No Whimsical Wednesday This Week

Because I have missed several days of blogging lately due to baby and family issues, I'm canceling Whimsical Wednesday for this week, and will resume it next week. Whimsical Wednesday is a gimmick for stretching out a certain amount of content over a long period of time in which little sports news will emerge. Another way of stretching out the content is simply not to post, which I have unfortunately done a bit of lately.

Today's content will revolve around a column by Birmingham News sports columnist Kevin Scarbinsky.

Sorry, Nick Saban. Too bad, Tommy Tuberville. Keep it under your hat, Les Miles. You're all playing for second place in the SEC.

Why?

Tim Tebow has started, and Urban Meyer has spoken.

The entire article reads like a love letter to Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow, in which Mr. Scarbinsky basically says the Tim Tebow is really really good; he's perfect for Meyer's system; and therefore the rest of the conference is playing for second place.

Your first response may be to think this is utterly moronic, and you'd be right. Your second response may be to write him an angry email telling him how moronic he is for saying it. You would mention, among other things:

• Florida is replacing, I think, 10 of its starters on defense
• Tebow plays a style that gives rise to a significant risk of injury, and his backup will be a true freshman
  
• Tebow has not yet been asked to play a whole game, let alone a full season.
• Games are played on the field in the fall rather than in Spring.

But before you write that email, let me inform you a few secrets. First, Kevin Scarbinsky knows that his column was moronic. Sometimes, a sports columnist writes something simply to get a rise out of people and get a reaction. The best way to do that is to write something inflammatory. If you're going to write something inflammatory though, you shouldn't write something so inflammatory that it will get you fired. The solution? Write something that doesn't attack anyone personally, but will get your readership fired up, negatively or positively.

This column fits the bill. It rankles both major groups of readership. Auburn fans don't want to hear that the SEC Championship is already decided. Bama fans don't want to hear how good The One That Got Away Is. Tebow was down to Florida and Alabama before choosing Florida, and many Bama fans remember this.

Second, Scarbinsky wants you to send him that angry email. Scarbinsky knows this is the kind of column that will get posted on message boards throughout the Southeast. Suddenly a minor, relatively unknown local beat writer will get some widespread attention for a few days. His editors will see him getting a reaction and lots of emails, and will approve.

In the media, any reaction is good reaction. They'd prefer you love the writer, but if they can't get love, hate will do. What they really don't want is indifference.

As deliberately-inflammatory-and-only-half-believed attention-grabbing articles go, I think this one is pretty clumsy. It is so obviously designed to get a rise out of people that for me it simply fails. It's too transparent. I can almost see him thinking, "Oh boy, I'm going to get some emails over this one," and engineering his article to get the maximum number. To be really effective, you have to be a little more subtle.

Beyond football

Of course by now you've heard about the shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech. This is bound to create reactions in people, but one of the things I find the most repugnant is how when a tragedy like this occurs, the first thing many people worry about is how it will affect sports.

The Virginia Tech incident is not a sports story. Sports stories rarely include the violent deaths of more than 30 young people. If your reaction to deaths of over 30 young people is something to the effect of, "You have to start wondering if any varsity athletes were killed or wounded in this crazy event at Virginia Tech," then I suggest you keep your thoughts to yourself.

For today, we'll just leave it at that. Our condolences go out to the families and friends of those directly affected.

Rushing game

Last year, LSU's leading rusher on the season was Jacob Hester with 440 yards on 94 attempts. Not so good, right? Yes and no.

Hester's effort was only good for 16th best in the SEC. In fact, every single SEC team had at least one running back go for more than 440 yards, and Florida beat 440 yards with their backup quarterback. Arkansas, Auburn, South Carolina, and Vandy each had two rushers go for more than 440 yards.

Most teams, however, pretty much went with one or two guys in the rushing game. LSU had five running backs go for more than 200 yards. While we didn't have any one guy getting a lot of yards, we had a large number of effective rushers. Looking at our cumulative statistics, we rushed for 2155 yards on 450 attempts, for an average of 4.8 yards per carry. Here's how everyone else did:

Arkansas 3199 yards, 539 attempts, 5.9 yard average
Florida 2240 yards, 476 attempts, 4.7 yard average
LSU 2155 yards, 450 attempts, 4.8 yard average
Auburn 1927 yards, 470 attempts, 4.1 yard average
S. Carolina 1876 yards, 414 attempts, 4.5 yard average
Vandy 1795 yards, 385 yards, 4.7 yard average
Georgia 1656 yards, 426 attempts, 3.9 yard average
Alabama 1600 yards, 455 attempts, 3.5 yard average
Ole Miss 1504 yards, 422 attempts, 3.6 yard average
Tennessee 1404 yards, 382 attempts, 3.7 yard average
Kentucky 1282 yards, 411 attempts, 3.1 yard average
Miss. St. 1142 yards, 394 attempts, 2.9 yard average

