Sports Team

The great John Siegenthaler spoke briefly at the Center for Innovation in College Media in Nashville, Tenn. The man who fought for civil rights and continues to battle for freedom of expression said he wishes he could jump more into new media reporting. “I’m in my 80th year, but I wish I were starting over,” Siegenthaler said. “There’s the chance to do so much with the written word that’s never been done before. I wish to hell I was your age – and not for the reasons you might think.” Everybody needs to learn more about the Siegenthaler and the continued fight of all journalists (and citizens) for freedom of expression,. You can start by checking out the Freedom Forum and First Amendment Center site and by reading as much as you can on Sieganthaler. (photo/Brian Poulter) -30-

Here's an opportunity for students looking to dig into sports more intensely. Here's the desciption from their website . Check it out (and let me know if you attend.) Would love to hear from someone attending this during the summer. "The Sports Institute will offer an intensive four-week program of study, combining the practical and theoretical works of the sports industry. The purpose of the Institute is to train professionals and to offer a unique, specialized program in a nationally renowned academic setting. This summer the institute is scheduled for June 4 - June 29, 2007. Participants in the program will take four courses over the period of study, meeting a minimum of four hours a week per course. The intensive area of study will be open to current Boston University students as well as students from other colleges and universities. College students must have at least junior or above status. Graduate students are welcome as well. Professionals seeking career advanceme...

Anybody covering baseball should pick up Jim Collins’ The Last Best League , a book that covers the top wooden-bat league in the nation. The top college baseball players in the country gather in Cape Cod each summer to see how they compare to other top prospects. Collins follows a team through a summer season. You’ll get a chance to see another side of professional and college baseball in this wonderfully written book. This book also teaches much about setting, something sports journalists need to capture for gamers, features, and profiles. Setting should be more than mere background in a story, something Collins proves. Setting should help define the people we focus on in features about runners, ball players and swimmers. Head out to practice and describe athletes in their settings, both on and off the field. Show plants blooming, hear wind whistling through an open field, and describe the salty air on a sultry night. A writer who spends time describing the tactile elements of a scen...

It’s rugby season for many colleges, the time when college teams prepare for their national championships. Most sportswriters know very little about this exciting sport that has the grace of soccer, the power of football, and the speed of track. Here’s another thing most sportswriters do not know: These rugby titles are not fully sanctioned NCAA championships, so do not write them as if they are. They are not NCAA Division I or II. Teams do not play in any sanctioned conference, such as the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast or Big Ten. These games are played by club players. And teams do not have official rankings (Alex Goff ranks teams on his rugby website, but one person’s ratings are hardly worth noting as a national ranking. The Associated Press and other polls rely upon at least a few dozen reporters who regularly cover the beats to make such assessments.) In addition, these games are club championships, the same titles that your campus’s club hockey team or volleyball team competes t...

Division II programs are going to be required to play fewer games against larger programs. That’s good for everybody. Typically, these are money games, where bigger programs essentially seek an ‘official’ preseason game and an easy victory. Sometimes, players at smaller programs can get hurt, which happened to Eastern Illinois’ top linebacker last season against the U of Illinois. This new rule should force larger programs to play someone their own size, which is also good for fans. Plus, Division II programs will get more opportunities to play against one another, which should build more intense rivalries and enhance the quality of Division II sports. Here is the lead from a posting on the NCAA website. “In conjunction with the initiative to encourage more intra-division competition, the Division II Football Committee recommended to increase the number of games institutions are required to play within the division from six to eight contests. If approved by the Division II Championsh...

I should have comments from several other baseball writers in the coming weeks, but wanted to post this right now since so many schools are covering baseball on campus. This posting also includes some fine advice from the baseball beat writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Enjoy. Dejan Kovacevic , the baseball beat writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , says reporters need to prepare before going to games. That’s true whether you are covering a high school game or a major-league game. Read as much as you can on these teams and check for updated stats. “The most important element is preparation, exhaustive study of trends on both sides, and written notes to accompany those,” Kovacevic says. “On a tight deadline, there is no time to look up how many home runs Albert Pujols has hit at PNC. It simply has to be at your fingertips. This way, if he does it in the 10th inning, you have time to get that information into the first-edition version of the story, even before the one that has qu...

Columns can be difficult to write. Writing one from a game on deadline is even more difficult. A sports columnist needs to understand the topic and needs to do the research to prepare for several angles. Then, of course, the columnist needs to write the piece in a compelling manner. Tom Keller, a columnist for Michigan State's State News , did just that while covering the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament in North Carolina. Keller focused on the odd pairing of junior guard Drew Neitzel and junior walk-on foward Jake Hannon, players as much alike as Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. A sports column, in many ways, is a sports news story with an opinion. Too many columnists want to offer their opinions -- and too often these opinions are not informed. That is not the case here. Keller spoke with key people, researched the topic, had a clear working knowledge of the subject, revealed observations, and had a strong news angle. In addition, Keller made some interesting connecti...

