Seriously? Really? You're gonna do that a news conference

Signing stories? Awful. If the kid isn't I-A in football or hoops, we won't do it.

Why is the signing newsworthy if in fact you had a story that he committed already?

 

Because the one time I don't show up, the kid will change his mind and go somewhere else.

 

It wasn't the middle school cheerleading that surprised me, but the reference to state. State contests for middle school? What, no state freshman tournament?

 

I hear they have one helluva track team.

 

To play devil's advocate ... because commitments are non-binding ... they aren't official until someone signs on the dotted line. If you care enough to report that a player committed to a certain school, you should care enough to report that he's gone through with his commitment.

 

For here, we try to do a feature if it's a D1 school, depending on the year, there seems to be around 2-5 D1 football signings each year. Since resources are limited, we try to do most of them when they make the verbal commitment (rather than signing day).

This year, one HS had 2 D1 signings, with one of them coming less than 48 hours before signing day, so that was the centerpiece of Thursday's package. We ran photos (coaches sent them in) of the other schools that had players signing on the day.

As for the 1-AA players, when the news came in, we'd do a 2-4 paragraph brief on them, with some background on the player and maybe a quote from the player or coach.

 

Every newspaper, or smallish ones, needs a once a week brief package called "Heard in DeKalb" or some such title listing small school signings, summer baseball and basketball tournament winners, local swim club winners, etc. Cheerleading and band don't even make that section.

What do you people do when the ME actually backs the parents and says you have to do the cheerleading or band story?? You simply can't do it, right? It's not sports and that precedent cannot be set. But as many sports editors know, news fucks can be news fucks. What do you tell the stodgy powerhungry ME who demands you write a feature on the cheerleading team??? I say you offer your resignation instead of writing it.

I can picture the conversation of the ME saying, "Did you really tell Mrs. Jones we would not run a feature on the band placing third at state? What were you thinking? This kind of backward thinking is a reason our circulation is stagnant."

 

Yeah, but you ain't seen those Marching Jackals. The Carrion-Fed Band from Cowshitistan can rock the fucking house. They make the bands from places like Grambling and Southern seem dull.

 

Just starting to realize, ya'll get worked up over some minor stuff.

 

Wow....

I have one that may top that:

Out on long island I was working for a website covering a signing two years back for a kid (former local prodigy) going to CC. The kicker is he was going to the CC because he'd been suspended by the high school for a variety of issues (physical violence to classmates and a girl, robbery, etc.) and had his Prep school (unofficial one-year prep-to-d1 winkwink deal for grades) scholarship pulled.

First off, nobody will ask about the legal troubles or what it's like to be playing CC ball 40 minutes from home after having the opportunity to go D1 - then one of the local writers has the gall to tell him that he's excited "it worked out this way, because i'm gonna have fun still being able to cover your games...." And proceeds to talk about how he cant' wait to chart his progress, etc, etc...

I was disgusted. This local writer who was an editor and the main sports writer hadn't mentioned any of the problems, and was covering his 'signing' as if he hadn't been suspended at all... like he just just redshirted his academic senior year....

The whole thing was one giant felating for a kid that hadn't been punished since he was 8. I wrote a story when he was 14 and got in a fight at a summer tourney that it might be in his best interest to attend a military school or any boarding school to get him in a structured environment.... I had been freelanced out, i'd known the kid (it was MY town, after all) for years....

Story got squashed, and THEY asked ME not to contact them anymore because they thought i had a vendetta, and wasn't able to cover the team honestly. they had the gall to use the word 'honestly'!

I haven't spoken to any of the hoops people there since.

 

You get 15 minutes max from the original set time for the signing, or I'm leaving. All our schools do their signings incredibly early (especially if you're at work at 1 a.m. like me), so I have very little tolerance. The second signing I covered here, the principal was late and I told the athletic secretary, "I'll wait five more minutes for her, and if she doesn't show, I'm taking a picture without her or I'm going back to bed." The principal isn't late anymore.