How come national sportswriting is now all predictions and comparisons?

SI's cover wasn't trying to hold a reader's attention for 9 months, or even, arguably, nine minutes. It's the nine seconds that count when the person in the airport decides what he/she wants to read on the way to Cinnebon.

As for golf's decline, yes, it's troubling but you also have to grasp that it's a course correction from an artificial inflation. Tiger brought eyeballs and money and curiosity to the game in ways no one ever had, and golf overextended itself as a result. Happens to a lot of businesses. Rory isn't going to save the sport. The sport needs to grasp that Tiger Woods and his 2000 Swing and all that came with it ain't walking through that clubhouse door.

 

I can't wait until soccer's decline.

 

IMO, we get a lot more predictions (worthless), rumors (eventually wrong) and comparisons (bloviating but generally harmless) in part because real access is so much more restricted by the leagues and the teams these days. And the percentage of outlets that even want access is shrinking, too.

For every one rhino out there doing real reporting, we've got 10 of those little birds that dance around them feasting off the bugs the rhino attracts or the crumbs he drops. The barriers to entry into the media world have been pulled down, but it's a different type of media now. Sometimes it seems like we have more people who want to spew their opinions than we have people who want to read anyone else's. That might be what folks prefer but it doesn't mean something hasn't been lost.

 

One reason we get more predictions in sports now is that we're better at predicting sports now.

 

Pretty sure I wrote nothing to intimate that either golfsporting press ignore him.

 

I'm not sure what "anointing" needs to be done. He's anointed himself. He's won three majors. Three different majors.

He's 25.

 

The good thing is that Rory only has to win the next 3 majors in a row to be on pace with Tiger at the same age, so let's go ahead and predict he'll achieve that, because 3 at 25.

Point being that Rory's a good kid, historically good at the game, and let's relax and enjoy his next 3-5 years.

That's the ideal hope, anyway. Reality is that the hype machine never stops.

 

"Keep thinking that."

---- Las Vegas

 

When I covered the NFL the two items that got the most clicks each week were game predictions and power rankings. Mock drafts would get an insane number of clicks, even two months before the draft.

 

Interest in football, in particular, is largely driven by gambling.

It's no surprise that readers are forward-looking.

 

So this slam against "national sportswriting" (sic.) means "I don't like Sports Illustrated as much these days because of a headline."

 

Golf takes time and money, two items in shorter supply these days. Many golf courses have closed not because of a lack of players, but because they were "golf communities," expensive housing complexes built around golf courses. The collapse of the housing bubble did them in, not the decline of Tiger Woods.