Dear dimwit on the phone

"You only put us on the front page when we lose."

 

Well, yeah, she said everything but that.

 

And yet, if you would've buried it, she probably would've called the next morning wondering why the story wasn't in the paper. She heard from a friend who saw the front page and didn't see it. Little Jimmy ran for two yards in the fourth quarter! He tries just as hard as the first-stringer! He deserves to get his name in front of college scouts.

 

God damn Little Jimmy. Maybe is he didn't have a fear of spidahs he would have been able to make first-string.

 

That spidah's gone git got

 

Had a high school cross country fan/parent call in Friday night in the middle of writing a football story and taking gamers over the phone.
Wanted to know why we haven't been running the state cross country rankings "because we have a few area teams on the list."
Had to inform him that the state's coaching association, which actually handles the list, had not sent them to us at all this year. The group does have a Website and I think it can be found there, but it's not very proactive about distributing the information and The AP is not involved in any way.
What I didn't tell him is that, while landing on the list is a nice morale boost for the runners and program, it means absolutely nothing in regard to the state title or even the postseason. I'm sure, though, that we're costing some kid a scholarship because his team's coaches association state poll ranking isn't listed on the agate page.
Oh, yeah, did I mention he called in the middle of a football Friday night?
Sir, if you don't like my curt and quick -- though polite, with no yelling or profanity -- answers, don't call in the middle of a football Friday with a question about what you consider to be a lack of high school cross country coverage on our part.
I know not everyone likes to play or watch football and it may not be PC thing to say, but football is THE high school sport in the fall and Friday night is all about football.

 

The XC rankings we sometime use aren't even done by the coaches' association. They're compiled by a couple of guys who run Kentucky's Mile Split site.

 

Prep polls are worthless anyway...we dealt with those for years and years, then a couple years back Oregon went to an RPI system for its team sports, and those rankings are updated daily by the state association and are used for seeding. Finally, some rankings that are well thought out and have an impact on something real.

 

Football mom: "Yes, I'd like to know why there was no mention of Podunk's football game from last Friday in the recaps section?"

Me: "Well, the team never sent us results on that game"

Football mom: "Oh, I didn't realize that's how it worked."

It's amazing the things that seem so simple to us that readers simply don't understand. Even more so when every edition has a bar across the bottom of our recap section saying in bold print "Coaches can report scores by calling XXXXXX or by email at XXXXXX"

 

I've long believed that many readers (and coaches and government officials) somehow believe that we can receive information via telepathy.

 

We send reporters to every game but only allow them to file if the teams we hate lose.

 

Yes, I can't count the number of times we've had it suggested to us that if we go to a game and the local team loses, we shouldn't bother with a story. Of course that would pretty much eliminate late Friday nights during playoff season