Sport-business
is entertainment and most people don’t take it too serious and from a
bird-perspective they are right: Don’t take it too serious. Because nearly
nobody takes it too serious we find here a place for relatively uncritical
media-report-judgment. It’s not very dangerous for sports-journalists to write
completely wrong things and they don’t have to „fear“ unmasking antithesis to sometimes
much too simple conclusions and „wisdoms“. In addition I absolutely don’t want
to blame especially journalists from the popular press because they just do what
is expected from them: They need readers and that’s why they have to personalize
crises and miracles they are always trying to find scapegoats and heroes even
if there are none. The popular opinion is that the readers are looking for
this. The journalists have the order to create polemic. So, they just do their
job, nobody to blame here. I also do know that in today’s world a lot of
journalists fight for their jobs because nowadays -with the endless
possibilities of “amateur”-news on the web - the aura of the old-school
journalistpower somehow disappeared, not so much glitter and glory anymore.
Also sportswriters have to fight to stay in the business and they have to fight
for the level of their salaries as never before.
But
all this doesn’t make bad reports/comments/thesis better.
With
the much appreciated help of Christian Seibt’s brilliant
observations I try to sharpen our readers brains a little bit and the brains of
sport-directors, GMs and presidents who sometimes might be too easily victims
of garbage pressure from popular press. I don’t want to change the writers I
want to help the readers to become more sensitive to garbage writing and especially
in sports we find too much garbage-writings, tons of wrong “wisdoms” and too
many thesis without antithesis.
So
here are some lessons I did learn:
The sharper, the more spicy a thesis, the
more critical we should check it. Don’t forget: Spicy herbs cover meat which has gone
bad.
Some examples:
“Czech hockey is going nowhere”. “European players are softies”. “Canadiens are winners”. “Russians
are moody”. “The neutral zone trap
is dead”. Watch out for such generalizing thesis! Not really better are
thesis with a messias or a scapegoat: “Brian
Burke saved the Leafs”. “Bryzgalov
is the problem of the Flyers”.
Sometimes
thesis are “proofed” with poor stats. I did read headlines about a bad goalie
and in the article they refer to stats from just 5-10 games, one single
tournament or even just one game…
Also
with mainstream-outrages we should be very careful. “European imports destroy the development of homegrown players”. “Players from NA take away jobs from local
players in the European leagues.”
All such thesis have one thing in common:
They are somehow right halfway through and in a retrospective view basically
never. Finalities
like a guillotine or a canonization work nearly never. The manager of the month
is the fired one next year. The “lunatic” coach who did lose most of the games
will win championships soon after. We also have to be very careful with so
called trends. A printed trend is nearly always a yesterday’s trend.
So, what shall we do?
The
mechanical method of questioning a thesis is to do some research of antithesis
but this is not the most fair method because in too many cases it also doesn’t
lead to find the truth. Maybe more inspiring is to check this thesis in
practical life, to ask some friends, relatives, experts. Sometimes you might
discover that this thesis did overlook a giant gorilla in the room. In
addition: Bad editors ask for a thesis before doing some research. Good editors
just ask questions. Last but not least: You should never repeat or even
strengthen already spread out errors or multiply banalities. E.g. “He knows how to win championships”, “after the bad first two periods we showed good
character”, “goalies are Mr. 50%”,
“soft coaches never win championships”.
“A good assistant can’t be a good
headcoach”. Better try it with “wisdoms” without a lobby. Ask questions as
e.g. “Can a no-name amateur coach win the
Stanley Cup with an NHL-team?” “Is
it possible to become a successful hockey coach/scout/GM without the experience
as a pro-player?” “Can we win the
Stanley-Cup with just average goaltending?” “Is it possible that in reality we do know significantly less about
winning games in hockey than we “experts” would like to believe?”
Maybe
not very spectacular, my this writing, but if it helps just a tiny little bit to
avoid believing the biggest garbage in sports-writing it will be positive for
our beloved sports.
Thomas
Roost
Zurich,
15th September 2013
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