On the day after my 44th birthday (or, as I say, my 14th year of experience at age 30), I had several topics about which I could write. Of course, railing about getting older was near the top of the list, but it’s been done. The presidential debate was on last night, and had I watched it I could wax philosophic about how far down the turd bowl our political system has brought us, but that’s been done and overdone (besides, I watched football and action movies instead). So in searching for something to write about, I reflected on the media and decided to write about that.
No, I’m not going to write either about the media covering the presidential election (gasbags covering more gasbags) or the negative impact the media has had on this country’s race relations or relations with the police. I’m instead going to write about sports media, because they are just as screwed up as the first two and don’t catch their share of abuse.
I am a proud graduate of the US Naval Academy. Of late in the sports world, Navy football has gained significantly more following than it had when I was a midshipman, because for the most part now the team can actually play. They have had a winning record for about a dozen seasons in a row; that is significantly better than my time at USNA, where I think I saw them win 10 games in four years (and we had to go to every home game). I remember jokes like, “the Navy secondary gets beat more than a red-headed stepchild,” and, “Navy has a great completion percentage; it’s just they throw mostly to the other team.” The team wasn’t good.
It wasn’t supposed to be good. The guys on the team played hard, and had more guts than anyone out there, but for the most part they were only playing Division I football for Navy because they weren’t big or strong or fast enough to play for anyone else, but we were proud of them for getting out there and trying. And yet, whenever they did play hard or play well or come even close to beating someone like Notre Dame, all the sports media could do was to talk about how the big school made mistakes or “kept Navy in the game.” Right or wrong, Navy was only mentioned as a punchline when talking about the bigger opponent.
Fast forward until now; over a dozen winning seasons, and several upsets of ranked teams, most notably this past Saturday, when unranked Navy beat #6 Houston 46-40 at home. Yes, Houston made mistakes (how do you hike the ball over the head of a punter who is six feet seven inches tall?”). But once again the sports coverage from the media giants all focused on how Houston lost the game, not how Navy won it with execution and hard hits and just plain “don’t give up the ship” guts.
I get that when talking about an Ohio State or a Notre Dame that those schools have fans all over the country, including some folks that can’t even spell either “Notre” or “college” correctly. I can understand (sort of) how you need to make the story appeal to those large fan bases. But Houston? No one cares about Houston outside of Houston, and the coverage was still lopsided in Houston’s favor.
Dear sportscasters, TELL IT LIKE IT IS. What does Navy have to do to get some real respect?