Some observations:

• Clearly Arkansas was on another planet rushing-wise last year. They got more rushing yards than Jamarcus Russell had passing yards, and Jamarcus was awesome.
• Obviously, after giving props to the best rushing attack in college football last year up in Arkansas, LSU's rushing attack was more than just respectable. It was 2nd in yards, and 1st in rushing average in the SEC after Arkansas.
• If Florida hadn't gotten an extra game (with the concomitant extra chance to add to cumulative stats) due to making it to the SEC Championship Game, LSU would have finished ahead of Florida in rushing yards.
• Like I said before, Kentucky would have been awesome on offense if they could run the ball. This was a bowl team, and they had less than 1300 yards rushing last year.
• Ole Miss was a below-average rushing team last year despite having a the 3rd leading rusher in the SEC (BenJarvis Green-Ellis).
  

That last point is especially telling. Ole Miss had the 3rd leading rusher in the SEC, but had only the 9th most team rushing yards and the 10th best rushing average. Combine that with the fact that Brent Schaeffer was the poorest-performing starting QB in the conference last year, and you have a really bad offensive team in Oxford.

But not as bad as Mississippi State's.

There's a lot more to say about rushing the ball, but it will have to wait.

The media pushes back - Part II

Yesterday we discussed some of the ways in which Saban treats the media, and what this can mean. This topic is really deserving of a lot of depth of coverage, so I'm continuing it today.

Every media observer should be mindful of one general rule of the media: journalists love access. They love having powerful people invite them to functions, answer the phone when they call, and possibly even have the powerful people call them. They want to be part-of-the-gang among the powerful people they cover. A journalist who can only write about what other people write and what he sees on the games on TV isn't a journalist. He's me. And I don't make a dime writing this blog.

This is true in all sections of the newspaper; not just the Sports Section. The guy who reviews the movies would fall all over himself to be invited out to Spielberg's house. The guy who covers politics would love to get an exclusive interview with the President. The guy who covers local politics would love to get a behind-the-scenes view of what happens in Bob Riley's office.

Some members of the media are now complaining about Nick Saban that he doesn't give them the access that they previously enjoyed. He doesn't answer his questions. He doesn't let them watch practice. He doesn't let them interview certain players and coaches. It will only get worse for the media. Ask the Miami media.

The mistake these members of the media have made is to think that the people who buy their papers actually give a damn if their lives are less enjoyable. They've forgotten one of the other general rules about the media: the customers, even though they pay for the content, really don't like the media and will generally side with the powerful figure over the journalist in most professional disputes. This, also is true in most sections of the paper (though perhaps not among the reporters who cover Hollywood, who the public likes even less, despite also giving Hollywood tons of money).

Complaining about your lack of access just makes you look like a whiner. It's fighting a war on bad terrain. It's asking the public to dislike Saban because he dislikes the journalists. It won't happen. The public feels no sympathy for you

While the public doesn't feel sympathy for the media, the media definitely has the ear of the public and the ability to engineer public perception if they do it with more finesse. Criticize how Saban does his job, not how he helps you do your job. Like I said yesterday, if Saban offends you, "Put it in your back pocket." Remember the slight, and bide your time. Soon enough, Saban will do something that people won't like (lose a game he was expected to win, for example). Then you bring out the claws.

You have the ear of the public. Your voices are among the loudest out there when it comes to discussing whether a coach's job should be saved, or whether or not he should go. Put his slight in your back pocket, and remember it when it comes down to writing that column about whether you "give him one more year" or "throw him to the wolves."

The media pushes back

It was inevitable, but it seems like the media is finally starting to push back a little on Nick Saban's unusual policies on media access. CNNSI's Stewart Mandel published a long, mostly positive column discussing Nick Saban. One small part of it discussed how Saban scheduled an interview with Mandel, who flew out to Tuscaloosa, only to have it abruptly canceled at the last minute. He has since published a follow-up column, in which he reveals that Saban called him days after the original column and apologized.

Mandel is not the first media type to publicly bristle at how Saban is treating them. Honestly, he has long been famous for being churlish with the media (and his underlings, and his assistants, and his bosses, and his players, and his neighbors). At least one writer, perhaps one gloating over his own level of access, has commented that this behavior by the media is more childish whining than it is legitimate criticism, and ultimately doesn't hurt Saban, and probably actually helps him.

