Bloggolalia: Why do we need Female and Minority Bloggers?

TBL had an interesting article about how most of the ESPN Insiders were white guys; something like 34 of 37. here As mentioned by Captain Caveman (appreciate your honesty on that, CC),and others, the same is true of the most popular sports blogs. The problem is, we have no excuse of having been hired by the same company, so it's even more embarrassing.

Look at the supposed listing of the top 20 sports bloggers: here . Are we really any better? Here, let's play Where's Waldo: want to find the minorities and women in this picture? Even trying to find a decent tan is fruitless.



Now, for some reason I have a blogging death wish today, so I decided to tell you why we need more female and minority sports bloggers. Most sports media are white males, whether its ESPN or the big sports blogs; is that fair to say? I think so. We need female and minority sports bloggers, not because we need to fill some magic quota, but because I feel that white male sportswriting in general suffers from two critical flaws in perspective. And only females and minority members of American culture can fix those.

Flaw 1: Lack of Emotional and Personal Depth
The first flaw is a terrible inability to convey emotion and motives in sports stories. Men in general are less in touch with their emotions than women, fair to say? What I hate is how often sportswriters turn to weak, freshman psychology class type analysis of players and teams. These sportswriters often have never played professional sports, so their analysis is even worse because of it. So we get this one-dimensional view of most athletes, or ridiculous platitudes about working hard and overcoming adversities.
Female sports bloggers, on the other hand, tend to present a more well-rounded view of a human being. I often find that they bring up angles to a story that I hadn't thought of. It amuses me that even when it's a blog created mainly to express crushes on male athletes here , the women still continually veer from the script to present the athlete as a person, not just a hot body. We learn that so-and-so is crushworthy not only because he's handsome, but because he volunteers to help kids, because he and his family appear so close in some picture, etc.
My concern about some female sports blogs is that sometimes, I feel they don't get to the point. The article starts great, it's witty, it's interesting...and then I reach the end and go "huh?" So I wouldn't want to live in a world of all-female sports bloggers, either. And that is why we need both male and female sports bloggers.

Flaw 2: Rush to Judgment
The more offensive flaw of many of today's sportswriters and bloggers is a rush to judgment any time they don't understand something or that an athlete doesn't match their cultural background.
I saw a lack of understanding just today. Garrett Anderson doesn't want to wear Jackie Robinson's number like everyone else. here for example Ok, so what? I don't want to wear a Live Strong bracelet like everyone else; does that mean that I want Lance Armstrong to die of cancer?!

But no, let's rush to judge him, right? How dare the black man not enjoy the Jackie Robinson holiday! We have set this up for you to make us, err, you, feel good about black players! Never mind that there are only 8% black players in the league, 50 years after Jackie! Enjoy it, black man! Follow the leader! Conform! Sigh. You get my point.

Or, take OJ Mayo. Let's suppose OJ Mayo was a white boy with a 30 ACT score, and that his father was the one who wouldn't give out his cell phone number. Nope, nothing wrong about that! We'd praise his family for having taken control of the crazy recruiting process. But because he's black and seems to be cocky, no such thing. Look, Bill Simmons, Kevin Love is 5X cockier than OJ Mayo. Reader, google his name on the web; Kevin's dad tried to get his coach fired. Read Slam's High School Diary articles with him. The editor there deserves a Pulitzer for all the filtering he does of what Kevin Love really says. Kevin is no better.

Even more mind-boggling is Gilbert Arenas being treated like such a curiosity. Let me run this by you, slowly. Gilbert Arenas has admitted to playing video games non-stop, being rather OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive), having intimacy issues with women (not wanting to sleep next to them), and doing odd thing to improve his performance (like a hyperbaric chamber in his house). Now, if this was a white center from Stanford, what would those characteristics mean? NOTHING! He's a nerd, or if you will, geek. We can recognize that type. Gilbert Arenas is a nerd or geek, is all.

However, heaven forbid that sportswriters and bloggers ever met a black athlete (or black man; they're different, you know) who was a nerd or geek. Nope, not at all. Instead, we have all this weird Gilbert cult talk, because we don't have enough minorites who can understand someone who doesn't quite match popular athlete culture.

