They just interviewed the kid’s dad on ESPN SportCenter. The interviewer was going on about “Some people are saying” this and “some people are saying” that (such as that they set out to get the coach fired on purpose, or that the kid was a crappy football player with no work ethic.
The dad did well, though, just pointing out over and over that it was about protecting his son and any parent would have done the same thing.
You know, we think of sports journalism as being about something that is at its root unserious, so you might think it doesn’t matter if sports journalists are themselves unserious, but this is a good reminder that actually people’s health, maybe even in some cases their lives, are at stake and it’s not okay to settle for unserious BS in journalism, not even in the sports section.
Absolutely. And it’s about mental health too. A number of players who initially complain about bad treatment from coaches retract the claim because they realize they might lose their scholarship and the professional sports future they dream of.
December 30th, 2009 at 6:37PM
They just interviewed the kid’s dad on ESPN SportCenter. The interviewer was going on about “Some people are saying” this and “some people are saying” that (such as that they set out to get the coach fired on purpose, or that the kid was a crappy football player with no work ethic.
The dad did well, though, just pointing out over and over that it was about protecting his son and any parent would have done the same thing.
You know, we think of sports journalism as being about something that is at its root unserious, so you might think it doesn’t matter if sports journalists are themselves unserious, but this is a good reminder that actually people’s health, maybe even in some cases their lives, are at stake and it’s not okay to settle for unserious BS in journalism, not even in the sports section.
December 30th, 2009 at 6:54PM
Absolutely. And it’s about mental health too. A number of players who initially complain about bad treatment from coaches retract the claim because they realize they might lose their scholarship and the professional sports future they dream of.