Next up, Kansas City...

He's going to get run out of town. I've read some of his blog posts and everything he says is just dripped with snobbishness.

Plus, here's a tip: if you want to cover a team, you probably shouldn't have a blog where you bash everything about the university, its players or its coaches. The biggest problem I have with this guy is not the fact that he's a KU grad but because I have a very hard time thinking that he's going to write fair and unbiased.

 

That's probably true. It's like burning the bridge and then swimming across anyway.

I wonder if the Star/Eagle knew about the blog before they hired him.

 

Interesting that this guy's blog has been deleted, erased, killed. No evidence of what he wrote that was snobbish or negative toward KState.

Gee, never had the problem (articles disappearing) with stuff that's in print.

 

Yeah, it's been killed, but a bunch of people on the K-Stated blog found them, linked it to the posts AND quoted them. So there's limited records of it still hanging around.

 

Interesting to see this discussion made it here.

Irrational fan base doesn't even begin to describe it. And damn it, I'm a part of that base. An embarrassed part right now.

I don't know if it will work out for this guy. I don't think it's fair at all, but people are really, really, really really pissed. How much will your life suck if the people who read what you write hate everything you do? Every mistake, no matter how tiny, you make will be blown WAY out of proportion. The guy hasn't even filed an article yet, just written three blog entries and people already are furious with what he has reported. They will see unfair shots at players and coaches in literally everything he does. He called one player "short" but great and people flipped out. Pointed out that another was practicing after getting arrested and people see that as a shot at the head coach's morals. It's really insane, but the fans will never trust this guy.

Obviously a beat writer shouldn't have to be loved or even liked by fans, but if they aren't going to read anything without finding some dumbass hidden message I don't know what you can do. Sucks to be him.

 

A beat writer shouldn't have blog posts bashing or loving on the University he covers.

There is a KU beat writer who is a Mizzou grad. No biggie.

 

I don't think it's just fans that may not trust the guy. The people with the university himself may not be too keen to talk to him, especially since he's following the class act that was Jeffrey Martin. The first thing I was shocked about wasn't just the fact that he graduated from KU (I know they have a good j-school and everything) but that he did it in 2005. For this major of beat doing it for two of the largest newspapers in the state, it's going to be a lot of pressure and not just because the fans already want to lynch him.

I can't understand why a diehard KU fan would WANT this job. There's a reason I got completely away from the Big 12: out here in SEC country, I can show as much bias as I want towards my team. I don't cover a I-A school. The memo's been sent out as to my loyalties and I cover a bunch of teams that I have no care about either way (no matter how many e-mails I get to the contrary). I find it hard that this guy is going to be able to not let his personal feelings get in the way of his job, knowing how fanatical he's been in the past.

 

Easy -- it's a Division I beat. And if you're a diehard KU fan, there should be no concern with bias on the job because it's not your school. I've never had any problems covering KU or K-State, because I know when I'm on the clock, the job comes first.

 

The issue isn't where he went to school. His posts on that blog are an issue. Yes, I was curious and looked them up. They sure read like a screaming homer and the tone is quite dismissive of Kansas State, almost to the point of belligerence at times.

I can see where the KSU fan base would be extremely angry. It's one thing to hire a graduate of a rival school. It's another to hire someone who comes across as a rabid fan of said rival and a hater of the teams he has just been hired to cover.

 

It's tough for me to feel bad for the guy because he put himself in this position by running a KU-based fan site where he took numerous shots at K-State. Like someone else said, if you have even the slightest aspiration to cover that team in the future, taking repeated digs on a blog you run is probably a really bad idea. Even if none of this had ever come up, he would have had to work harder just because he's a KU grad. But now I question if he'll ever really gain the trust he needs among the administration/coaches/players/fans.

That said, this reaction from Wildcat fans isn't surprising. The hardcore K-State fans are brutal on the media. There's a definite "the media is out to get us" mentality that permeates throughout (a hopefully small but very vocal part of) the fanbase. When Posnanski announced he was leaving, more than a few essentially called him a talentless hack who hated K-State because he ripped the Frank Martin hire. Whitlock and Lutz are ripped on a regular basis for their alledged overwhelming biases against K-State. Most of the beat writers and radio/tv personalities are disliked because either they're not K-State guys or at some point, they wrote something that could be construed as a negative (Jeffrey Martin, however, was well liked/respected). Even the No. 1 radio guy in Kansas City, who is a K-State grad and a huge K-State fan, is seriously disliked in by some fans because occasionally he'll discuss a negative story about KSU or give praise to KU or Mizzou. One of the the reasons the K-State Rivals fan site is so popular (I think it's top-5 or top-10 among Rivals in subscribers) is because it's run by KSU grads and fans, and subscribers are much less likely to read anything critical about their team there. (A more important reason is the writers at the site have great relationships with sources, work hard and produce a lot of good material).

But now that the fans have a legitimate reason to be upset, and I think those posts are a legitimate enough reason to at least warrent a discussion, it's tough for me to feel bad for them either. Because it always seems to be something with them.

The whole scenario seems like another good life lesson about the way the Internet can burn bridges you don't even know exist.

 

Good points all and a fair evaluation.

One thing. I'm as big of a Posnanski fan as there is on this site (and that's saying something), but the way he and the Star handled the Frank Martin stuff was irresponsible.

 

Agreed with all of that, billikens, and I'm one of those K-State crazies myself. The guy was going to have it hard enough just being a KU grad but no one at the university will ever trust him (unless he proves himself and earns it) because of this.

Plus, he's following Martin, who is probably one of the most liked K-State writers ever.