Sorry, enough ranting. What I love about minority bloggers is that they don't rush to judge someone who doesn't match the cultural norm. They look for explanations for that behavior, and sometimes those explanations do exist in a cultural context. They personally are used to not fitting into the cultural norm, and so minority bloggers are more insightful in analyzing athlete behavior. My only concern is that sometimes, minority bloggers are unwilling to call "FOUL" when it should be called. They get trapped into an odd corner where they're the go-to person on their particular minority when it comes to sports personalities. So they're afraid to say anything bad about their boys (or girls), or anyone else's boys or girls. Big mistake; it lessens their integrity with the general population of readers. We need some judgment in sportswriting, some winners and losers; we just have to be careful that we don't filter everything through our own cultural biases.

All right, I know, I've generalized and typefied and done all those things we aren't supposed to do in our society, and that is always risky. If I really did mess something up, though, I'll own it. Comment away.

Next week, we'll discuss about how to make blog-land even more diverse and creative. For starters, a favorite complaint of mine; where are the small-town bloggers? Why aren't they making it big? Why is it just NYC, DC, and LA, with a little Detroit for flavor?

Bloggolalia: Is TheBigLead.com really so innocent?

So blogland is all in arms about what Colin Cowherd did to a poor innocent blogger known as TheBigLead ( site is down now ). And I don't like it either; apparently, Colin Cowherd did deliberately try to shut down the site. I really liked TBL's article this week about "why we blog", and they've had some great articles in the past. But let's look at this honestly; is TBL so innocent?

According to TBL themselves via kissmesuzy.blogspot.com, what has TheBigLead ever done to Colin Cowherd? Nothing. But let's check the facts via Google's cache. I searched for "colin cowherd" on the site and found the following:

http://thebiglead.com/?p=1423, in an article titled "Scoop Jackson has his Colin Cowherd moment"
"But now that Scoop’s gone and bogarted someone else’s thoughts and ideas and not attributed them to their correct source (his Colin Cowherd moment), we’ll say it slow and hope it sinks in: Journalism in 2006 isn’t what it was in 2001. There’s a new checks and balances system in the form of bloggers, and they’re watching the big boys. It’s happened in politics, it’s happened in entertainment, and now it’s going down in sports. So get your act together."
Hmm, seems like they did get their act together, TBL, only not the way you hoped. Instead, they checked and balanced you into submission. Now what?

http://thebiglead.com/?p=1399, in a random gathering of links.
"Looking for ammo against that douche Colin Cowherd? Look no further" --and then there's a link to an article that has since expired.
And why, TBL, should we be "looking for ammo against that douche"? I don't understand. Looks like you provided ammo for Colin Cowherd yourselves with that sort of talk.

TBL's hands aren't as clean as we think. I sympathize with TBL, sure, but I refuse to pretend that TBL is as innocent as Mother Teresa. Blogs in general need to wake up and drop the inferiority complex when it comes to ESPN. There are checks and balances BOTH WAYS. Blogs in general need to hold themselves to a basic level of integrity. Stop randomly slandering ESPN personalities by taking pictures with them under false pretenses, questioning the credibility of their columns when it isn't necessary, and accusing their personalities of all sorts of sexual and physical misdemeanors without facts. I thought our blogs were about sports, not a fifth-rate version of defamer or gawker going after D-list sports celebrities. It makes us look cheap.

Yes, you probably didn't like this piece, dear reader. (And frankly, the fact that it's "dear reader", not "dear readers", is why you're hearing this information here, and not in a more well-trafficked blog. They have much more to lose by potentially angering the blog gods.) It's much better to believe that the little guy is always righteous and true-blue, and that "big media", "big pharma", "big oil", or "big whatever" is just keeping us all down. But real life is much more complicated than a slick 2-hour film at your local cinema. TBL found that out this week.

Guest Bias: The Short And Happy Life of a Royals Middle Reliever

So you let a guy post a guest blog, and he thinks he knows what he's talking about. Ted Bauer is back for more punishment. He maintains a decent blog A Price Above Bip Roberts , but he tends to go a bit overboard on some of his claims. For example, he seems to think - in contrast to my ever-so-eloquent Benchwarmers post of Monday - that the life of a benchwarmer is all sunshine and lollipops, specifically when you play on a bad team. He also seemed to think, back at the beginning of the week, that the BoSox would shatter the spirits of the Royals off the proverbial bat. Er, that didn't happen. Check his rants, penned Sunday, then let him know just how wrong he is.

When I sat down to write something for my associate MC Bias, I started out with a meandering, poetic essay on "what baseball means to the American soul," peppered with a few references to Jim Nantz's place in the sports culture this week. I realized it pretty much sucked, and who could give a rat's ass what I think about baseball's place in our hearts?

