The coach brought a suit for $70 million. Thankfully, he lost.
Now I know I've written stuff worse than that. I've said some crappy things about the men's basketball team in its 1-11 days (I once called one of its members the "Human Foul"). I've called the football team boring and bad. I've bashed strange substitutions on the women's soccer team. I've criticized people individually and collectively and I've stretched the truth.
It's all in the name of entertainment, which is a large part of sports journalism. Sports are entertainment, and the media surrounding it should be accordingly entertaining. So we point fingers and name names. On television, CBS color commentator Terry Bradshaw rambles on like he's lost his medication. The Boston Globe's Bob Ryan trashes soccer with gusto.
The average member of the sports media will do just about anything to make the guy on the street corner nod his head and growl "Yeah!" in support.
Nothing, however, boggles my mind like the occasional
SAVORY BEEF BRISKET: WHY ARE WE PAYING MONEY TO EAT THIS
excuse for nutrition? (Whoops, how did that slip out? Sorry, MICHAEL "THE WEASEL" BERRY. What is this, backstage at a KFC?)
There are not many people at this school who can address such a large number of people concerning just about any random thought that enters their head. We write columns here about football, hockey, the weather, Kansas, soccer, Minnesota, the Red Sox, sportswriting, Cal Ripken, Jr., Nancy Kerrigan, Boston University and Canadian baseball. Anything goes.
It's a special honor, but here we pretty much throw it out the window. (This column, for instance, will only be read by one pair of eyes besides mine before it gets to you.) We write to fill space, like I'm doing right now. We toss in irreverent, shocking and provacative statements like
THE BILLS WILL WIN THE SUPER BOWL
in the name of The Page and consider it a done deal. It can be done much better, and I hope it will be. There's some new blood in here now--a kinder, gentler staff for the '90s, as the bitter, cutthroat staff of the late '80s moves on.
We'll go, and we may go quietly. But the "sports-as-entertainment" mentality, I think, is disappearing with us. Gone is "the spectacle," to be replaced by "personality." You'll hear an awful lot about Sean Wissman's Kansas upbringing in the next year and dot pictures on the editorial page, perhaps. People don't want the razor-sharp dissections as much as general appreciation. I call the new style the "ex-jock" trend.
Ah well. I'll stop. Exams are hell.
John B. Trainer is the outgoing sports editor. Please send questions and complaints to John B. Trainer, c/o The Crimson--Dharhan, Saudi Arabia. And please, call collect.