Getting bored with sports

Exactly. Find the prep football player whose brother is doing a stint in Iraq. Find the kid on the basketball team who moved from New Orleans after Katrina. Did anybody know about dogfighting and pro athletes until Vick? And how widespread is it among his peers, if at all?

Here's the secret: Good sportswriting, IMHO, isn't really about sports. It's about people.

 

"I don't view myself as a sportswriter. I write about people who play sports."
-- Bill Lyon

 

I get all that. And I've done a lot of that. I still find it limiting. Sorry.

 

Eh, it depends on the gamer, the situation, etc. A mindless middle of the year minor league baseball game? Sure. If you're a beat writer, a gamer should be another in a series of unfolding chapters of a season, not something mundane. Even on deadline, if you're not giving your readers big picture off a game, you're not doing your job right.

 

Started out as a cub on the cop beat in the early 70s and had enough after about two years. Saw some unbelieveably bad shit, and the constant exposure to it really wore on me.

Been doing sports ever since. Did pro football and basketball for years, and for the last 15 years or so have been covering colleges. Do the Final Four and several football bowl games every year, including the championship game.

None of it does it for me anymore. I don't know that I'm bored. It just doesn't stoke me because despite all the hype around the big events, the bottom line is It's Just A Game. They'll do it again next year.

But I'm too far along to change now. I'll be retiring in less than 10 years, then will be more than happy to sit back and watch everyone else have all the, uh, fun?

 

Have you ever thought about going back and covering preps? Seriously. Maybe some time at the grassroots, away from the hype, would help you re-find some joy in what you do.

 

Nah, don't think so. The premise would remain the same: It's all just a game. Besides, I don't dislike what I do now. It just doesn't energize me like it did in the early years.

 

It's stuff that I can tell people I wrote about, I'm not sure I didn't want the experience, but I sure as shit don't want to do it again. It wears you down, and the thing about the cops beat is that it never ends. Games only take three hours. City council meetings only take two or three or four hours. But crime? it goes on all the time.
And there might have been other factors behind Collier going back to sports. I don't pretend to be privy, but that's what I heard.

 

I've never understood the "it's just a game; it's all inconsequential" mentality. ... What is life if not a series of a few so-called important events (birth, childhood, education, friendships, relationships, career, health, death) interspersed with a million more of these so-called inconsequential moments and day-to-day events that we enjoy (ballgames, movies, vacations) and others we don't (household errands, putting gas in the car, reading the fine print.) ... There's no shame in sports being important in your life -- just because something is not life and death doesn't make it inconsequential -- frankly, we spend most of our time in most of our lives dealing with the so-called little things. ... They're important for that reason. Otherwise, what's the point of life if all these frivolous or mundane or necessary or escapist activities we engage in every day are "inconsequential"? ... Sorry, but sports, etc., are as important as you make them. If they are a part of your life, then they are important.