Good or bad idea?

Or the annual coaches team vs. media team basketball game at the local college. It was fun for a while. But now I'm too old for that shit.

Leave the playing to the real athletes and I'll stick to the journalism end.

 

Quite the athletic prowess out there, especially in track and field.

I don't have a problem with it, especially if they have a sponsor, but it would work better against a high school or college athlete -- like many of you have already said.

 

A few guys from my shop once played a few guys from another shop in what was supposed to be a two-day golf event called the "Writer" Cup. Get it? Yeah.. we're wordsmiths.

It was just for grins. We only got one day in, and the score was tied. And it involved one of the most epic blowups I've ever seen, in any sport, at any level. It was about a three-minute epic of profanity that deserves to be on a plaque somewhere.

 

These assclowns have too much time on their hands.

 

If there's an "asthma-attack triggering contest" as part of the proceedings, I'll kick ass ... as much as I can do in my weakened state. If I can get up off the ground.

 

I guess I see the logic in building up the sports staffers as "local personalities," but my gut instinct is that if you're going to spend the time and effort to do video, the video should be about the people you cover, not about you. I think this extends to roundtable discussions too, which I've seen a few papers do -- two or three guys BSing about high school football as though they were doing an episode of The Sports Reporters or PTI. I don't think it works for preps.

When it comes to prep sports coverage, I don't think the personalities of the writers will drive reader interest/Web traffic. Maybe it works with college and pro sports, where you have longtime beat writers and columnists who everyone knows. But in most places the people on the prep beat come and go. Turn the camera on the kids and the coaches and make the videos about their personalities, not yours.

 

The PTI-style videos on prep sports is funny, especially when reporters get worked up about a game, but can't actually criticize an athlete because you are still talking about high schoolers.

 

I think some of you are taking it way too seriously. Of course it's not "news," but rather, something that's entertaining and some people might enjoy. If you don't, then you don't.

The personalities and the guys' willingness to do it all in good fun is what makes or breaks things like this.

As a 23-year old, I would absolutely love to get involved with something of the sort. Not too long ago, I did a feature on a discus thrower and included in the story my attempts at throwing. It was more of a "it's not easy" type of thing since I was doomed for certain failure, but felt it was an entertaining/interesting tidbit that added to the story.

 

Different beast altogether. That type of color helps a story because it shows just how strong a feat your local athlete accomplished by throwing the discus X feet. This dumb thing is doing nothing more than showing which sports guy sucks less than the other and, believe me, no one cares.

That's why I don't allow Red Sox and Patriots crap in our local weeklies. No one wants to read what I have to say about the national teams because A.) My opinion on those teams is irrelevant, B.) They're not local stories and C.) They take space away from local news/teams that would be better served by it.

In this example, if the sports writers in question had brought out a third athlete who was a well known local who demolished them both, that would have been cool. As it is, this is nothing more important than publishing the results of your inner-office tic tac toe competition on 1-A.

 

Verity.

 

We did something like this at one of my stops in Wisconsin a few years back. The baseball program organized a fundraiser game, with a bunch of coaches, parents and me taking on the varsity team. Of course, we also recruited a couple of ringers (local college players) to pad the roster.

I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column before the game, basically telling the high school pitchers how to strike me out (high fastballs and breaking stuff in the dirt).

Somehow, I still managed to go 2-for-4, with a couple of Crash Davis specials: A seeing-eye grounder in the hole at short, and a dying quail to right. It sure didn't seem like the pitchers were taking anything off their stuff for the old guys.

It was a lot of fun, and we raised about a thousand bucks for the program. And it yielded at least one more tongue-in-cheek column after the game.