Dear AP (Re: State basketball tournaments)

Weird.

Or, maybe par for the course. They cover them here. I just assumed it was like that in every state.

 

I grew up in the burbs of Chicago. Most of those schools were quick and my HS wouldn't play pudunks until State, so I didn't need to worry about those games.

 

The KHSAA site is wonderful. It's always being updated, even if someone calls a score in at 3 or 4 in the morning.

The AP is always calling us for results either right before deadline or right after. We've pointed them in the direction of the scoreboard site and it's worked so far. They only call us if they check for a score and it isn't posted and the teams are in our coverage area.

 

A few years ago, AP would run stuff from every game of the state girls and boys basketball tournaments, as well as baseball and softball state. If you couldn't send a photog, they would shoot the game for you.

Slowly, though, that service went away. Now, we get nothing except the championship games.

At least we're lucky in the fact that the state associations (separate for girls and boys, don't ask, it's a long story) post enough stuff on their sites that we can put together a roundup each night.

 

I've covered the downstate teams in Illinois, and what's been said here is true: Some of those burghs are so far out in the fuckin' woods that it takes 2 days to send word of the game result to the nearest big town by horseback.

 

Forget the AP. Here, the State Tournament is a two-week-long hoops smorgasbord with all the classes, boys and girls, playing in Jackson, and the Clarion-Ledger guys do a bang-up job of posting results and updating blogs on their website almost in real time.

 

I'm looking forward to reading those 3-inch AP stories on the championship games this weekend, though.

 

For our just-concluded state tourney, AP used capsules from a have-to-improve -to-be-dense intern... I feel sorry for the papers who used AP...

 

I called Austin trying to pass along the scores we had last night, and the voice mail picked up and the message box was full.

 

don't they have bigger answering machines in texas?

 

I've always been amazed by states that have the AP cover HS sports. We don't even get a scorelist over the wire.

 

Really? Every state I've worked in has done that. I do believe Texas is the only one that I've worked in to push full agate on every state tournament, including track and field and swimming and those types of sports.