What does this prove?

There's probably some added interest in this little flareup this week, coming after the report that the Raiders' other PR stooge tried to block Gannon from the facility during the CBS production meetings. Self-serving by the writer, yeah, but it is a little peek behind the curtain into the madness that is the Raiders.

Also, as for people not caring if it doesn't have to do with the on-field product, when the Raiders got fleeced in the Seymour deal they made a big show of saying he would bring professionalism and raise the standard of the entire team. You could read that blog post and conclude that quite the opposite is happening, that he's being dragged into the mire as Moss, Culpepper et al. were.

 

On a related subject, wasn't long hair considered part of the uniform, and pulling it was legal in the NFL, or did the rule change?

 

I don't know Lowell Cohn. Know of him. Wouldn't be able to pick him out of a press box.
But, I can tell you this.
The Raiders are the biggest assholes in all of professional sports. They are paranoid, they are fatuous and they are schizophrenic. It starts with Al Davis (or Bernie, from "Weekend at Bernie's") and goes all the way down to the bottom rung.
I hope Randy Hanson sues the franchise. He not only deserves a settlement, but I would love to hear these bastards under oath.

 

Didn't one of the Raiders' flacks try to fight Tim Kawakami last year? One of the Bay Area TV stations got it on video, and the flack was completely out of line. Seriously, Kawakami was reasonable, but the Raiders PR guy wanted to punch him for no good reason.

 

Again, I don't know how the team deals with the media, and I don't know how long it's been that way, but I do know from personally dealing with Seymour is that he's a professional. And this guy came off to me as a hack. As far as the blog/column debate, professionalism is professionalism, no matter the forum.

 

Anyone who has dealt with the team over that last decade knows the nightmare.
The team can't even run onto the field without the organization in fraud mode:

 

1) It's a blog post. Stuff like this is perfectly fine and par for the course.

2) The Raiders, from top to bottom, suck.

 

We may know the difference between blogs, web stories, and newspapers.

Most readers, however, make no such distinctions.

That's especially true these days, when the former two formats' prevalance and apparent preference are making them more interesting, more in-depth, more "inside," more modern and more efficient, immediate and up-to-date, and therefore, more impacting, than the latter.

Or, at least, perceived to be all that, whether rightly or wrongly.

Readers hardly know the difference, and usually, they don't care to learn it, either.

 

This comment below caught my attention. Is there a sportsjournalists.com groupie that can confirm this? I wouldn't know Lowell Cohn if he was washing my car at the local car wash but I can't fathom calling a PR guy a profane name and then writing about a situation as if I were the victim. Is there anyone out there who witnessed this?


Mr. Cohn,

I was in the locker room when Mr. Taylor was asking you to leave. He never raised his voice. He never approached you in what I would perceive as a threatening manner.

You on the other hand shouted in a loud voice "Mike you are an uninformed a--hole."

I couldn't help but notice that your outburst and ill-advised name calling was left out of your report and Mr. Florio's report.

I have to question your journalistic integrity considering you have twisted the story to make yourself look like a victim, when, in fact, you were doing your level best to incite some type of negative response.

Perhaps you should stick to writing about sports rather than attempt to sensationalize half truths.

Or have you lost your journalistic integrity?

 

Cohn was a noted shit disturber for the Chronicle for several years in the 80s and 90s. From what I remember - he was a talented writer without a background in sports whose job it was to stir the shit, and not be a jock sniffer. A guy who wrote about athletes in a way that the Bay Area wine and cheese non-fanboi crowd could relate to.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Anybody see that that guy that got punched by Cable appears to be going forward with charges? I wonder if he'd have done that if the Raiders were 3-0.

 

Anyone who was in the locker room is either a team employee or a credentialed member of the media. And media members don't tend to post anonymously on other reporters' blogs. I'm guessing that comment/recollection is either A) a complete lie because the person wasn't there; or B) coming from inside the headquarters of the most dishonest group of people currently operating in any business anywhere, in which case it's almost assuredly a complete lie anyway.

 

wow, that sounds exactly like something a PR guy, or front office exec, would write. who was the team that got busted recently for having a PR person post anonymously on team message boards?