I scrapped that in favor of something on Joe Torre, because I firmly believe this is probably his last year at River Avenue, but then I realized there are far more interesting, informed surveyors of Joe Torre's time in the Bronx, so I scrapped that.

I needed something, though. I mean, at the time the Mets game is 6-1, I was Instant Messenging with a girl I knew in high school in a futile effort to get some and slowly realizing she basically has a boyfriend, and I had little else to kill my time. Then it hit me: a diary. An Opening Day Diary of a Royals middle reliever.

In stark contrast to Mr. Bias, I used to tell people back when that I think the ultimate dream job would be Kansas City Royals middle reliever. You make the league minimum, which automatically makes you richer than half of America; then, you basically get paid to plug holes. See, playing for KC in this day and age, you're almost never going to enter a meaningful situation. Either the starter got absolutely rained down upon, and you're on the short side of a 7-1 game, or you're mopping up something, or you're bridging to a closer no one really thinks can close in a game everyone expects you to lose.

Basically, you make a lot of money to travel around the United States for a summer, telling girls you play professional baseball, seeing a lot of ballparks, working maybe 100 innings, and never really having a lot of responsibility. Sure, I mean, I bet the losing gets grating after a while, but doesn't the pressure of winning too?

If I were a KC middle reliever, here's how my day would look tomorrow:

11:45am
Arrive at ballpark. Exchange pleasantries with groundscrew and other assorted personnel I haven't seen for a while. Old Man Morty, one of the clubhouse guys, says to me, "I really think this is the year!" I smile and say, "Totally." I'm so full of crap, it's unbelievable. Providing false hope to a man close to the grave should be punishable with something horrible. Instead, I'm removing a paperback copy of the latest James Baldacci novel from my duffel bag. I'll be reading this by the 4th.

11:48am
Some of the dudes arrive. We, too, exchange pleasantries. Someone yelps, "Who the hell are we playing today, anyway?"

12:02pm
Jersey'ed up - I sometimes think the KC jersey is embedded with a sweet stench of failure that high-quality free agents can smell, like one of those dog whistle kind of deals - I take the field at Kauffman. A few VIPs are milling about, and some hardcore fans. I take my first deep breath of the spring. Nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning.

12:40pm
I'm limbering up playing catch with a few guys in the outfield. A fan asks for my autograph. "Any idea who I am?" I ask. "None," he admits. "But you're wearing the jersey." Imagine if it was really that easy in other professions to become revered. "Do you know what accounts I manage?" "Not a clue, but you're wearing the suit."

1:10pm
David Ortiz walks around the batting cages with Manny Ramirez. They take a few practice hacks. I'm pretty sure one of them landed by Bill Self's toupee over in Lawrence. I turn to my brethren and mouth, "Oh crap." They are just staring straight ahead.

2:00pm
I'm up in the bullpen now, sitting around and not doing much of anything. Meche, who we're calling "Millions" until he bloodies one of us at a bar later this week, is throwing around. Me and the guys are scoping out a few females slowly filing into the bleacher area. "Think this year will be better than last, overall?" one asks. The bullpen catcher chimes in with a new question: "Best road trip of the past season?" I vote for Seattle, which pleases Millions. "I was making out with this girl at this tiki bar," I begin, before the pitching coach shows up. I quickly halt my story. He glares at me, then smiles. "It's Opening Day, baby," he intones. "Nothing like that."

2:02pm
I see a fan with a paper bag on his dome. Nothing like it.

3:48pm
Millions is tossing his final practice pitches near us. I've cracked the Baldacci book already - we were on the field too early - and am already near the beginning of Chapter 2. One of the guys is starting his first Hot Foot of the season, aiming for the bullpen catcher as a target. A few girls have winked or waved ("The Essential Ws," as we call it) down at us already. Millions looks nervous. "Hey Millions," I bellow, drawing a glare. "Don't sweat the small stuff out there, you know? No one expects anything." He stares at the ground, then looks back at me as if to say something, then stares back at the ground. "It's KC, baby," I finish. A good middle reliever can always get the last word, because when else does he? "If it ain't BBQ, it don't matter." Millions smiles and begins his trot to the dugout.

