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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Easterbrook, Belichick, Capitalism, and Fairness

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By Kevin Beane

It's no great insight to say that a lot of sports commentators and columnists express poorly thought-out and poorly rendered ideas. I'm no exception. What really sends me over the edge, though, is when someone being paid to offer insight to a national audience offers up an opinion that is actually fundamentally flawed.

I saw a great example of this on Monday night, which I'll get to in a second, but the standard for this phenomenon was set during the World Cup.

Every four years in this country, we set aside our normal disdain for soccer, watch it a bit, and then go on to declare how the rest of the world is wrong to like it so much.

I've carried the torch for soccer many times in this column, but one thing you must understand when trying to get into a sport for the first time is, things are going to occur that don't make a lot of sense to you, and things that seem just wrong. American readers, just try to watch a rugby match all the way through without inwardly comparing it unfavorably to football.

But just because an element of a game seems stupid to you doesn't mean it's actually stupid. During World Cup time, a player will break free with a clear one-on-one with the goalie, only to have the spoilsport side judge raise his flag and declare the offending player offside.

And commentators and pundits from across the land will huff and puff and say, "This is why soccer is so boring! There shouldn't be an offsides rule in soccer!"

And soccer fans from across the globe (and knowledgeable ones in the U.S.) will just shake their heads at our ignorance.

Having no offside rule would have the opposite effect the pundit wishes for. Whatever extent that soccer does possess some excitement and offense is owed to the offside rule.

You see, if there were no offside rule to protect them, the fullbacks (defense) would have to stay back near goal all the time, so there would be no breakaways. The offside rule allows the fullbacks to venture up the field, which not only gives the opposing team a chance at a breakaway coming back the other way (if he times his run just right so as to not be offside), but creates a situation where protected fullbacks can venture all the way up the opposing half, creating a 10-man offensive attack.

Monday's flawed opinion comes regarding the American version of football, from Tony Kornheiser, and whomever wrote the game "glog" at CBS Sports.

The new craze in the NFL is, if your opponent is lining up for a game-winning field goal, call timeout just before the ball is snapped. If it works perfectly, the kicker will kick a field goal, only to have it nullified because of the timeout. Sufficiently iced and shaken, the kicker will (theoretically) miss the followup attempt. It worked for Denver against Oakland, Oakland against Cleveland, and although Buffalo attempted it against Dallas, Nick Folk made both the first attempt and the do-over.

Tony Kornheiser and the anonymous CBS glogger don't like this (very slight bit of) gamesmanship one bit, and have called for the NFL to "change the rule."

First off, this fad will come to a screeching halt the second a kicker misses the first attempt and makes the second. It's gonna happen, and no one will ever try it again, at least not until the first batch was forgotten about. So goes the groupthink of the NFL.

Secondly ... "change the rule?" Change what rule? The rule that says you can call timeout before the snap?

That's obviously out of the question, even if you limited the rule to the last two minutes of the game and only when you line up for a field goal attempt. The offense could too easily exploit it by rushing out a field goal team by surprise on third down. What, the defense doesn't have the right personnel on the field? Too bad! They're not allowed to call time out here anymore.

Better yet, just line up in field goal formation on every down, and fake it each time! Peyton Manning could be your holder and Joseph Addai could be your "kicker."

So, seems to me we have no choice but to allow this non-travesty. You want to do something about it? Practice a quick count with your field goal team.

Speaking of injustices and improprieties, real and imagined, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Lee Ann Schreiber, of ESPN, taking Gregg Easterbrook, of ESPN, to task. Schreiber is the "ombudsman" of ESPN.com, and makes a lot of interesting points in her latest piece.

