Sports=Life, again...

Appologies are due, as the blog has been under a temporary delay. I somehow managed to score a job writing for CalgaryFlames.com during the Flames’ run to the playoffs and resulting first round departure (Click on the video link at the bottom of the entry to see video of Flames head coack Mike Keenan chew me out).

Feel free to go look me up on the site for other delightful insight on our underachieving group… Here, I don’t worry about the performance of multi-million dollar athletes, instead I worry about why the fans who make a slight fraction of the income of professional athletes and seem more invested in the team than the athletes themselves, and that’s not at all to slight the desire of the athletes, for the most part...

My job over the course of the last bit has consisted of joining the sports media in full force. As a huge sports fan and avid reader of sports writing, it was an absolutely phenomenal experience. I went to practice, attended press conferences (see below), scrummed it up in the locker rooms, sat in the pressbox next to two of Canada’s top sportswriters, and enjoyed the kind of privileges usually reserved for contest winners. The biggest perk is obviously the access and the sports conversations you can’t buy with money, and though all conversations basically do revolve around sports, during the final pre-game press conference of the season I enjoyed a conversation with Globe & Mail sports columnist Al Maki that transcends sports, and is a larger commentary on the current state of the battle for mindshare.

Our discussion was based on the fact that Flames’ players and coaches, despite the fact I love ‘em, would basically tow the company line, align the proper catchphrases with the proper situation/emotion, and literally expound on absolutely nothing until the media receives enough to take to a loyal, ravenous fan base. Maki believed that future sports journalists would be disappointed that past (current) sports journalist merely accepted what they were told, and didn’t dig deeper with their questions when a coach for example, sprays water on a fan during a critical playoff game, the same playoff game he happened to sit a player for unruly behaviour in the midst of the previous game. Why are people in positions of authority actually allowed to defy answering legitimate questions that the paying public want answers to. Not answering shit questions (see above) is fine, but ignoring legitimate queries is like selling fugazi jerseys or watering down the beer.

This phenomenon is related to a condition I think of as the prophetic nature of sports journalism, basically that sports are the coolest/most interesting/relevant element of the news, so good sports journalism is basically at the forefront of style, form, and content. In terms of media, this means that the kind of sports coverage you get from the news is eventually going to be the ‘Life’ & ‘News’ coverage you get from the news. I'm not going to criticize certain organizations or individuals, after all I now get paid to bang the flames' drum in a similar fashion to Harvey the Hound. A much better critic than I, the excellent Jason Whitlock, wrote an elloquent piece about the state of sports journalism. My position is that the problems with sports journalism have permeated into all forms of exchange between media and bureaucracy.

Let me lay the problem for you as a sports fan, when your team is playing well and you’re happy, then there are no worries. But as soon as your team starts shitting the bed, naturally you want answers. So you actually go to the team, the players, the coach, the GM, and you ask them, and they give you nothing. Oh there are words, sentences, claims, boasts, analysis, interpretation, but rarely do players go into a scrum or press conference and admit why, for example, they consistently take penalties at the beginning of games when their team is trying to build momentum.

Then, the coach, the leader, and the symbolically smartest dude in the room, uses his time and his podium to offer any combination of strange metaphors and comparisons, stories from past experiences, contradictory analysis, but little ‘newsworthy’ besides the daily affirmation of already known injury status.

Maki’s point was that journos should not merely be asking about what injuries a particular player has sustained, but they should dig into the troubles that face a team when they struggle; give the fans real, specific answers as to why those who they hold in such high esteem aren’t performing to their standards. Unfortunately, the cost of that kind of query may be the loss of access, the real currency for journos.

So these ongoing dramatics exist to serve the public, the fans, the commodity, where they are consuming more and more media: multiple 24-hour sports networks, websites, talk radio, newspapers and everyone else who garners audience through the Flames have created result unrealistic expectations for information that for a number of reasons simply isn't there. The commodity needs a topping up of info to keep the affinity strong, so we report and audiences read the same standard lines over and again. As a result, the fans get two performances: The game itself, and the extra-athletic (if you will) performances that the sports media construct.

If this sounds familiar, it's because your team probably does it too, but also because this is not a phenomenon that is limited to sports. Strict control of communication content occurs throughout the majority of contemporary institutions and journalists of all types are often held hostage to bureaucratic interests by threats of access restriction. But the public interest, the desire for constantly refilled information that has been constructed by cultural institutions and their technologies, has turned into the fourth estate into willing actors in a hegemonic pantomime.

From my experience the journos on the hockey beat, I've ever dealt with were almost all cool, and take their jobs pretty seriously. Unfortunately they have to march in formation, or risk falling out of favour with the team, who are the purpose for their existence. In a sense it feeds the drama. Fans get pseudo-information that they use as fuel for their fan bus, but the bus can only get to its destination in one direction. While the journos can dig up as many supposed controversies as they like, at the end of the day only a limited amount of specific information is actually getting out, it’s all simply surrounded by noise…

Life is a lot like that these days. Unhealthy food, unattractive singles, unproven drugs, benefits, bailouts, borrowing, buying, binging, purging, gauging, splurging, stressing, messing, second-guessing… We look for answers, and we want those giving it to us give us the raw deal, so we ask and try to get it, but keep hitting a wall of ivy, elusion, and bullshit. Eventually you just stop asking, eventually you just take the bullshit, what else can you do. You can’t ignore your cultural institution; it’s a part of your life. Eventually it wears on you, and you just buy in. But then it becomes your framework, then your arguments and criticisms fall into the parameters created around their bullshit. The real questions go unanswered, because the now convenient questions have as convenient answers.

In sports, this ongoing exercise in futility is frustrating, in day-to-day life, it's potentially catastrophic.