 I
don’t know if the rest of you noticed, but the Super Bowl is this
week. How can I tell? You mean, besides my roommate (a diehard
Steeler fan) reminding me every five seconds? Maybe it’s
because every sports media outlet in North America had focused its
attention on Detroit for the week. And maybe that frozen,
depressing locale is why so many members of the media are glued to
their computers, blogging away about anything that might tangentially
be related to the game. The upside? At least there's something worth paying attention to while we wait for kickoff.
In my last Jiffy J-School … ok, so it was also my first, cut
me some slack, we’re a young site … I divided the sports blogging world
into three broad categories – news, fans, and corporate. Our
esteemed editor here at SMW was quick to note that split was overly
simplistic, and for an event such as the Super Bowl, he’s 100%
correct. The news is still the news, no qualms there. But
when an event turns corporations into fans, fans into analysts, and
analysts into mush, it’s kinda tough to split the blogging world into
three easy pieces. So this week, we’ll just look at blogdom’s
Super Bowl reporting topic-by-topic.
Of
course, we do need to start with the news…such as there is. I
mean, there needs to be some blog coverage of the car accident which
involved four Seahawks on Monday, right? A bit about
Bill Cowher firing his bus company, right? OK, from someone
besides John Clayton? Oh, who are we kidding.
There is so little actual news at this stage of the week
that the old stiffs on PTI made fun of the ridiculous media herd -
and Wilbon is part of it. Even the postings on Ben Roethlisberger's personal blog
are more interesting. Needless to say, other blogs pulled no
punches. Chuck Klosterman, blogging for Page 2 (no, seriously,
that wasn’t a stunt they pulled yesterday), picks his favorite nonsensical quotes from Steelers Media Day. Seattle Seahawks Fans NOTORIOUS takes the media to task
for refusing to acknowledge anything about Seattle beyond Starbucks and
Hasselbeck's dome. Deadspin correspondent A.J. Daulerio (formerly
of Oddjack) documents his futile attempts to get into the futile media events. And besting all of them, as usual, is SportsPickle, not technically a blog but worth noting all the same for polling on where Jerome Bettis is actually from. Plus, they poke fun at the dull Seahawks and report just how much tail Ben Roethlisberger could score in the Steel City these days. Of course, that assumes he’s still capable of standing, called into question through Deadspin’s crack photo division. OK,
so the news related to the teams is a little slow right now. But
what about the economic aspect of the game? After all, the Super
Bowl is capitalism with a cherry of football on top; shouldn't these be
a big part of the stories? Surprisingly, though, the sports
business bloggers are relatively silent this Super
Week. The Sports Economist reports on the profit Detroit just might see from hosting the Super Bowl (something that neither Houston or Jacksonville can claim), as well as the staggering increase in ticket prices for the big game. Beyond
that, though, there apparently isn't much interesting to
cover - SportsBiz and Darren Rovell, both of whom you'd expect to chirp
up, are both silent. Deadspin notes the marketing
of Big Ben Beef Jerky; the idea of eating his dried meat is a little
much for us, but feel free to try it yourself. Chuck Klosterman expresses bewilderment
at the amount of "Super Bowl XL" memorabilia available in Detroit, with
nary a mention of the teams. Frankly, the most exciting news in
the "professional" blog community coming out of this Super
Bowl might be the lawsuit Texas A&M has filed against the Seahawks,
detailed here by the blog of King 5 Sports reporter Cory Bergman.
