Oklahoma State coach Gundy blasts Oklahoman columnist

Thank you, Piotr.

And that kind of disconnect, somebody else can have it.

 

Just curious ... what leads you to this conclusion? Anything other than hope?

I know we all want to believe that there's this silent majority out there that respects the hell out of us ... but what makes you believe that?

 

I believe it because those are the people I deal with, not the fanboys.

 

Schoffel:

I'll echo shotglass. I've dealt with enough sports fans who are also intelligent that I retain, yes, hope that the majority is like that. I wouldn't say they respect us, but they also are smart enough to know that journalism does not involve homerism.

The alternative is to assume most of them are idiots. I just observe that those with a modem act like idiots.

 

boy shottie, it seems as though i have a lotta fanboys in my neck of the woods.

 

One of our columnists has been told by readers that she should be fired after her first column 3 years ago supporting a coach, and now being told by readers that she be fired for saying that coach today should be fired.

The one disconnect I'll concede is this: We run way more news on athletes who get on trouble than those who do good things. Not to make extra excuses, but I think there's built in reasons for this, the greatest of which is that arrests, etc. are public record made available to us by easily accessible court records

 

Growing disconnect...that's a phrase I hear conservatives use quite often when they bitch about the media. Funny, no disconnect existed five years ago when the media was pounding the drum for war in Iraq.

 

I choose to frame this argument in a different way.
It's not about a disconnect. It's about the ignorance of readers/listeners/viewers who tend to believe our job is to be P.R. for the athletes/coaches we cover.
News flash -- they have P.R. people. It's my job to find and tell the truth, warts and all.

 

Correct. Just don't expect many who live and die by the Tide or the Irish (to isolate two of the most prominent examples) to agree with you.

 

There is a disconnect -- damn! -- between me and anyone who thought this'un would go to 38 pages.

 

dumbest post of the day.

 

I was thinking about this during my drive home tonight for some reason. A-Rod -- several people brought him up in relation to the Oklahoma columnist story. The question posed was A-Rod was 19 when he joined the big leagues -- he was covered like anyone else.

I was thinking about the stories about A-Rod in the last couple of years though. There have been some hard stories about intangible surrounding him -- his personality, whether people like him or not, that he's sort of phony, that was seeing a therapist ... all in all, sort of finding himself as a person.

Here's my point: you can do that sort of story about a 10-year veteran, and about a 30-year-old guy. He's been around the block a few times so you can get into his psyche a bit. Tough story, but you can do it.

It's much more difficult to do that story about a 19-year-old kid -- or 21-year-old in the case of Bobby Reid.

It's extremely difficult to do on the younger player -- you run the risk of tearing them down while they're still growing up.

Just a few thoughts.