You know, my first thought was to post something about this piece, because it really sums up my feelings about how absurd the whole “the media wants to cancel the college football season” whinefest really is, but then I thought about the shitstorm that might ensue if I did, so I said to myself, nah.
Then I said to myself, screw it. Because, in the immortal words of King Kaiser, “you never cut funny.”
You don’t have to look far to find somebody who blames the media for canceling the college football season, and says we are trying to cancel NFL season, too. I will be blunt here: This ticks me off. “The media” is not canceling college football season. I am doing it all by myself, thank you very much.
Look, we all got bored and anxious during quarantine. Some people put together jigsaw puzzles. I dismantled a sport. It helped pass the time.
You might wonder if I was “rooting for the virus.” Well, duh. What self-respecting journalist would not root for a virus that has killed 160,000 Americans? It all falls under the umbrella of being a bad person, O.K.?
Of course, it’s “better” for sportswriters to have “sports” to cover. It gives us “work” which helps us get “paid.” But I am devoted to my passion of being a bad person, and sometimes—I recognize the irony here—being a bad person means being unselfish. If I can work and get paid, my colleagues can work and get paid. That’s a non-starter for me.
The scare quotes really tie the piece together.
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UPDATE: Well, if it’s not the media…
Given this backdrop, the decision of major college conferences—especially the Big Ten and PAC 12—to abandon football this fall, understandably disgusts Americans. The soft and selfish administrators of universities and their NCAA conferences have stolen a season away from young athletes and deprived adoring alumni and fans of the rituals of autumn.
Why? For politics.
Get The Picture 
I disagree, the wolkens of the sports media world had a lot invested in being able to say I told you so. Having a normal season with minimal problems caused by the virus would be a huge hit to their reputations, so in that way they are rooting for the virus.
Its very plain to see by how negative news about it is amplified tremendously, while any positive developments regarding the virus are downplayed or not covered at all.
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On Earth-2, maybe. We’re way past that point on this planet.
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Oh for sure. Because it is much better for a sportswriter’s career to say “I told you so” about a cancelled season than to have, you know, an actual season of sports to write about.
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“Its very plain to see by how negative news about it is amplified tremendously, while any positive developments regarding the virus are downplayed or not covered at all.”
It’s reverse-cigarettes; it seems every smoker I know crows about their grandmother/father who lived to 99 smoking 2 packs a day, so they should be fine despite the overwhelming odds. Seriously though, you think sports writers care much about being right in the past?? They care about eyeballs, being smug doesn’t attract those, fresh scandals and hot-takes is their game. I guarantee you none of them is sweating their collective reputation over how their coverage of sports in the time of Covid plays out.
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It’s just… breathtaking, really, to watch people utterly fail at understanding that when a journalist asks hard, uncomfortable questions it’s because that’s the job. The problem isn’t that Wolken asks questions. The problem is the leaders in CFB (conferences, coaches, the NCAA) had terrible answers (if they even had answers). The notion that Wolken wants CFB canceled is so god damn absurd because USA Today, which is owned by Gannett, is going to lay people off in droves. There’s a very good chance Wolken is among them. But his job is to ask questions and when those questions were poorly answered, the anger should have been directed at those being asked the questions, but then again, there’s a reason why we often shoot the messenger, because it’s easier.
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Except they were asking questions. They weren’t reporting. They were pushing an extremely specific narrative not backed up by available data, but by only certain kinds of anecdotal evidence while ignoring everything else (including anecdotal evidence that didn’t back up their narrative).
That’s the problem me and many others have with what they’ve done.
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No doubt…
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I guess what they say about humor being subjective is true, because that’s about as funny as a funeral.
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Well, I’ve been to plenty of funerals (three dozen, maybe?) And many were truly NOT funny. But many, in fact, were. Lots of tears of laughter, in addition to the tears of grief. So there’s that.
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Well, for Catholics the funeral tends to not be funny. The Wake is another matter.
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I was born and raised Irish Catholic and I laughed out loud during my father’s funeral. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.
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Oh FFF, people… It’s about as funny as an infant’s funeral.
Find the funny in that.
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Maybe tell us again how great the US is doing on Covid mortality rates (if you ignore the states with the most deaths). That’s always good for a laugh.
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Aww, does actual reality hurt your fee-fees? Need a safe space?
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I haven’t bought into the idea that the media is driving the initiative to cancel college football, but as I type this James Brown (NFL sportscaster) is on CBS This Morning running his mouth about how he would not let his son play, if he had a son playing….too dangerous….yada yada. So yeah, I do wish some of these guys would STFU.
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You really don’t have to be very smart or prescient to have predicted this. My wife (huge Gamecock fan) asked me back in the spring whether I thought there would be football in the fall. I told her it was simple: if the virus was under control in the fall, there’d be football; if not, there won’t. But somehow it’s not the incompetent response of our state and federal officials, or the anti-mask pro-haircut populace who have helped the country become the world’s COVID-19 epicenter. Nope, gotta be the liberal sportswriters’ faults. Dumbasses.
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Your wife’s a Gamecock fan and you’re calling other people dumbasses?
