While many criticize Bowl Championship Series’ social media efforts, ESPN does not
The Big Lead |
Dec. 2, 2009 10:45 a.m.
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A man stands at the final hole of a golf course, a green jacket resting snuggly over his shoulders. He is asked a question. Being a family man, he responds that his family is the most important thing to him. But under the jacket lies the truth, the real image, the sex addict – the true Tiger Woods. H.G. ‘Buzz’ Bissinger never spoke with Woods before writing his piece in February’s Vanity Fair on the fall of the world’s greatest athlete. In fact, Bissinger never talked with Woods in his life. But, he knew the image that he saw and the deception that lay beneath it.
As Wallace Renfro sees it, there are some misconceptions about big-time collegiate athletics. One of the biggest: That most big-time programs are highly profitable. Renfro, NCAA vice president and senior adviser, said Wednesday the reality is far different, and that in 2008, only 25 NCAA programs generated enough revenue to cover expenses. Moreover, he said just 18 did so regularly over a five-year period. Renfro, speaking at an Investigating the Business of College Athletics workshop hosted by the Indiana University School of Journalism’s National Sports Journalism Center and the Associated Press Sports Editors, said the statistic is notable enough. But he said what’s most notable is the misconception that being an expense rather than a profit source makes athletics unique in the collegiate environment.
Years ago, former Meet the Press host Marvin Kalb started one of his many books confessing about the biggest story he never covered. While working as a CBS News correspondent in 1963, Kalb had the misfortune to walk into a private elevator at the same time as a shapely young lady under escort by Secret Service agents, presumably for a – ahem – private meeting with then-President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. One hammerlocked takedown and fifty years later, Kalb never discovered who the woman was – surprised only by his immediate and almost reflexive decision not to do any more reporting on the matter.
In the digital world, sportswriters don’t have to wait for the next day’s paper to break news. They can take a half-hour to write a blog post or a story for the Web, a minute to help an editor craft a headline, or a few seconds to share the news with their Twitter followers. And sports fans learn information not just by visiting news organizations’ Web sites, but by receiving emails, tweets and status updates written by their fellow fans. News has never spread more quickly or in so many different ways. But the ability to break news so quickly has robbed that news of much of its competitive value. Scoops were once jealously guarded with an eye on tomorrow’s newsstand – the goal was a day on which you had a story your competitors didn’t, and a second day on which your competitors had to acknowledge through gritted teeth that you’d had it first. But that game is disappearing because of the Web. Web publishing reduced the life expectancy of most scoops to hours. Twitter has now reduced it to minutes.
Great leads don’t let you out of the house. “Death is delivered pink.” First four words of a story written by Seth Wickersham for ESPN The Magazine. Had me at pink. Cancel my appointments, Ms. Thistlebottom. Gotta read Wickersham.
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