A&M is seeking an injunction against the team's use of "The 12th
Man". Unfortunately, the only reason it's exciting is because it
gives us another reason to think Texans are loco. Because
it's still early in the week and the corporate parties haven't started
yet, there are no juicy, drunken posts following nights in swanky
clubs. Those will come later this week, if Deadspin follows
through on their promise to provide us with pics from the Maxim "Rock Opera" bash. In
the meantime, we'll have to live with the juicy vitriol spewing from
the mouths of the fans for the two teams. Well, at least one
team. Let me say this clearly (and, I swear, my status as a Browns
fan isn’t tinting this): Steeler fans are crazy. Not Jack Bauer
crazy, but crazy nonetheless. Check out some of the 4th grade
level taunting they issued to Seahawks blogger The 12th Man, or some of the flat-out disturbing posts from Steeler Fanatic (advertising a slew of Steeler songs) and the morally-named Honest Wagner (predicting
a pant-shitting by Hasselbeck). I’m relatively certain from
reading Stiller fan blogs that many of them would reenact scenes from Brokeback Mountain with a hyper-aggressive Bill Cowher if they thought it would win a Super Bowl. That's not to say there isn't some great work being done out there by fan bloggers. Will Harrison argues that Mack Strong will be the most influential veteran back in the Super Bowl with a nice bio piece at Seahawk Sal. The 12th Man, aforementioned Seahawks partisan, provides a position-by-position analysis of the game that's fairly impartial. Mike Boyko at One for the Thumb details the relatively easy path the Seahawks rode to the Super Bowl and breaks down the Seattle offense, while lauding the unsung heroes for the Steelers. And Heels, Sox & Steelers takes a page out of the SMW book, and actually analyzes some of the media coverage of the Steelers. Not bad for a Carolina fan.
So,
just to review – we've got partisan spitting, economic breakdowns, some
honest-to-goodness football analysis and a little bit of fun-poking,
all at Super Bowl XL's expense. It's not all good, and it's not
all flashy, but in different degrees and through different styles, the
offerings of blogdom are informative, entertaining, and downright worth
reading.
You know what I say to this? Thank GOD. There is a reason that each NFL regular season matchup commands, at most, seven minutes of time during Sunday NFL Countdown
– there really isn’t all that much interesting to say about each game
on television. You can talk about the general matchups, you can
run out of mock plays for your analysts to run, and you can run clip
after clip of game footage for Jaws to break down. But eventually
… and sooner than ESPN wants to think … you run out of stuff to talk
about. And that’s when you start covering stuff like “The
Steelers showed up in Detroit wearing replicas of Jerome Bettis’ Notre
Dame jersey!” I’m a Notre Dame fan, grew up loving the Bus in his Irish #6, and those stories make even ME want to poke my eyes out. But
it’s not like television doesn’t know; it’s just that there is nothing
they can do about it. Even during the playoffs, the talking heads
at Bristol were looking for other NFL stories to chew up time during
their football-specific shows. That’s how we ended up with process
stories on when Gary Kubiak would really become head coach of
the Texans, and why ESPN wanted us to care that Mike Hiemerdinger,
Brian Schottenheimer, and Mike Martz landed offensive coordinator spots
out of the coaching carousel. (Though, perhaps the nation should
be concerned that all of the new offensive coordinators in the league
have oddly Aryan names.)
This is where the
Internet has an obligation, and, as I said, thank God the blogdom is
fulfilling it. If we are going to be bludgeoned to death with
stories on the air of Jerome Bettis’ tearful homecoming and the battle
to be declared the underdog, at least we can find something … many
things … different online. Heck, we even have pictures from the Maxim party to look forward to, assuming that Deadspin isn't pulling our chain.
The
question that continues to need an answer, though - if
the corporate professionals are spending their time on
stories that everyone knows already (and, though I'm guessing
here, doesn't particularly care about), while the bloggers are covering
the more interesting topics ... who gets the title of "real
journalist"? Please don't misunderstand me; I'm not implying that
a Steelers fan who predicts that Seattle's quarterback will need an
underwear change is at the pinacle of reporting. But there are a
number of blogs out there writing well on harder topics than ESPN dares
to attempt these days, with a fraction of the time or resources to do
so. So if journalism is uncovering the news, talking about
it in a reasonably indepth fashion, and providing context and analysis,
I think we need to declare the blog world the favorite to win
Super Bowl XL for the media. Though I suppose most would still
view it as an upset.
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