players.

Marketing-wise the Face-Off/Highlander ads the Association has run throughout the Playoffs, the ones which taught fans the proper person to cheer for/against for each respective team, turned the franchise angle by pairing up Bird with Magic. And this team over superstar theory is being further reinforced on the court now too. The inconsistent play of the star players has meant each win has come thanks to a tandem of players contributing over one doing it on their own.

As ESPN’s J.A Adande points out, although it was the stars who got these teams to this point it’s the supporting cast that has now taken over. The stars importance aren’t grabbing the headlines like once previously thought would be the case, which is kind of ironic when you consider it was blockbuster trades for a handful of players that allowed these two opponents to meet up here.

Doc Rivers made a comment at the end of Game 4 and reinforced this idea, an idea I personally thought was dead in the NBA; “This is a player's game. It always will be, and it really should be.” And as Adande further emphasizes; “As much as we fixate on the stars in the NBA, basketball remains a sport where the collective means more than the individual.”

It’s almost as if you get the feeling that this series was never supposed to be about anything BUT the franchises! And to that extent it may be possible that the only person anywhere near as happy as David Stern right now would have to be Chuck Klosterman (Chuck, if for whatever reason you're reading this blog PLEASE get a spot either on halftime or pregame or whatever to tell everyone what they're feeling this series - not only would I LOVE to see this but it'd likely help book sales too!).

It’s true the Lakers history had nothing to do with holding off another late surge by the Celtics, the banners in L.A.’s rafters had nothing to do with Boston’s all around poor performance last night. But it’s just a lot easier to see the teams over the stars right now; it almost makes sense to recognize the whole, which is rarely the case in the NBA these days.

Bill Walton’s analysis did little to sell me on the merits of the Lakers holding onto their narrow halftime lead, but he likely summarized the entire series in that one awkwardly stated comment. A series with a plethora of superstars has become an examination of the teams, not specific players, for a pleasant change. NBA basketball has returned from the brink of superstar oblivion, if only for a moment, for one championship series.