Covering a beat is a challenge for everybody involved – reporters, players and coaches. Sometimes, coaches and players get upset by coverage they perceive as unfair, inaccurate or unflattering. We should not immediately dismiss this as whining or unimportant. We need to listen to everybody, including those whom we cover. Those tensions have simmered here at Eastern during the past semester. In the past year, we have covered many stories that go outside the lines of playing fields, such as a player kicked off a team for grades, another player kicked out following a stabbing, and an associate athletic administrator charged with burglary, among other things. Needless to say, nobody loves to speak about problems. But we have also heard concerns over less sensational matters. Coaches have shown displeasure when we cited injuries to key players, when we called athletes at home and when we commented on potential recruits. Players have also complained when we have run pictures or stories that...

Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, writes a terrific column on old school vs. new school sports journalism. Clark focuses on what some perceive as a dramatic shift in sports coverage. Clark is right on the money in regards to debates between old vs. new. I have heard more than a few old-timers lament about people like ESPN's Bill Simmons. I myself chafed until I took him as he was -- a fun-loving guy who sees sports beyond the stats and standings. I also like Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who does some of the same things. Jerry Greene at the Orlando Sentinel is also an entertaining, knowledgeable sports columnist. You also might want to check out Clark's column on Mitch Albom from a few years ago where Clark talks about the perils of sports columnists as celebrities and franchise players for newspapers. It's an excellent read. Check them both out. There are also some spots left for Poynter's sports journalism summit in St. Petersbur...

Scott French always brings four things to any soccer game he covers – binoculars, a stopwatch, tape recorder and a Mead flexible composition notebook. That way, French, who has covered two women's World Cups, two men's World Cups and Major League Soccer, can follow the games more precisely. The binoculars enable him to gather details about plays across the field (or from high in a press box). A stopwatch enables him to accurately record the time of key plays at stadiums and fields where scoreboard clocks are not used (or available.) After games, French tapes players and coaches. During the game, he uses the Mead notebook to record key plays, comments and scoring (team-player-minute), red cards and yellow cards, starting lineups and substitutions. French, a former senior editor for Soccer America magazine who has covered soccer for more than 40 newspapers, diagrams scoring plays to show which defenders were beaten, to record the passes leading to the goal, and to note where the...

The University of Wisconsin just captured its second straight NCAA women’s ice hockey championship. But you wouldn’t know it by reading newspapers across the country, especially if the coverage offered in USA Today and a regional newspaper are definitive. Goalie Jessie Vetter was amazing, knocking away 32 shots in the 3-0 victory over Minnesota on Sunday. (This was her second shutout of the weekend. She had already shut down St. Lawrence 1-0 in the semifinals of the Frozen Four two days earlier.) Too often, women’s sports get shafted when it comes to coverage. Certainly, this final is not going to receive the same recognition as the NCAA men’s basketball tournament (very few events can), but a national championship in an (arguably) major sport deserves more than five paragraphs online and a story buried on page 10 in USA Today’s sports section. Even the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel failed to cover the game with a staffer, based on its posting online where an AP story and picture were p...

Spring training is a time to work and a time to play, a time for promise and a time for joy. Spring training is a time for players to learn what it takes to be a major leaguer and a time for coaches to see whether young players have the skills and intangibles (whether they have ‘it’) to take it to the next level, and a time for managers to see if their veterans are ready for another long, grueling season. Spring season is a time for fans to reconnect to the game, learning about rookies and re-evaluating veterans, and this is a time for parents to reconnect with their kids (showing them how to keep score and pointing out key plays); it’s also a time for remembering and telling baseball stories with friends and other grown kids. Spring training is a time for re-birth, where twenty-seven-year-old pitchers like Matt Smith shag fly balls for batters with numbers more evocative of defensive linemen and wide receivers than of major-league players, where a non-roster invitee like Lou Marson ri...

Here’s a sign of the times. Tennessee’s all-everything sophomore Candace Parker says she will not enter the WNBA draft on April 4. “I’m definitely going to be at Tennessee next year,” she tells USA Today ’s Dick Patrick. That anybody is speculating about a women’s basketball player says much about the WNBA, college basketball, and women’s sports. The WNBA has found a way to survive despite problems with several teams through the years. (It does not hurt to get propped up by the NBA and in TV promos on NBC and ESPN.) College basketball is also thriving, outdrawing the men’s teams on a few campuses. But the league has endured. The addition of Parker would be a huge boost (perhaps, league officials started planting this rumor themselves). She is an amazing athlete. Parker, twice named the top player in the nation among high school players, can power past players near the basket and she can lead the team on fast breaks down the court, running past some of the nation’s best athletes. And s...

