Reporters wearing local team apparel?

So when I go to a bowl game, I have to give all that crap back? And when I go to the NCAA Tournament, the same goes? Same for the conference tournament? Whatever. You live by your rules and I will live by mine. Like I said, I've been doing this long enough that a t-shirt aint gunna make one damn bit of difference how I write the story.

 

Been there. Done that.

 

Can we wear the apparel of the opponent of the team we're covering? All our teams know we're biased against them, anyway.

 

Captain Podunk: The man of Shill.

 

Some people have touched on this, but I'll sometimes wear a tie or dress shirt that has similar colors as a team I cover. I don't much worry about it, though. I figure it's a stretch to equate a hue in a tie to homerism.

 

at a shop that covered two local schools in my area, the former preps reporter had two polo shirts with the podunk times logo. each in the home color of one of the schools. he alternated — and wore the official team baseball cap of each school — depending on which he was covering. don't know what he did when they played each other.

ridiculous.

i don't have a lot of plain white clothes, so i intentionally wear a different color from whatever local prep team i'm covering. since i cover 12 or so high schools, people are always accusing me, an out-of-towner, of favoring one or the other. i try not to feed the hysteria.

a time or two i've accidentally shown up on the campus of one school in the rival's colors, and i got some of the dirtiest looks this side of the bloods and crips.

 

It's amazing how many reporters lack ethics these days. Amazing.

 

The shop line here is "Don't worry sir/miss, we hate everyone else's school just as much..."

 

Agree on not wearing a team logo of a participating team.

As for colors - sometimes I think of it and might decide to wear something else. The colors might be a little extreme... a lot of teams have blue, so you can't stop wearing blue to any event which you might cover. Usually one team wears white, so I can't see wearing white especially since you might spill barbeque sauce or catsup on it.

 

If I'm covering two reds or two blues then I could care less.

Track meets are the worst -- we're talking 15-20 local teams -- then it's about whatever looks respectable and is comfortable. Bitchy parents can blow me if they think I'm going to screw around with my wardrobe when it gets up to 110 outside.

 

This seems less an ethical issue than a "don't a be a dork" issue.

The only t-shirts I have accepted from teams I cover is when they had the "media" games, in which we fatties got to take the field and embarrass ourselves.

When I cover anything outside the office, I never wear anything with a college logo, except a couple times I wore my alma mater's sweatshirt when I was just getting quick quotes at a practice for a team I covered regularly. Considering the alma mater was 1,000 miles from the schools I covered and never ever plays them in anything, I think only the most anal person would say that matters.

When covering high schools, I gave absolutely no thought to the colors I wore. It's not my job to be concerned with the idea that someone might be bitter because I'm wearing green to write about 16-year-olds. High school fans . . . .ugh.

Again, I don't assign particular "ethics" to this. Not in a world where much worse ethical breaches are wrongly considered OK by some readers, editors and reporters. I'm not just talking about the obvious, either. Hell, there are some beat jockeys who try to sell the bobbleheads from giveaway nights on eBay. I've known people that tried to sell old media guides on eBay. Those are the ethical issues I'd like to see more focus on.

I don't think it's necessary to worry about what one wears to work the desk. But definitely people need to realize just how dumb they look wearing logos in a college or pro press box. When among other reporters in an official capacity, there's a certain level of professionalism.