The main thrust of the article is summed up by the headline ("Fed fast food of opinion, ESPN audience starves for reported fact") and is nothing groundbreaking, but Schrieber illustrates the point in thought-provoking ways. Remember when Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy singled out and excoriated a beat writer for criticizing one of his players? Seems like the consensus was against Gundy on that one. Lord knows I sided with the writer. But did I read the article in question? Well, no. I didn't. And to what extent did the writer, Jenni Carlson, back up her accusations that the Cowboys' QB was a malingerer and a softie? With "facts" couched in phrases like, "If you believe the rumors and the rumblings...", "Tile up the back stories told on the sly over the past few years...", "Word is...", and "Insiders say..."

Oh no. No, no, no. Had no idea. That, right there, is BS. Anyone can use those sorts of phrases to say anything. I'm sorry, Mike Gundy, you are right. That is indeed garbage.

So why did I, and most of the sportswriting world, side with the reporter? Schreiber wonders, too. She has a few ideas ("Because they want to be allowed to take those same liberties? Because they didn't bother to read the column? Because all that mattered was milking that videotape for a week's worth of commentary? Because the boundaries between fact, opinion, and rumor have become so porous that nobody noticed rumor crossing the border with a fake passport?"), but I think it's none of those things. It's because, just like in any profession, sportswriters and journalists feel a kinship and tend to defend each other and close ranks. That simple.

Then Schreiber sets her sights on Easterbrook. No one has beaten the drum louder against the Patriots and their videotape indiscretions than Easterbrook, but Schreiber has a problem with the convictions coming before the evidence. We don't know how much of a competitive balance the Patriots truly gained with their cheating, and we don't know the full extent of the cheating.

She also doesn't care for a metaphor Easterbrook uses, comparing the incident to Watergate and Belichick to Nixon:

"And feel free to custom design the opinion of your choice out of rumor, speculation, and twisted logic, as Tuesday Morning Quarterback Easterbrook did, not once, but twice, in manufacturing extended false analogies between Richard Nixon's Watergate and Bill Belichick's tapegate, as if stonewalling to the press is the same as stonewalling to congressional investigators, as if violating a league rule is the same as violating federal law, as if he didn't promptly hand over to the commissioner all the material that was asked of him and accept his punishment."

She also cleverly captures Easterbrook, defending his accusations, being less than frank himself: "I had a reasonable reason to think that the parties involved were trying to keep something off the public record that should be on it. Since I can't get them to answer the questions, I don't know whether they are hiding something or just being weird and evasive. Believe me, I'm working on it, I know some things that are not in that column, but I don't have them on the record yet. I hope to be publishing proof of all those things in great detail."

Emphasis mine. You damn well better, Gregg. Otherwise, you're just tilting at windmills in the same amateurish way Jenni Carlson did. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard of a rumor from an "extremely reliable" source about a blockbuster trade that is simply going through the final paperwork that never happens.

That said, I part ways with Schreiber on the appropriateness of his metaphor use. Easterbrook's job is sports. ESPN's job is sports. Sports are pointless without integrity. Of course major sporting scandals are not as important as political ones, but you have to at least grant the metaphors if it's within the raison d'etre of your job, in whose service you are employing the metaphor. In other words, in the context and microcosm of ESPN and subject matter they cover, it really doesn't get bigger than Belichick cheating. Anyway, since when do both sides of a metaphor have to match to scale?

I also think Schreiber, as well as a lot of well-meaning sports fans and ESPN consumers, lose sight of why ESPN stirs up so much bombast and controversy. It's because that's what maximizes their profits. To begrudge ESPN's modus operandi is to begrudge capitalism itself. They know they have you, the hardcore sports fan, locked up. Where else are you going to go to watch all the sporting events the ESPN family of networks show?

So they need to try to make money off the casual fan instead. Your girlfriend won't be pulled in by "Coming up next, Ron Jaworski breaks down the Vikings secondary!" but she might be by "Should the New England Patriots be forced to fold and Bill Belichick sent to prison? Gregg Easterbrook explains why he thinks so, after the break!"

The solution? Consumers will have to start rejecting sensationalism (never going to happen) or you will have to boycott ESPN. If you want to get ESPN's attention, though, you'll have to make that boycott pretty big.

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