Media Bowl Gifts

I refuse my paycheck each month in case it might color my perception of my employer.

 

The best college sports event in the best setting in American sports (and I've been to Augusta National as well). Forget the swag, whatever it is. Enjoy the view as the sun goes down.

 

Some of the best perks in covering the bowl games isn't so much the swag as it is who you get to hang out with. No. 1 on the list was Hoss Brock with the Cotton Bowl, mostly chasing them around in October and November when they went to games. Hoss expected you to hang out with him and he was awesome. RIP, Hoss.

 

Just wondering - has anyone brown bagged it to a bowl game (or any game)? Media meal is pretty par for the course, not just the Outback.

And I second the comments on the Rose Bowl this year. Been to a couple of bowls and the people at the Rose Bowl were by far the most helpful and organized of the bunch.

 

To summarize the fine reasons given so far for accepting freebies:

1. I'm too strong to be affected by a nice gift. It doesn't change my work at all to get a free ride on the racetrack in a car that no regular fan gets to ride in, or a free round of golf at Augusta, or a nice blanket to give my wife because I'm too cheap to buy her a gift myself.

2. If that won't work: Most of the gifts aren't nice at all. They're just trinkets, small worthless items that bear the colors and logo of the Monistat Is The Cure Bowl. Why the sponsors of the events would give us these gifts, we have no idea!

3. I only use or wear the swag in private. So I'm not advertising the bowl game or its sponsors. Compromising your integrity in private is the best way -- nobody knows but you!

4. We don't pay for the seat in the press box, or to park, and they feed us at the stadium (though sometimes the assholes make us pay for our food), and we have a private elevator so we don't ever actually have to get anywhere near the fans (though some of them we should be interviewing, because the only thing we can possibly get in the press box is what other people are getting in the press box), and they bring us the stats, and they bring us the quotes, too, so we don't even have to bother going down after the game to actually interview anyone, so it's perfectly acceptable to take home as much swag as we can carry. It's hypocritical to see any distinction whatsover. Being handed things is what sportswriting is.

5. I confine myself to writing about the actual game on the field. My role as a scribe is circumscribed by the boundaries of the playing surface. (There will never be any actual news at this bowl game, and covering the bowl sponsors and their response to such news wouldn't be my job anyway. We have actual journalists we'll send over if that happens.) And although the bowls have contractual relations with the conferences, I don't plan to do any serious coverage of the conferences or those contracts, either. Therefore, because the swag doesn't have a team logo on it, it won't affect my game story. No problem.

6. I give most of the stuff away to my family. They think that I became a sportswriter so I can go to games and meet famous athletes and get free stuff, and they're right!

7. People who think you shouldn't accept gifts are just expressing that they're better than we are.

8. Or, if that won't work: They're just jealous. It's not possible that people with careers to be proud of hold ethical beliefs.

9. I don't have a shot at being hired at any place with respect for ethical rules, so what the hell.

10. The people I work with already laugh at me.

 

Has anyone tried: It's sports, who gives a crap about some silly ethical rules that don't apply to these situations?

Put me down for that one.

 

That's not true. Having actually been around the track with a driver telling me the keys and where the entry and exit points are made me feel much more educated about the track. Kind of like watching film with a coach. Guess that's swag too?

 

If you cover auto racing, and you arrange to ride with a driver, good for you. That's enterprise. That's reporting. I'm sure it does help you cover your beat.

But I was referring to this:

Last time I checked, the Meineke Car Care Bowl is a football game.

I trust you can see the distinction.


http://meinekecarcarebowl.com/events/raceday.html

 

I'll second the hospitality at the Armed Forces Bowl. Good people running that one. They had a liquor cabinet in the media workroom the year I covered it. At least for a couple of days.

 

Translation: I don't get to cover anything fun, and I'm sad I never got a pen/polo/fleece/dinner/bag/race-car ride.

Either that or you are just the world's most ginormous douche.

Lighten up a little. Jesus.