4:05pm
National Anthem is gearing up; I'm wondering if they'd let me take a laptop out here. I'm then wondering if Kauffman is wired for WiFi. I wonder if it would be a seminal moment of my career if I took a "wireless dump" in the bullpen of Kauffman. This Baldacci book isn't too well paced; once we sit down, I'm headed to my bullpen bag for some US Weekly. I heard there's an article about Katie Holmes and Chris Klein's torrid sexual history together, and it possibly being rekindled. That's some good stuff.

Women's Sports Week Encore: WNBA Draft Pick Pictures Part 2

Part 2 of my WNBA Draft Picture post. As for the human details:
Shay Doron's family is apparently adorable; lots of Jewish babble and calls to Israel to tell family there where she was drafted. They are going to love her in NYC.
Meg Bulger, sister of Marc Bulger, was drafted. No sign of either on site, though.
Rebecca Lobo is apparently very underrated in person. She was talking about her husband for a moment too, but sadly my embedded reporter had no details. (Ok, like I'd tell you anyways. Eavesdropping is a bit much.)
Brooke Smith was eating a huge white-chocolate chip cookie, but my embedded reporter was the softie type and warned her of the lurking camera before he took a picture. Too bad, that would have been fun.
A lot of the ladies were really sweet. I'm not surprised at this. The Draft is a seminal event for an athlete's life; it doesn't get much better than knowing you'll actually make some real money now. It's like graduation...only if you got money at the graduation ceremony. :-) Cool.
Katie Gearlds still seemed to be disappointed at not being able to move further in the tournament than the Elite Eight. It must be really odd to go from trying to beat North Carolina a week ago to being drafted.
No security whatsoever. My reporter should have gotten someone else to go with them so they could have taken pictures at the podium, ha.

Players here include Brooke Smith, Shay Doron, and a player I can't identify. Click for a larger view of any picture.

Women's Sports Week Encore: WNBA Draft Pick Pictures Part 1

One thing that drives me crazy as a blogger is how hard it is to get original content. I mean, 85% of blogging seems to be some couch potato typing "I can't believe so-and-so said that in that one interview" or "Didn't Erin Andrews look good the other day on ESPN?" It's ALL secondhand. And frankly, it holds blogging back from a larger audience. But it's nearly impossible to get contact with famous pro athletes, so what can one do?



Well, why not pick a less popular sport, where you can actually get closer to the athletes? Here you go: pictures from the WNBA Draft, not as good as the official WNBA gallery of course. To be honest with you, it's a lot like the NBA draft, with happy families and poorly fitting suits, only with women. These players pictured below appear to be Jessica Davenport, Katie Gearlds, Ivory Latta, Gillian Goren, and Carla Thomas. Thanks for cooperating, ladies, with my photographer.

NCAA Men's Final Four: Bench Boys

We're only about 7 hours away from "One Shining Moment" being played. I wanted to talk about some overlooked members of college basketball teams: the bench players.

Now, usually when you see those little-used players, they're hopping up and down after their team just made a key basket to move closer to victory. Sounds like a pretty good job if you can get it, right? Well...what about their thoughts at other times in the game? Let me fill you in:

...so if Smith and Johnson go pro, Onfen graduates, and the campus police stop letting Infamume off when they find him passed out in his car with minors locked in his trunk, and Henderson chooses Duke instead of here, I might play next year...

...Wish I wasn't flunking Accounting this year. I didn't want to take it during the Winter quarter, but it's my only chance if I want to graduate. Coach said there's no funding for next year for me to go to school. Funny, there was funding when he recruited me, before I hurt my knee...

...so Henderson keeps elbowing me every time in practice. Any real defense on him in the post draws an elbow. It's a foul, but coach won't call it. Tells me to "be a man". Funny, they didn't tell Henderson that when I blocked his shot last week and he got mad and broke the table. I swear Coach James was telling him it was a foul on me after practice. Me? The only foul was what the staff have been letting Henderson get away with the last 3 years; Janikitz still hasn't seen a dollar from the $300 he let Henderson borrow to "see his mom." I can't wait until Henderson has to sit the bench like this in the pros.

...Becky hasn't called me in a week; says she's busy vacationing in Florida. I remember when I was Prom King and she was Prom Queen at high school. I remember when she told me "I love the best athlete ever!", felt so good...Oh, and Dad told me that Jeff Manders, the guy who broke my high school scoring record this year, is visiting Florida this week. I'm not surprised he broke my record; he was my height and always was more athletic than I was. Wait a minute...

...Coach told the reporters Jones is the last guy out of practice every day. I guess that means I'm not on the team anymore, because I leave a half hour after he does. Heaven forbid Coach mention a player the national media can't ID without a guide...

