Columnist opening in Orlando

Mizzou, you just summed up everything. Rob Parker would be the next logical hire, for sure.

Hey, I'm not saying it's fair or not fair if someone's hired or not based on their personal life, or more precisely, what they do in their personal lives which enters the public domain. Just saying it's the truth. But some people get away with more than others. Look at Tirico. I can't believe he survived all his, um, 'mishaps.' Kornheiser, conversely, had to do a stint away from his radio and tv show, I think, when he criticized the WWL on the air.

That's not fair, it's just what the current corporate culture will tolerate. It's just like the 'star system'
on any professional sports team: Some guys get away with more because they're more valuable to the team. Others don't, because they're not deemed as valuable. Now Jemele didn't create the current 'Cultural Valuing System,' but to pretend she's not benefiting from it, on multiple levels, is either naive or foolhardy. Take your pick. And I'm ok with that, but I'm not going to pretend it isn't the truth.

Parcells kept Lawrence Taylor around even though he was a self - destructive drug addict. Parcells got what he wanted from LT, so LT stayed. Another guy does LT's routine, he's cut the next day. Not fair, just true. Hey, ESPN thinks they're getting what they want from Hill, so they hired her. Cool. Like I said, in their thinking, the blog with the sex stuff is almost assuredly a selling point, not a negative. Maybe Tirico was on the hiring committee.

LT had plenty of people around him, too, to tell him how great he was while he destroyed his life, his body, and kept collecting a fat paycheck. And when he couldn't get to the QB anymore, he went from hero to "poor, sad drug addict" LT in a New York minute, and nobody cared. It's cool to ride the wave when it's going your direction; just don't be surprised when it turns against you.

It's one of those "Catch a man a fish, teach a man to fish" things. If you pretend a man can fish when he really can't, don't be surprised if he goes hungry when the time comes for him to fish on his own, in deep waters, against more legitimate fishermen. The time when the man is no longer ridin' with the fat cats on their yacht who tell him how great and unique a fisherman he is. When the new fishing fad comes in, and the next "trophy fisherman" is feted on the big yacht, and the man is left on the shore with his stick and twine.

That's what I'm thinking about here, that 'stick and twine' time. Who's going to be there then? Not the WWL, that's for darn sure. When that time comes, you better be ready to go against the other fishermen. Chances are, they were once on that Big Yacht, too.

 

blah, blah, blah.

 

Yeah, we saw how well that template worked with Skippy Bayless......

 

As a retort, this has an actual English translation, I am sure.

 

You'd like to think so, yes.... but

 

Someone thinks she's pretty black. Maybe even pretty and black.

Someone thinks she has loads of street cred for the fact that she once wrote about oral sex. I think she does.

And, she is mediocre. And for a person of her exterior qualifications, that is pretty fucking good.

Good for her.

 

It absolutely is not.

There is a dearth of those with her qualifications. That's it.

 

I dunno. Say, like writing a column with lots of neat details of basketball players enjoying their ol' college team and it turns out that it never even happened.

Far-fetched, I know.

Or writers shilling for the home team or taking pot shots from the safety of the press box. Those kinda things.

 

What I find most troubling about this, is Jemele Hill is now arguably the highest-profile female print sports journalist in the country...

Not Selena Roberts, not Juliet Macur, not Sally Jenkins, not Nancy Armour...

Hell, even look at the last few writers to come out of this spot at the Sentinel... Macur, Rick Maese, Charles Robinson (sort of), and Jerry Brewer... All of them are so much better than Hill that it's scary...

 

Maese is one of those people who is so good it's scary... Same thing with Wright Thompson... I've yet to ever read anything from Hill that was anything other than mediocre to bad... She now has a better job than either Maese or Thompson, which is wrong on so many levels...

 

Writing for ESPN.com's Page 2, last I heard, is not a print journalism job....and if being hired with the possibility of someday maybe writing for ESPN the Rag gives her a higher profile than Selena with a 3x a week column in the NYT, I'm sorry, you'll have to prove that one to me. As for leaving Sally Jenkins in the shade, Sally with her WashPost columns/features and No. 1 best-selling books, to quote JPM Jr., you can not be serious.

 

Jared,

I'm not saying that's right, but that's going to be the perception. Obviously, Hill is nowhere close to being at the level of Selena, Juliet or Sally all of whom I consider to be among the best writers in the nation, regardless of gender...

But right or wrong, ESPN turns writers into stars... I talked to a longtime columnist who started making occasional appearances on ESPN and said, "Overnight, people across the country now know who I am..."

It's not right, but that's the reality of it. If Joe Posnanski and Scoop Jackson were both walking through an airport, which do you think would be recognized first? How about T.J. Simers and Stephen A. Smith?

Higher profile does not on any level mean better... But with a $200K a year job on Page 2 and regular appearances on ESPN, there will be no female writer in the country who is more recognizable than Hill.

And, no, that's not a good thing on any level... It's why I fucking hate ESPN...