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Oh, how the not-quite-so-mighty have fallen. In case you read the
magazine and didn’t notice – entirely too possible – this week is Sports
Illustrated’s NHL Preview Issue. Obligatory jokes aside, the twenty-page section
is actually shorter than last week’s “Special Advertising Section” on football
tailgating, and lacks any of the quality SMW has come to expect from SI season
previews.
If
this is any indication of the season to come, the NHL will need much more
substantial changes than a repainted arena and some rewritten rules; it’s not a
matter of whether fans will return to the game, the oft-chanted chorus from this
time last year, but whether in fact sports journalists can be pried away from
football and steroids long enough to offer the league significant coverage.
Don’t hear that as a moral issue; the league has no God-given right to media
coverage, and there are plenty of professional sports that labor in
near-obscurity. But it doesn’t make any sense for sportswriters to sit around
wondering whether the NHL will return to prominence; we are all complicit and
should openly embrace our accountability.
The SI Preview does contain a wonderfully-familiar soundbyte. Remarking
on changes in NHL broadcasting, in which the games will be largely carried on
OLN with NBC retaining rights to some games later in the season, SI quotes Dean
Bonham of the Bonham Group, “a sports and entertainment marketing firm.” Bonham
optimistically predicts that this contract “gives the NHL flexibility because it
is not long term. In five years the league will be positioned to get a much
higher rights fee. The product will be more fun to watch, and we’ll have a much
higher saturation of high-definition TV technology … HD format completely
changes the game, [and] it is much easier to follow the puck.”
Now, while SMW agrees completely with the coolness factor of HDTV sports
– especially hockey – this is a familiar refrain. HDTV has been five years down
the road for the last fifteen years. While HDTV is more available today than
ever before, that doesn’t mean that its price tag ($2500 for a baseline system,
plus significant monthly charges, all subject to geographical availability) is
likely to fall within reasonable standards for casual fans.
The jump to HD might be worth it for puck die-hards, but they’re not the
ones that the NHL needs to worry about. SMW suspects that the short-term,
flexible contract more significantly benefits OLN, making the marginal network
more immediately attractive to local cable lineup programmers while not forcing
it into long-term commitment to a league whose return to prominence is hardly
guaranteed.
In
other news, now that somebody besides St. Louis has finally won a division,
sportswriters are falling over themselves with congratulations. In Chicago,
where the Sox appear safe, Mike
Downey’s breathing a sigh of relief. Chris De Luca wants us to “put it on
the board.” And Mariotti says
Sox fans can breathe again (assuming of course they don’t lose from today
out, something their cross-town neighbors might know something about).
In
further Sox news, both Mariotti and SI’s Verducci take particular note of Ozzie
Guillen’s post-game stomach troubles. Apparently the stress of managing is
taking something out of him, leading to SMW’s favorite phrase of the day,
courtesy Verducci: “the occasional cruel loss made [Guillen] so sick to his
stomach that he’d sometimes pull his office door closed and give new meaning to
the phrase hurling for the White Sox.”
One imagines that a breath-of-relief is what Atlanta fans might feel in
about a month if lady luck – and possibly deities from another dimension – come
to the Braves’ aid. Celebrations of consecutive-division-title-#14 fall over
themselves to note how impressive the streak is – Kevin Kennedy offers his
congratulations, and Tony & Mike did as much on PTI.
In
Atlanta, Mark Bradley pities himself for the task of writing the
hometown column on a familiar topic. SMW wonders if columnists ever consider
just pulling out last year’s Congratulations-Braves-but-you-will-fold-as-always
essay and just rerunning it. TK notes that nobody seriously expects them to get
by St. Louis; a longtime Atlanta follower, SMW does not expect them to survive
Houston.
PTI Watch: Not exactly a big news day for Tony & Mike. Wilbon
expressed quite a bit of anger at outrage over the pink
locker rooms at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium. While not mentioning her by name,
Wilbon exclaimed that he is “tired of this woman,” referring to the new Iowa
professor who had initially raised concerns.
SMW finds it interesting that Wilbon so easily tires of a single voice in
a short-lived debate, and generally that a question of color scheme so obviously
offends the sports media fraternity. SMW also remains unoffended, and generally
thinks that if the debate generates this kind of adrenaline, perhaps it the pink
is not such a good hometown strategy for the Hawkeyes.
Carson Palmer talked about Matt Leinart for the bulk of his “Five Good
Minutes,” which, in reality, was about 3:45. Perhaps SMW should start monitoring
the actual number of minutes used by “Five God Minutes” on any given day.
Regardless, we are clearly so unaccustomed to covering the Bengals that to have
their star, MPV-candidate
quarterback sit for an interview makes us want to ask about other teams in
other leagues.
And finally, over on Page 2, Sports Guy
tries to console himself about the AL MVP race between David Ortiz and
A-Rod. Simmons points out that no one ever remembers these awards down the
road, and that they seem to exist entirely so that we can argue about them prior
to awarding them. SMW fully embraces this realization, and wish that it had come
sooner. But there’s more: he additionally consoles himself that, occasionally,
people who should rightly win awards don’t: “If we recognized the right person
every time, awards would matter more.
This doesn't just go for sports. Three of the defining TV performances of
2004 belonged to Glenn Close (The Shield), Jeremy Piven (Entourage) and Terry
O'Quinn (Lost). Did any of them win Emmys? No. As with anything else, human
error screws up a good thing.”
Human error? Seems like strong words for
people-who-disagree-with-Bill-Simmons. Disagreement is not human error, it’s
just plain human, and SMW would have expected Sports Guy, whose career thrives
on mundane disagreements, to understand this most of all. As for the Emmys:
perhaps if they did not schedule themselves up against season premieres of the
programs they are awarding, more people would pay attention. SMW would tune in
for the Emmys in late July, when 24-withdrawal is kicking in. For confusing
himself with a supreme transcendent arbiter of taste throughout the galaxy,
Sports Guy’s respect-o-meter drops to 4.0. At least it was short.
Really like the commentary on SI season preview. And the direct call to
the media. Let’s hold people accountable to what’s going on in this arena as
things progress through the season. So columnists ignore it except to bemoan how
it’s ignored. |
Daily Digest 