...Assistant Coach Lenders stopped me the other day and told me I needed to be more enthusiastic on the bench. Said I didn't look excited enough when Jones hit that big three last night; said I should be jumping up and down, showing how happy I am to be at State U. Oh, there's another jumper by Jones. Think happy thoughts...oh, like only one more year before I graduate! Woo-hoo!...

...Social Work sounded like an easy major, but now, what do I do with it if I actually have to work? Yeah, like lots of single moms are going to let a 7-foot man into their house to check on their kids. I can't wait to hear "I was expecting the agency to send a woman" for the next 30 years of my life...

...Jones broke into my locker again and borrowed my Blackberry without asking. Only this time, he scratched up the faceplate when he dropped it, and now it stopped working. I'd say something to him or coach, but we're all supposed to be extra nice to him since he's talking about going to the NBA....

...I swear, if Assistant Coach Lenders looks at my girlfriend again like that after the game, and offers to buy her something while she's waiting for me to get dressed, I'll...say nothing. Because I want to play, and he's my only supporter on the coaching staff...

...Two more inches, the coaches told me. I was only 17 when I graduated; if I grew to be 6'1", they could see me playing the point for 3 years here after Jones graduated. Hey, David Robinson grew 6 inches in college, right? Not me. I'd believe in God too, if he gave me a 6 inch growth spurt right now. Or Allah, or Buddha, or Victor Conte...

Women's Sports Week: She is the Champion, My Friend

I figured we hadn't had enough classic song titles as blog titles on here yet. Ah, so much easier to twist the work of another to make a cute title than rather thinking up our own, eh? That said, let's talk about female sport champions.

I didn't want to post on this to start the week. Usually, most of us are controversial enough without help, thanks much. But I dislike how little emphasis there is in women's sports on achievement and winning the championship.

The standout example to me is women's tennis. In 1999 or so, the sport had a chance to set up rivalries that could last for a decade. And what happened? Ask the players themselves. Are you Martina Hingis, the Williams sisters, Anna Kournikova? Well then, you are a marketer's dream, and you should spend more time on fashion/movies/travel/becoming an entertainment superstar than on actually improving your tennis game. I know they had some injuries as well, but I really dislike how they used tennis as a stepping stone. On the other hand, are you Lindsay Davenport? Well then, you should prepare to be made fun of because of your looks, and have your accomplishments ignored.

Eh, I could go on and on about this, but it's Friday, and the last thing you need is to hear me rant and rave. I think the issue is clear. I would argue that any time a women's sports league or players attempt to focus more on appearance, style, and sexiness rather than the outcome of the game, it has been a negative in the long run. Sure, it's a short-term boost for the gate if, say, the left midfielder for your women's soccer team appears in a laddie mag; but there's no permanent benefit. Please, feel free to contradict me if you wish with examples. I'm arguing a principle more than providing across the board evidence. But I think the evidence may favor my argument as well. Sure, for marketing, say, a new perfume, using Anna for an ad will probably sell more bottles than using Lindsay would. But there's also the principle of honoring a champion for their achievements, and that is lacking.

So in oh-so-weak retaliation, today I am posting pictures of more obscure women champions over the years. No ring or medal earned, no picture.

Courtesy of here , Lindsay Davenport, 1996 Olympic Gold Medalist and winner of all the big tournaments except for the French Open:


The great Laura Wilkinson, who won a gold medal at the Olympics for diving despite a broken foot. She has a great page that you should check out; I especially appreciate the video interview after she won the medal.


Erin Buescher, who it's very hard to find a picture of. Unlike the other players on this page, she's a role player, not a star. But she does so very well. She won the 2005 WNBA title with the Monarchs, and then turned around and made herself the Most Improved player in the WNBA the next year. She's also a really great person: one of the few athletes I've ever gotten to e-mail back and forth with until her site closed down. Erin, if you're reading this, send me an e-mail; I'd love to have an interview for here too :-) Hey, can't hurt to try, right? Shh, it's a rhetorical question.


Cynthia Cooper, 1997-2000 WNBA title winner and Finals MVP winner several times. Very underrated performer. She never really got much appreciation because of Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson, but they haven't been able to win without her.


Ok, and with that we end Women's Sports Week. What did you think of having a running series like that; any preferences as compared to my random posting? I was going to have more text, but I was boring myself, so I became more picture-centric as the week went on. Or did you want more verbiage?