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The article is hilarious. Sportswriters and sportscasters get paid to write and talk. Write and talk they did. You and I may not agree with what they wrote or said but they did their job. Leaders get paid to lead. None did. From the White House all the way down to the county commission there’s been a total abdication of duty. All refused to lead. That’s why we find ourselves in a worse place today than when this began in the spring. That’s why there won’t be college football this fall. Absolute and complete lack of leadership on any level. Bunch of dang clowns. Both parties are equally unwilling to do the job they get paid to do. All of them need to be gone. Every single one of them on both sides of the aisle at every level of government have proven themselves worthless
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Blaming “media” is comical. At the same time, thinking of the “media” as the last beacon of hope, the last vestige of light in a dark tunnel, is also comical. The “media” does not root for the end of Fall sports… but, in general, they sure weren’t rooting for them on either.
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I think the media did have something to do with it being canceled. The same media person that would have cheered them starting the season would have been the same one that was criticizing the decision makers if anything went wrong. So yeah they discourage anyone in public life from taking even legitimate risks because of the medias blatant hypocrisy.
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So, the folks who run for office because they want to lead can’t be blamed for not doing the job they actively sought and get paid for because they’re afraid of what someone might say about them?
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No one said decision makers couldn’t be legitimately held accountable. It’s the double standard the media has for other peoples decisions that go south versus their own accountability for their jobs that was being referred to here. It’s treating people fairly the way they would want to be treated should their roles be reversed. That is much of the reason why we are where we are.
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I agree. Unfortunately that’s not the business model most media has chosen to pursue of late. In this environment you simply have to put your head down and keep churning. You can’t let what what people say become part of the equation. Media no longer exists to to seek truth, honesty or balance. It exists to sell advertising. Whatever maximizes ad sales is what they’re going to do. Sad but true. We need more writers like the Senator who write about things they care about.
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I knew Mr. Big Brain, who obviously has far superior knowledge on this matter, would be offended by this piece.
You know that quote about if you meet assholes all day, you’re the asshole? Substitute the term “irrational idiot” for “asshole” and it applies the same.
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*Reply fail
Mr Big Brain in this case is Corch.
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I’m glad you think about me enough that I was the first thing you thought of here.
The one thing I’m not glad about though is your bastardization of one of the best quotes from the best television show of the last 20 or 30 years. Given that, I’ll leave you with another quote from a show almost as good:
I don’t think about you at all.
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Here’s the truth, whether some are willing to realize/admit it or not:
Many in sports media were sounding alarm bells for MONTHS and warning that there may be no college football season BECAUSE they wanted to see a season. Not because they didn’t want to see a season. They saw people weren’t taking the necessarily planning and precautions seriously — everyone from regular fans, to elected leaders, to athletic directors and university presidents — and these sports media people were saying, “HELLO!!!????? IF YOU DON’T SHAPE UP THERE WILL BE NO SEASON!”
Instead of listening to these “bad” sports media folks and tightening up, many people are now blaming the people who tried to warn them for “cancelling” the season.
Now THAT is funny. But I have a morbid sense of humor.
If you want to look for sports media folks who WANTED a season cancelled, just look for those who have SAID NOTHING at all this whole time. Or the ones who kept harping that everyone’s warnings were “over-blown”.
They’re the ones who are to blame — at least more than those who were trying to warn us all.
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Hmm. Well, here’s one of the biggest Karens in sports media of them all with the Freudian Slip, so… y’all can be the judge.
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And the number of commissioners and college presidents who make a single decision based on a Rovell tweet is…?
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Given the remarkable level of what seems like coordination we’ve seen from certain members of the CFB media in the last few months, if we found out that there was a “JournoList” type situation at player here, well, I would be shocked to find gambling going on here.
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Sure, man. Tin foil hat looks good on you, by the way.
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Because JournoList and Cabalist weren’t actual things that existed? Or because you don’t want to believe that there was a concerted effort by many to push a narrative as opposed to report a story?
I’ll wear my tin foil hat, and you can keep drinking your Evian. 😉
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That’s not a Freudian slip. It’s stating an existing condition as context for the absurdity of the following condition.
“We got Nazis bombing Britons every day, and Henry Ford is not only talking about staying out of the war, he’s refusing to build airplanes for Britain.”
No one thinks the speaker here has anything to do with creating Nazi bombing runs.
When you’re a “blame the media for everything” hammer, everything becomes a nail.
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Or, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before… it IS.
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Yeah, this has been fun while it lasted.
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The Clown Prince of CFB, Paul Finebaum, walks this line very well. He has guests on like Pat Forde, Dan Wolken and Kirk Herbstreit who are skeptical about the upcoming season, and he asks them a lot of decent questions. And then he fields all the subsequent calls and sort of agrees with the “Pawwwwl, its the libruhl governors in the Midwest that wanna cancel football! See a pattern there!”
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I’ll,ask again, why are total deaths the last 6 months basically the same as years past…riddle me that Batman…
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200k excess deaths so far this year:
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Well, this thread won’t last long.
Hysterical article by Rosenberg. Thanks for sharing.
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I can’t say I didn’t warn me. 😉
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Look like that reporter’s wearing his own tin foil hat. 😉
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