Dear dimwit on the phone

Would've been better off asking for the school's mascot

 

Somebody at a local high school contacted a news-side reporter to whom she sends press releases regarding a sports complaint. She asked for her e-mail to be forwarded to the sports editor.

It's too bad she doesn't actually read the sports section online or in print, where that information is available -- along with quite a bit on the team about which she complained.

I basically bullied the news-side reporter into responding, and even sent him a link which has her favored team in the headline. If she wants to contact the sports editor, well... he'll just forward the e-mail back to me too, and I can tell her the same thing as the news-side reporter.

But thanks for reading the paper!

 

We had a coach/parent tell us this year over the phone that she can't get girls to join the cross country team because all they see in the paper is the volleyball team (which is untrue in itself).

All because we didn't have space to run a photo with their results from a road meet.

 

Marginal sport on marginal sport crime. s'sad.

 

Volleyball is actually a pretty big deal here.

You can't just fill your sports section every day with just football in the fall, basketball in winter and baseball in spring/summer.

 

No, Mom, it's not "illegal" for us to mention that your son, the quarterback who was involved in a fight with a teammate, was suspended from school and didn't play in the game, even if he a minor.

 

No, ESPN2 does not mean channel 2. No matter how many times you tell me the game isn't on channel 2, it won't make it suddenly appear there.

 

We had a momma complain to us about an "egregious" error in our HS FB statistics. Seems we had her son for 348 receiving yards. Momma said he had 349. No mention of us costing him a scholarship, though.

 

Dear dimwit page designer,

Don't run a story about the food bank running out of food with a large photo of a fat lady grinning while holding up a pack of bagels. The jokes write themselves.

 

I didn't know where else to put this, but do you ever get that one guy from a different department who comes over to sports, stops in front of the TV for 10-15 minutes to watch whatever game happens to be playing, and loudly makes a bunch of obvious comments?

 

The features editor, a daffy woman about 60, will drop by sports in an effort to look hip. She'll gaze up at the TV screen for 20 seconds, and then she'll say: "OK, which team is our team? I need to know who to root for." She'll do this often.

 

I remember that well when I was working sports. Now? I believe I am that guy! Sports sits right next to me and sometimes I mosey on over. If I do speak up, I try to make it something insightful.