I’m building a small compendium around This Zebra Doesn’t Have Stripes . This is an issue that I’ve decided deserves greater attention. The following post was meant to appear at a later date but I think it’s probably more appropriate now given the discussion that has taken place recently on this particular topic. This is part two of what, once completed, will probably end up being a four or five part series.
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I’ve mentioned the names of a few reporters and columnists while using the HockeyRhetoric handle and after each time I remember regretting the decision. Words like amateurish and disrespectful would float around in my head. I couldn’t figure out what to do. I’ve since been able to rationalize the fact that creating content with an emphasis on causality and then assigning credit/blame is not necessarily the right or wrong way to go about examining sports, it’s just one way. I shouldn’t get angry at the people with jobs to uphold the standard practice. They’re responsible for fulfilling just one perspective in what I and many other like-minded people have long since felt to be an incomplete branch of the media.
Think of the content offered by the mainstream media regarding politics. If you obtain your political news strictly from a source that favors one ideology, which most political media outlets do, then your perspective will eventually reflect that of the particular outlet. They hook consumers by stream-lining the range of issues discussed so as to attract a specific audience. It’s smart business. The problem lies in the fact that many important details, especially those counterintuitive to the ideological agenda, relating to the overhead issue are purposefully being excluded by these companies. It’s slanted media. Everyone knows this, correct? The most ignorant people in the world are those exclusively reading HuffPo or exclusively listening to Limbaugh. The point I’m trying to make in bringing all this up is that you’ve got to find perspectives on either side of the situation to get the full story.
Sports media on the other hand is constituted by a collection of nearly identical personalities covering teams, players, and events, all offering explanations and all sounding pretty similar. There are a few exceptions of course but the majority falls somewhere inside the aforementioned group. This isn’t a plea to make sports related content more like that of politics. This is merely an attempt to point out the vacancy in the way sports are discussed critically. There needs to be more voices on the other side of the table and they need to be heard. I’m speaking mostly about commentary — the type you have with your dad over the phone or the type you have with your friend on the walk to class or the kind you publish on the Internet. If you’re an observer trying to offer opinions regardless of the specifics of the audience, just answer the following question: what’s in your head? There’s no wrong answer so long as it’s crafted independent of other voices and the thoughts are communicated intelligently. I mean, lets be honest, the value in this type of opinion is just that it’s simply entertaining. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that what’s most important?
People read the sports section, watch sports television, and listen to sports talk radio to get informed. While they’re learning about the details and circumstances with which games are to be played under, they’re absorbing the associated opinions as fact because they’re coming from an authoritative position like newspaper columnist or talk show host . Most people will then adopt these opinions as their own. This is an important point not to be lost in all of the rambling: authority begs conformity. This psychological mechanism isn’t triggered for all but it certainly is for the majority and the reason for that is simply: they’re uninformed — they’re living their lives and working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. There’s no shame in this, in fact I would argue it’s perfectly normal. Most people don’t have time to keep track of all the minutia. This system works fine for certain topics like politics because there are loud voices speaking on behalf of either ideology. People are given a choice in politics. In sports, the opinion-makers are all having one-sided discussions. The readers and listeners who think to themselves this is stupid, there has to be another way to consider these issues, have no where to turn.
So sometimes I get frustrated and I take it out on the people making opinions in sports. As a fan, the experience of being beaten into hopelessness by a chorus of nearly identical voices makes the option of responding, combatively, to the occasional fallacy or non-sequitur all the more alluring. I regret the occasions I’ve even so much as negatively commented because it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of mainstream institutions for not promoting more voices from different perspectives and it’s my fault because even though I see the problem, I am, regrettably, an unknown.
I don’t want to overstate all this though. It would be totally foolish for me to suggest that I or anyone else is absolute in the way they look at something like sports. Mainstream critics do not all have hearts made of ice. Likewise, I’m not blind to the specific issues most mainstream media figures are talking about regarding the teams I follow like Sabres, for instance. I do agree with some of what’s being said.
In the future, I’ll try to refrain from commenting on the actual critics promoting messages in the mainstream but I’m not going to back down from the my position. I’m going to continue hurling verbal grenades at any poorly supported message getting attention on any platform of the sports media industry. If one of these grenades hits the messenger, well then, I’ll consider it collateral damage. I seriously empathize but I’m not sorry. Sports should be fun. There should be something you can take from most games that made you smile, made you appreciate what you’ve witnessed, and most of all — made you glad that you’ve taken the time out of your life to watch.