I'm headed to spring training where I plan to relax at a few stadiums in Florida. Nice weather. Cheap dogs. Baseball. What could be better? Check for posts through the week. -30-

Here's the third of a series of reviews on sports books that focus on issues related to the craft of sports reporting and writing. This review is of Mark Frost’s THE GREATEST GAME EVER TOLD. Frost used considerable source material, such as newspapers articles, books, memoirs, archived notes and conversations to write his book about the 1913 U.S. Open golf championship. The Greatest Game Ever Played is based upon historical documents, such as newspaper articles, journals and recorded conversations. Some of Frost’s reporting goes against traditional journalistic methods. But this can lead to discussions about New Journalism (which is actually middle-aged), about reporting techniques, and about the challenge to report the truth. Here’s what Frost wrote in an introduction: “In employing dialogue to bring these scenes to life, I used source material for direct attribution whenever possible. In its occasional absence I attempted to infer intent from prose to reportage, remaining as tru...

Sports fans are pigs. Or so it seems. Cheerleaders prance along the sidelines with skimpier and skimpier outfits, especially in the NFL. Sports Illustrated ’s Winter 2007 issue features models with painted on swimsuits that can be viewed through 3-D glasses. ESPN.com promotes its championship week coverage by plastering some cheerleaders on its promo (shown above). And Hometown Hotties are posted at the bottom of CBSsportsline.com. Today, fans can leer at Tatyana, a blonde-haired St. Louis model splashing through some waves and wearing only a pink bikini and a smoldering look. We’re supposed to vote for our favorite “hottie” each day. (“If this gorgeous gal next door makes you Hottie under the collar, return the favor by voting for her.”) Now that’s what we call sports, huh? The 15-year-old in me says, “Not bad. How ya doin?” The 43-year-old father wonders why we need sex to sell sports. Sports fans watch the Brewers in August and the Lions in December. Plus, fans watch ping pong, sk...

Here's the second of a series of reviews on sports books that focus on issues related to the craft of sports reporting and writing. This review is of Dick Schaap’s FLASHING BEFORE MY EYES. Students today don’t need to write well, especially if they are going to be hosting SportsCenter or anchoring sports on a local TV affiliate. And students don’t need to keep up with news events so long as they know sports. Or so we’re told. So goes the fantasy of many students who are pursuing a career in sports journalism, a field too often filled with judgmental, superficial and, ostensibly, witty commentary. A field, sadly, that no longer has Dick Schaap, who died in December at age 68 from complications related to hip surgery. Schaap, who left a legacy that included 33 books, six Emmys and countless articles for magazines and newspapers, reveals how sports reporting ought to be done. He covered the tough issues without being in the center of them and he befriended athletes without losing his...

Here’s the start to a list that will certainly grow with time: Things I love & hate about sports. Must be in a bad mood. I’m more a hater tonight. That’s not something to love. ■ Youth parents without a clue. These jerky parents are the exception, but they do stand out, especially when they open their mouths. Like the parent who started calling me and my coaches losers for walking the best player in the league in the top of the final inning of a championship softball game with runners on second and third and two outs. Yes, this game was not the World Series, but you have to start teaching strategy at some point. You can call me anything you want, but don’t yell it through the fence when I’m coaching my players. The girls started yelling back until I told them to focus on the game. That parent was classless. ■ One-source profile stories that offer few insights and comments beyond the person profiled. These story are about as illuminating as a bug light (but not nearly as interesting...

Here's the first of a series of sports book reviews that deal with specific issues related to the craft of sports reporting and writing. I plan to use several chapters of this book for my sports reporting course in the fall. A few years ago, I used the word “gam” to describe the attractive legs of a female athlete, not so much that I was leering but to reveal that this young woman turned more than a few heads on campus. The people in my workshop loved the use of the word even though it seemed as though the old-fashioned reference seemed more likely to come out of the mouth of a film-noire detective than from a 1990s journalist. I had been uncomfortable using this description. In fact, I am often uneasy describing women in my writing, especially if they are young and attractive like some of the players on Eastern Illinois’s rugby team. I’m forty-three and they are half that age, at best. I do not want to appear like perverted old Humbert Humbert in Nabkhov’s novel, lusting after a ...