Dear dimwit on the phone

Yeah?! But it's happening THIS WEEK!

 

This thread always makes me smile.

 

Agreed. It's one of the first I look for.

 

It's because it's one of the few things we all can agree on. And that is that the general populace is mostly ignorant.

 

Got my annual "Why don't you guys write more about the SWAC" phone call.

As an added bonus, the suggestion is made that only some form of discrimination could possibly explain our lack of interest.

I had to be careful not to cut straight to the chase: A lack of interest explains our lack of interest.

 

Got the same thing going on with a minor league football team in our area. The only ones that are interested are those who are connected to the team in some way, be it family or whatever.

But those guys, some of whom I consider good friends, can't understand why we don't cover them. Our readership just doesn't care.

 

The minor league football people are like the soccer people and the BMX people ... they don't grasp, oh, so many things ... like if I'm up until 1 a.m. Friday putting out the paper, I really don't want to be out at your event for "just a few hours" on what's usually my day off because "well, you like sports, don't you?" Well, yeah, it beats delivering refrigerators or taming tigers (not Tiger) for a living. But I like my down time too ... but I digress.

 

Yes, I do like sports...that's why I'll be plopped on my couch with a pizza and a Dr. Pepper watching the college games today instead of out "for a couple hours" working your game that no one cares about except for the players girlfriends and mothers.

 

I once got a call at home, at about 9 a.m. on a Saturday after I had worked late Friday night, from a guy trying to get me to cover the finals of the local adult rec soccer league that afternoon. The guy was an assistant coach with one of the area high school soccer teams, and after waking me up he told me he thought I'd be interested, "because I know you like soccer."

That much is true. And I paid more attention to the local high school soccer teams than my predecessors had. But why this guy thought it was OK to call me at home on a Saturday morning to try to get me to cover some rec league game has remained a mystery to me for many years.

 

If it's important in their world, they figure it must be worth your time. Some times they are right...often times not.

 

Thank you, SportsJournalists.comers.

I know better than to do drunk posting, but when I made my original comment, I'd just finished a 12-hour day because we had 2 Thursday football games, and since one of our locals, while way out of town, was playing a few block from where our writer lives, I let him file from home and he put together a briefs column for me from items I forwarded to him, but other than that I covered a game and did our pages.

Friday? More fun. Parents said to principal of Shelbyville High that we made a big deal out of them losing to Podunk in volleyball, but didn't put a thing in when they beat Springfield (Shelbyville is in its first varsity season, so I've got newbie parents, dammit). Well, we did have Shelbyville over Springfield in the roundup ... which was led by Podunk beating Springfield Tech in tennis, since that's what I assigned to shoot the day after Labor Day when we had only one photog on duty, and I wanted to keep his work day as short as possible. I sent the principal a note, but saw him at a football game than night and told him to have bitchy parental units call me. I know I won't make them happy, but wtf ... it's my job to figure out what goes in the paper where.

But there was good news: A retired writer from one of our former weeklies has a granddaughter who has just become a cheerleader at Springfield Christian, and sent the me for news a note volunteering to send in stories on Springfield Christian football. And while I love going to Springfield Christian, we thank you!

 

Dear football coach who had a piss-poor day:

I realize your home game turned into a road game because your field wasn't playable, and I realize that your team lost by four touchdowns because you evidently haven't practiced special teams at all, and I realize you were in a foul mood because two of your players got ejected for fighting and then your AD came on the field and gave your team a postgame talk.

But we decided to staff your game even though it meant a 45-minute drive each way for our reporter, so the least you could have done was offer up something more than "No comment," when he tried to talk to you. Good luck to you, sir. By the looks of things, you're going to need it.