Late to the Party

But what else is new, eh? I may as well be posting this entry from the moon for how in the loop I am.

The playoffs are still going strong, but that's not what I came here to break my ever-more-frequent blogger silence for. The big story in the blogosphere this week is the official smack-down laid on internet writers of all shapes, sizes, and calibers on the Bob Costas show on HBO. (Bob Costas has a show on HBO? Who knew? Well, now the entire internet does. Well played, indeed, Bob.) Buzz Bissinger, famed sports writer, author of the book Friday Night Lights, and thereby the indirect creator of my newest TV obsession (so good!), endeavored to set a Guinness World Record for incredulous sputtering when matched up against Deadspin creator and one of the fancier pantsed bloggers Will Leitch for a little "discussion." And then some random football player was along for the ride. Many other bloggers have already beat me to it, and did a delightful job, but as someone who has been known to, and may again at some point, aspire to write for a living, I felt the need to weigh in.

The sports media takes itself way too seriously. I understand that sports writing enhances the experience of sports, and has been an essential part of the sports landscape for many, many years. I understand that these writers have worked hard to get to the point they have. I certainly understand that good writing is an art form to be appreciated and treasured. But credentialed journalists didn't invent good writing, and they won't be the last to discover it, so pretending to the throne of Ruler of All that is Good and Worthwhile in the Sphere of Writing is not only an insanity, but also, frankly, an insult to the craft they practice. Discrediting an entire group of writers based on a technicality--that their writing appears on a computer screen instead of in a newspaper, or that they share their space with a few bad eggs (to which I say, who doesn't?)--is ignorance, and the unmasked, intolerant vehemence with which Bissinger lashes out against anyone who dares take a different approach to writing about sports than the one he himself took is an embarrassment to his industry. And we're supposed to buy that bloggers are the only cruel ones? I've only been aware of the sports blogosphere for a little under a year, but I can tell you right now that you're bound to find more single-minded dedication to insult, humiliation, and cruelty in one Bucky Gleason column about Sabres management than in all the blogs I regularly read combined. (Unless those blogs happen to be posting about a Bucky Gleason column, and then all bets are off on the cruelty thing.) And yes, I'm sure there are corners of the sports blogging universe that fit Bissinger's description of stupidity and profane uselessness (it is the internet after all), but those are corners that I simply don't visit. And anyway what's wrong with doling out credit and blame where it's due? We fans may not be unbiased, and we don't pretend to be, but we are agenda-less; we're accountable only to ourselves and our readers, no bosses to please and no deadlines to meet. We get to write exactly what we want, nothing more, nothing less. What's so wrong about us publicly hashing out our opinions, thoughts and feelings about the game we love? Isn't that what sports is all about? Is it just because we decided to use a media (writing) that journalists thought was specifically reserved for them and them alone?

That's the real problem I'm having with this whole thing. I don't want to generalize journalists into a group, but in this clip Bissinger was certainly acting as though sports exists only for him, for the media. The games are only played so that journalists can write about them, and they can go down in the history books to be read about and admired later. I hate to break this to him, but that's not what sports is. At the end of the day, sports is an entertainment industry, and thus exists for the fans. It exists to give the people of one city, one region, one country something to cheer about, and suffer through. And just because we've suddenly found a more efficient method to cheer and suffer together--a method that that despicably doesn't include paper of any kind--doesn't mean we want to get you and your colleagues fired, Buzz. You professionals have your purpose. Leitch didn't argue that, and I won't either. I don't know anyone who would. You, by definition, have something we fans don't: access, an insider's perspective. And that's something that's had value to the sports media for a long time. But is it so bad that suddenly the fan's perspective is gaining value in the sports media, too? Is that really taking something away from you? Are you really so afraid of it that you're pulling out ludicrous parallels between what you do with sports and what Woodward and Bernstein did with Watergate, as though that's going to prove anything other than that you have a grandiose opinion of yourself? I mean, yeah, you're all about digging up the truth, but come on. The truth about Watergate was an issue of national scandal, and the "truth" about sports is an issue of who actually screwed up the contract negotiations. Watergate would classify under the "Things of Actual Importance" tag over at The Willful Caboose. (A tag, which, by the way, through its mere existence and seldom usage perfectly illustrates why I love that blog. Frivolity isn't necessarily the enemy of worth, as anybody who has read Katebits' writing can tell you.) Sports, as much as I love it, is not a thing of actual importance. That's not to say that the reporting of the truth in sports isn't valuable, but it's not the be all end all of the sports experience, and it shouldn't be. There should room for opinion and interpretation. There should be room for fans.

The reason Bissinger had such a hard time completing his final thought--some vague insult about Leitch not wanting the facts to inhibit him--is because, I guess, Bissinger has forgotten what it means to be a sports fan, since I trust he was one, at least at some point. It's not that facts inhibit us, its that they don't so much matter to us. If sports fandom were a pursuit of fact instead of a pursuit of passion, we'd all be Red Wings fans and we'd all own Crosby jerseys. Well, except that we would all be football fans and no one would even watch hockey. In short, there'd be no point in even being a fan if all that mattered were the facts. But people like Bissinger and Costas are too caught up in thinking of bloggers as the "new journalists," and all the threats that that label entails, to really recognize us for what we are: fans writing for the fans. We're not a replacement, we're a supplement. And yeah, sometimes we're unreasonable, and sometimes we say "fuck" too much, but I ask you, what's the point of being a sports fan if it's not an excuse to be unreasonable and say "fuck" too much?

All I have to say is that if talented sports journalists are really that threatened by the idea of the voice of the fan taking away their readership, maybe they should jump into the meritocracy themselves. Degree or no degree, you have to write something interesting if you want people to read, and if your readers prefer something written by some clown with no pants on living in his parents' basement, whose fault is that, really? Maybe instead of arguing you should adapt, before the only one left to hear your incredulous sputtering is you.