ESPN "Office Space" Lynn Hoppes

HE BROUGHT HIS $%#@& TOYS!!!!

 

because you really, really need to explain yourself to a bunch of anonymous guys on a message board.... : : :
(tho it was pretty damn dumb.)

 

Along a similar line, although far funnier and better executed, is FoxSports' Bernie Kim's semi-weekly video gag, Cubed.

http://msn.foxsports.com/video/shows/cubed

 

Tour of my Office Space.

Over here we have the Doomsday Drawer -- soft drinks for when our vending machine is fucked up again, bunch of soups in case there's no food run. Some crackers for the soups.

Next we have the "head drawer." Big supply of Starbucks Double Shot Espressos so I can be wide awake at work, stash of aspirin, Excederin Migrane and ibuprofen. The prescription migrane medication is in the backpack.

Newspaper work also takes its toll on the digestive tract. So the top left-hand drawer is what I call the "ass drawer." We have antacids, Imodium, medicated asswipes and a clean pair of underpants in case ... well, you know.

In top right-hand drawer, notepads, pencils, pens, paper clips. magnifying glass from a Dollar Store. The paper purchased none of it, nor did celebrities give me them.

Atop the desk, they ran out of dictionaries, so I had to claim this one after an intern left. She was cute, but never stopped talking long enough to actually open the book, so it's like getting a new one!

I am not really ______ ________, former pro beat writer. I just took his chair with his name tag on it after he took the buyout and my old chair broke right underneath me while I was in it. As close as I have to a celeb gift, only the ex-colleague didn't really give it to me.

This phone is usually unhooked. The legions of people wanting to talk to someone else on the staff depress me. I think our cops reporters have groupies and are secretly banging Brazilian supermodels after we leave work and I head home, my middle-age wife asleep for hours by the time I arrive.

 

I don't get what the big deal is. [/garryhoward]

 

I rarely laugh out loud while reading something. But I got a good, sustained chuckle from this...

Thanks, Frank.

 

Thanks for saying this before I could.

 

A couple of you fellas need your sarcasm detectors recalibrated.

 

I read it daily for a few years. I thought it was a spectacular section. This was awhile ago. While I still think it's a very good paper now, it's not even close to what it was 8-9 years ago when you had Schad covering colleges, Harry covering the NFL, Povtak on the NBA, I think Elling was covering FSU. I think Juliet was helping with NASCAR. Brewer had just gotten there. It was just a staff of crazy young talent.

Mike Bianchi is one of my favorite columnists. At the time my only issue with the paper was that it seemed to waste a lot of space on Whitley (I know he's beloved, but I never thought he was on the same level as the other top columnists in Florida, much less nationally...) and I thought some of the fringe columnists they had were just awful (Diaz, Green).

I remember traveling through Florida at one point during the summer (probably at APSE) when there's usually not much in most papers where they don't cover MLB and they had this series on the 10 worst teams in college football. I think Schad wrote the bulk of them and it was just something that you didn't ever see papers do and this was back when places actually spent money.

Chris Harry did a story on white running backs several years back that was so well researched and well-writtenit was scary. I don't remember what year it was, but the story was one of those things that you read and then immediately think, "Wow, I wish more papers do things like this."

I also remember the Sentinel sending Whitley to San Diego, Texas to do a spoof on Super Bowl media day when the Bucs were in the Super Bowl. I remember running into a Sentinel writer there and he said, "Dumbest fucking idea I'd ever heard and they sent a columnist and a photographer there when the local NFL team in the Super Bowl."

I haven't read it much (other than Bianchi) lately, but 7+ years ago, that was one of the best sections in the country by far.

The older writers at the Sentinel hated Hoppes. The younger writers would have taken a bullet for him. It's that way at a lot of places where the SE favors the people he hired over the ones he inherited.

 

Great post, Frank.

 

We're using different examples to essentially make the same point. They have/had talented writers and did the big stuff well. But they don't own much, which explains the ridiculous SB idea. Give them something different! The idea of Miami or St. Pete doing a college football series on the 10 worst teams in the middle of the summer is silly unless it somehow relates to The U. (I can definitely see Orlando rolling that out when they know APSE folks are watching, though, because they play to that crowd. That has Fluff Daddy written all over it.) But if I'm a reader in Orlando -- and I'm only hoping that UCF was somehow tied to this -- why do I care? I don't. That was my issue with much of their coverage. Hence the daily dartboard local, state, national approach to coverage.

 

Kudos, Frank.