But they work so hard!!!!!

glens falls sets the bar once again.

 

You've obviously never run a section. All we do is determine "deservedness" in terms of what and when we cover.

And I don't run freshman and JV sports, because it's hellish enough dealing with varsity parents. Freshman parents who call in are invariably women who NEVER looked at the sports section before, because they were NEVER interested in reading sports. Then, their kid gets on a team, and they start reading the paper and they're shocked, SHOCKED! by the lack of glory for their little monsters. Since everything revolves around them, in their minds, they think the men at the newspaper should treat them with the same slavishness they get at home, and it drives them nuts to be told "no."

Am I stereotyping all women? No. Just the knotheads who call with this complaint like it's the first time that it ever happened to anyone in the history of man.

 

He got a long e-mail last week from a guy complaining about a lack of cross country coverage. Uh, football started this weekend so we had previews leading up to it. Cross country hasn't started yet. We will preview cross country, but, of course, not to the extent of football. Damn, we cover every high school sport, including lacrosse and badminton.
Anyway, this guy referred to football players as "knuckle draggers." And he pointed out all these wonderful runners who have put in 1,000 miles this summer on their own for the sheer joy of running. In attacking our coverage, he also reasoned that most of the knuckle draggers will be done competing after their senior year while the beloved runners will continue running for the rest of their lives. He said that runners will continue to buy pricey shoes and apparel "from your advertisers" and that's why we should cover cross country and not football.

 

Dear Cross Country Advocate,

When one of your meets draws 1,000 fans or more, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Mr. E. Meat,
Sports Editor
Anustown Gazette

P.S.: I took the liberty of forwarding your e-mail to every high school football coach in the Gazette's circulation area. Including Second Chance Alternate School.

 

What a fuck. I wonder what he'd be saying if his son was playing football instead of running cross-country. I'm sure he wouldn't be calling them "knuckle draggers."

I love how parents have no problem with bad-mouthing other kids. My parents couldn't give two shits if I were highlighted in a baseball gamer or not. They said it wasn't their place. One of the few things we agree upon after all these years.

 

Well, if you can sell enough ads to make a profit on it, why not?

That said, we do NOT cover cheerleading, and most places where I have worked have shuffled such things into the mix of other activity coverage.

But ... here at our quaint little 35K, we do (through our highly motivated classified ad department) sell full-page (and full-color) sponsored pages for all state championship teams, and that includes cheerleaders.

It makes them happy and it makes us money. I'm all about that.

 

I used to give them a short feature (and I do mean SHORT!) before a competition ... maybe a few stand alone photos during the course of the season ... but other than that, no -- I mean, there's NOTHING to report here! Anything that was done was simply to keep the parents off my back ... or to fill space during the few lean weeks during the year. It is truly painful.

It was particularly rough one day when I was going to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled, and, as I was hacking away with a horrible cough, the lady behind the counter, who recognized me from the paper, said, "You know, you should REALLY do a feature on the CHEERLEADERS! They work really hard too." I never went there for an Rx again, even if it involved driving five miles out of my way.

 

A-freakin'-men. I can't tell you how many parents' calls started out with "The kids work so hard," and when I tell 'em that everyone works hard, and that we have to make choices on what to cover, it turns nasty. They might say everyone works hard, but what they're really saying is, "Cover us and fuck everyone else!"
And to be fair to the cross country father, there are some football players that are knuckle draggers. There are some, though, that are valedictorians.
I got a cross-country caller like that before, who seems to think that what they do is harder than what football players do, since they have to run 3.1 miles. I almost told him, "Yeah, but while they're doing that, nobody's running at them trying to take them down!"

 

"The kids work so hard."

The mating call of the minor sports/subvarsity/cheerleading/band parent.

 

I snapped one time, unfortunately, to a coach who was giving me the "our players are working hard" line. This was college basketball. I had just covered a major conference media day ... 10 coaches. The next day I covered a mid-major conference media day ... another 10 coaches. Then I had 2 solos with the other mid-majors in our area. That was, in about 26 hours, 22 coaches telling me how hard their players are working. And the 22nd guy, I snapped. I interrupted him and said, "yeah, yeah, everybody's working hard, I know, I know." I felt bad the very second I said it. But this coach was a good guy and very smart. He said, "but the difference is between the ones who say they're working hard and ones who actually are working hard. That's what we're striving to do."

 

Everybody works hard.

Years ago, in another lifetime, I coached off and on for about 10 years (mainly basketball, some baseball and softball, and a couple seasons of football). I had some really bad teams and some really good teams. More often than not, we were pretty good.

Some of my BEST teams didn't really work very hard; they could beat people just by walking on the court (or field). Some of my below-average (or even bad) teams worked their asses off. But I never gave any of them the idea they were supposed to get brownie points for working hard; if you work hard, that's satisfaction in itself. If you think you're supposed to get your name in the paper for working hard, you're playing sports for the wrong reason.

 

I'm also a big fan of the complaint that stems from not putting Johnny or Susie's name in the roundup, because "they have college coaches interested in them and when you don't put their name in the paper the college coaches won't be interested in them anymore." Love it.