On Strippers and Sports Journalism
“Take my word, back in the day it was an honorable profession, to be a stripper; however if you were never lucky enough to’ve seen Tempest Storm or Irma the Body remove her long, lovely gloves, slowly, tantalizingly, one after another, you’d have no idea whatsoever. All you’d have as a modern point of reference would be pole dancing, which is raunchy and without any redeeming grace. I mention this because another fifty years from now when some old man says that, back when he was a boy, he’d read sportswriters in newspapers and magazines- that is: inprint - I hope he speaks kindly of us. Otherwise, no one will appreciate what sportswriting was really like at its apogee. I fear all you’d know would be blogs and/or statistics - the pole dancing of sports journalism.” From Over Time by Frank Deford
“ESPN now collects an average of $4.69 for every cable home –– four times more than any other network. Throw in the various other ESPN channels, plus other sports networks –– like that new NBC Sports –– that your cable provider makes you pay for, and there's $8 for sports on your monthly bill. Or, as the CEO of Liberty Media describes it, "a tax on every American household." Understand: ESPN is an entirely different programming animal than, say, CBS, which dominates prime time –– or A&E, or HBO, or Showtime — on cable. Those networks must create programming. ESPN and the other sports networks are essentially just brokers. They take your subscription money, buy games and then "bring them" to you, pocketing a nice broker's fee. And because games are live, advertisers love it, because you can't fast-forward their commercials. And, hey, you only need to go to the bathroom so many times.”
—Frank DeFord says you’re a hostage of sports of cable sports, whether you watch them or not.
Read the entire article here.
"Black Bands, Black Football Players and Frank Deford"
npr.orgI originally was going to title this link “Black Bands, Black Athletes, and Frank Deford,” but when I went back to the page of the original NPR report, I saw that I would have been unintentionally plagiarizing their headline, so I just opted to reproduce their headline here—hence the quotation marks. Anyway…
Unless you’ve been in a news blackout, you’ve surely heard about the death of the drum major in the famed Florida A & M University marching band, apparently due to injuries sustained in a hazing incident. I certainly had. What I hadn’t heard about was this controversy surrounding a recent commentary by NPR contributor (and famed sportswriter) Frank Deford. This essay is by NPR’s ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos. Even though he is probably aiming for a level of nuance and complexity that will strike many as trying to have it both ways, I find his piece well reasoned, and the issues it raises interesting. I need more time and thought before I’m certain how, if at all, I will integrate this case into any of my classes, but it seems pertinent to my Prejudice and Stereotyping course, to be sure.
One topic to which it’s potentially relevant is stereotype change, and change of a particular sort: ownership of a particular domain or behavior. (To give credit where it is due, I recall hearing a talk on this topic by Jon Krosnick at a Political Psychology preconference to SPSP a few years ago. If I find a paper on the subject, I will edit this post to add a link, if there is one.) It may be that people think of some domains as being “owned” by Whites (e.g., country music) and others as owned by Blacks (e.g., hip hop). At the end of this essay, the ombudsman suggests that the “chest-thumping, preening and prancing” observed on football fields on any given Sunday (or Saturday) may have origins in Black culture (or a Black male athlete subculture, to be more precise), but it’s now become just a part of football, practiced as much by non-Black players as Black. Whether one agrees with any of that claim, it does raise interesting questions about perceptions. Even if there has been such a shift in reality, to what extent do perceptions of group ownership over such behaviors lag behind? Will end zone dances always be seen as a Black thing, for example?
Of course, if forced to choose between my group owning end zone dances and owning “the Tebow,” I could live with us being stuck with the former.
Serena Williams Takes Tennis For A Ride
npr.orgLike Serena Williams gives a shit what Frank Deford thinks.
Puckett wept: 28 years ago today, Kirby Puckett made his major league debut
On May 8, 1984, a chubby, short outfielder who had a habit of swinging at the first pitch made his major league debut.
The Minnesota Twins — and Minnesota by and large — were never the same.
Kirby Puckett had four singles in his first game — batting leadoff! — and also contributed a stolen base in a 5-0 victory against what were then known as the California Angels. (In another interesting note, former Twin Rod Carew started at first base for the Angels.)
From that day, Puckett embarked on a 12-year career that left thousands of dogs named in his honor and thousands more kids who followed his form and hacked at the first offering in their Little League games.
I know I wasn’t the only one.
Listen
You’re a Mean One, Mr. Owner
…sports is about the last place where a real rich man can be an owner. Owner — the ultimate plutocrat. Oh sure, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and the various Saudis and Russian oligarchs can be chairmen and CEOs and majority stockholders. They can be moguls and magnates, but where else in the big time do people still call you an owner except in sports?
- Frank Deford
