The simplicity of sports

First, the defensiveness of many in this thread is humorous. Just relax, take the chip off of your shoulder and listen to what Mr. Farrar is saying.

I was having this conversation the other day with a friend/colleague. I don't think I could ever handle
another newspaper job outside of sports for many of the same reasons the original post indicated.

As writers, we are in a weird position of always looking from the outside in. It is our job, and in many of our cases, our psychological make-up. We are always the outsider, the observer. Sometimes it gets frustrating: I've lost a lot of my pure love of the game. Even when I am off the clock, I can no longer go to a game and cheer. I have no interest in paying money to go to a baseball game, or a football game, or any other sporting event. I watch SportsCenter for professional reasons.

Sometimes I wish I could be like 95 percent of the world and use sports as an outlet. It's times like these that I play around with the thought of switching to a job outside of sports. There is so much about a job covering sports that is mundane, so much that causes you to check yourself and ask, 'Does any of this really matter?'

But then I put myself in another set of shoes, and I realize that I'd much rather be jaded about sports than jaded about life. And I think that is what Mr. Farrar is getting at. When you cover real-life news for a living, you look at real-life the same way I look at sports: from the outside looking in; as an outsider, as an observer. At least in sports we get to compartmentalize that. In news, everything about life is a possible story. In sports, it is only a possible story if it involved a ball or a bat. In news, everywhere you go, everything you do, is a possible story. In sports, most of the time, you are safe outside of an arena or a stadium.

I love my job, I attack it with the same sincerity as my news side colleagues and friends. But it is an inherently different job than the one Mr. Farrar holds. And I think that is what he was pointing out. And everytime I feel like sports are a drag, I remind myself: I'd rather sports be a drag than life itself.

 

We are? That's news to me. I never realized the locker room was such a welcoming environment.

 

You're ... not ... getting ... it.

You don't have it that bad.

 

There's a middle ground to this argument. Shot's right. Most of us are missing it.

I can empathize with where Jay's coming from without having the knee-jerk "you're making fun of our profession!" argument. He's really not shitting on SJ. He's just venting. It's OK.

Really.

 

Pepsi, meet monitor.

 

I've read every post on this board and I see what both sides are ... :-[

and it makes me want to do this ... :

 

I never meant to infer that we have it bad. Yeah, we're not putting our lives at risk, like a war reporter, but our jobs are not a breeze, either.