Oh Linsanity, you're getting close Tebowmania in your annoyance level.

Photo courtesy of People Magazine

Read ESPN, Yahoo!Sports, or any other sports outlet. It's all about this guy Jeremey Lin.

The college across the street didnt recruit him, so he walked on at Harvard. Had a pretty successful college career, essentially put Harvard on the national map in terms of basketball. So you'd think an NBA team would draft him right?

You're so wrong.

Lin went undrafted, proceed to get cut, by more than one team. Became a bench warmer for the New York Knicks and luckily for him got some time in a game.

Ever since then, it's been Lin, Lin, Lin. (and no, that's not a reference to his win-loss record)

Sports journalism has exploded with this guy and I'm frankly annoyed by it.

Yes, it's a cool story. But it hasnt even been ten games. He hasnt played with the teams' superstar Carmelo Anothony. I'm not Linsane, but I am going insanse with all the coverage.

This is an example of how sports journalism gets it wrong in my opinion sometime. Sportswriters always love a Cinderalla story, and when it is found, albeit rare, it explodes.

We get so caught up in this single phenomenon we lose track of this bigger picture of sports.

This is the second such phenomenon to happen in less than a year. The first would have been Tebowmania and Skip Bayless' unconditional love for a NFL quarterback who I dare say is the worst NFL quarterback there is in the leauge.

We get so caught in the current of, "oh my, Tebow did this and Tebow did that" and "oh wow, Lin had a career high in assists last night!"

Tell me about Derrick Rose's back, or Ricky Rubio's success, or how the Boston Celtics need to call a retirement home. Please give me something other than Lin Baby Lin!

Maybe we should focus on how sports affect the big picture for once. How packing an arena in a city boosts the economy in the area, or look at how people maintain employment because of sports such as vendors and bar owners. Sports effect so much more than Lin or Tebow.

This is not an attack on either of these individuals, I dont know them personally and I'm not in the right to judge them. This is an attack on the media coverage and implosion the media causes by getting so caught up in one single moment.

Lin had a SportsCenter Top 10 all to himself! He's hasnt even started 10 games in the NBA!

So please media coverage, it's time to forget how to Lin, Lin, Lin. My sanity will thank you.

(updated April 26th, 2012)

Oh, the Super Bowl. How America loves you and yet I hate you. You are, in my opinion, one of the worst, if not THE worst football game played all season long. Your commercials were even sub-par this year.

But here's the reason I'm writing about the super bowl. With 99 percent of America watching the game on an HD tv somewhere, with a beer in hand and thinking of an excuse to feed their boss in the moring, we all saw the New York football Giants, (if only I could impersonate Chirs Berman) beat the Patriots.

Then the real madness insued, and it mainly brought to our attention by journalism.

Example A: Two patriots players decided that sulking with Tom Brady wasnt exactly for them so they took their shirts off and decided to party. Do whatever you need to do to deal with the grief of the biggest loss of your career, I guess.

Eample B: Then we have Tom Brady's super smoking hot wife, (such a lucky man) blasting the Patriot's wide receivers. Go Gisele! I have no doubt in my mind that you could have caught every pass that your beloved hubby threw that night! Then we also have the presumed Gisele curse that Mr. Brady is under, apparently Tony Romo suffered this same curse with Jessica Simpson. Tom, take a note from Tony and get rid of her.

Example C: The knee-jerk reaction from several journalists proclaiming insanely stupid things. If you'd like a great summary of the whole situation just read this. I'd go into further detail but I would disgrace Mr. Reilly and I refuse to do so.

Example D: I keep seeing the same damn commercial asking Eli Manning where he is going next. Good thing I know that answer, it's DISNEYWORLD!!!!

Example E: We have two Super Bowl gam officials who were, you know, kind of doing their job watching the game and hopefully their proper keys (ref lingo which I would love to talk about all day) who had a conversation late in the game to say the Welker drop was the end of the game. Some people might have an issue with this, but as an official I can tell you these kinds of conversations happen all the time. If people outside the profession actually understood all the jargon officials use, boy oh boy would we be in trouble. Luckily for me and the rest of the officiating world, people who want to get yelled at and be half right and half wrong all the time are few and far between.

I hope you all had a great Super Sunday, I hope some of you enjoyed Hangover Monday even, and then I hope you realize all of the madness that ensues with this game.

P.S., next president, please make the day after the Super Bowl a holiday. I'd love to have such a stupid holiday.




Ahhh, the Super Bowl.

With the festivities coming up this Sunday,you know, that thing called the Super Bowl, media coverage always is high. While I'd love to go on and on about how I think Tom Brady is overrated and how Eli Manning actually is better than his older brother, whom I'm sure you have heard of I need to stay on topic here.

With the media coverage ablaze in Indianapolis it gives me a great platform for this blog.

For starters I'll go off my personal experience, I use Twitter but I only follow roughly 20 people. As I'm checking my account on my BlackBerry right now I have five updates related to the Superbowl or football in general. Granted this does not directly related to the way I think of sports journalism and reporting, it does affect it because the way ESPN's NFL insider Adam Schefter breaks reports is through is Twitter account.

A very basic point is that we can get this news instantly. As soon as Schefter hits his enter button on whatever device he may be using we have access to that same information. How he seemingly gets the information first and accurately all the time is beyond my knowledge. But if you want to see how well this man works here is an activity to try sometime: wait for the day Yahoo! Sports has a breaking story then turn off all of your technological devices for a few hours, put ESPN on your television and watch how ESPN's insider has denied the report.

Anyways, back to the Superbowl and new media. While new media wont necessarily have an effect on the game itself, it will have an impact on the way journalists cover the game. I'd expect to see Tweets and network updates online more rapidly than in years past, just because of the society in which we live and the vast majority of people watching.

Another aspect of new media during the Superbowl that will be interesting to see is the commercials. Not necessarily the commericals in themselves, but the way companies are pushing technology in their products and/or services.

With all of these points in mind it will be interesting to watch how mew media affects the whole day. We'll only have 6 hours of pre-game coverage of only God knows what, plus the football game and the always too hyped half-time show, plus all the celebratory acts of the winning team, I'm sure we can oberseve how new media is affect sports journalism and reporting.

Have a super Sunday.