Helps him? Well, think about it this way. If the team is, oh, average this year, and a certain Bama beat writer criticizes Saban's performance, that beat writer's opinion is more likely to be ignored if that writer has a history of also criticizing Saban's treatment of him. People can say, "Don't listen to that guy. He just hates Saban." Perhaps they'll even be right.

My hint to media types: if you don't like how Saban's treating you, stick it in your back pocket and remember it when it comes time to either defend him or throw him to the wolves.

And that time will come. Saban is not a miracle worker, which seems to be what many fans are expecting. He had a lot of success at LSU, and has only had one actual losing season in his long career, but his overall numbers are not that great. Even his record at LSU was hardly eye-popping before 2003.

In his first year, LSU was 8-4 including an embarrassing loss to UAB. If not for a couple of dramatic overtime wins, it would have been a very mediocre season.

In his second year, LSU had a terrific 10-3 season, ending in a top 10 finish and an SEC championship and Sugar Bowl victory, but even that season was on the brink of failure, as LSU was 4-3 heading into Tuscaloosa that year before record-setting performances by Rohan Davey and Josh Reed saved that season. Incidentally, Rohan Davey's career illustrates one of Saban's greatest weaknesses as a coach: he doesn't always play the best player. Davey only started one year, but set an LSU single-season record in most passing categories that year, and was a first-day draft pick. The previous year, he sat behind Josh Booty, who had long since lost the confidence of the team. This wasn't the only example.

In his third year, LSU regressed to an 8-5 season and a loss in the Cotton Bowl (a game we had no business being in, by the way). We needed the Bluegrass Miracle to get even that good of a record, and Saban's vaunted defensive genius managed to give up two late touchdowns to Arkansas to lose that game 21-20. To be fair, we started that season 6-1, and then an injury to our starting QB caught up to us. The backup was only 3-4.

So before the 2003 National Championship season, Saban's Tigers were 26-12. Not bad. Not great. That was quite good enough at LSU to avoid most criticism, but I don't think anyone was calling Saban a genius at that point. Not until the 2003 season. If Alabama's next three seasons show an average record of 8-4, will everyone be satisfied? No. Will he be vulnerable to media criticism? Yes. Will that media criticism sting? Yes. If the media is willing to come to his defense, would that help? Yes. Does his deliberate rankling of the media help him avoid that criticism? No, but the media's current complaints, not about his coaching, but about his treatment of him may insulate him from the effects of that criticism a little.

I'll write more on this topic later. But for now, I have to go to work.

Whimsical Wednesday.. uh, Thursday

OK, so I made the mistake of adding my small bit to the media echo chamber revolving around on-Day Imus-may. I apologize for that.

The big news of the day yesterday was that two LSU football players (OT Zhamal Thomas and DB Troy Giddens) were arrested on burglary and identity theft charges. I won't comment on it further until more of the story comes out. I don't like when people jump to conclusions based on almost no information.

As penance for the Imus thing, here is a number of live performances by truly great bands in the primes of their careers:

REM - Driver 8 from 1985



The Pixies - Where is My Mind from 1988



Violent Femmes - Blister in the Sun from 1983



Pavement - Silence Kid from 1994



Matthew Sweet - Sick of Myself from 1995



As a special bonus, here is the original animated video for Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend", his first (and to date biggest) hit song.

Thin skin

Whimsical Wednesday will have to wait until tomorrow. I want to talk about something a little more serious. A couple of things have happened recently with radio personalities getting into some trouble due to the content of their shows. The situations are a little different from each other, but they bear some similarities that I think are telling.

The most public of the two is the extremely insensitive thing that Don Imus said about the Rutgers women's basketball team. For those of you living in caves with internet access, he called them (and I'm not sure the context, if it matters) "nappy-headed hoes". He has apologized numerous times in public, saying that what he did was "idiotic".

The other one is a little less public, and I only know about it because I happened to be listening to the Paul Finebaum show the day after it happened. One anonymous caller to his show, an Auburn fan, commented on the Nick Saban hiring by saying that (and I paraphrase), "Bama would have been better off hiring [Gene Stallings's severely mentally disabled son] as coach." Finebaum never expressed any approval of this statement, and in fact his only mistake was that he didn't cut him off immediately and get him off the show. Instead, he engaged the guy in conversation for a brief time, and let him continue his tirade.

Now the similarities in incidents are probably not as big as the differences. For one, in the Imus situation, the celebrity was the one making the offensive statement. In Finebaum's case, it was a caller, and Finebaum probably had no way of knowing he would say it before it happened. For another, Imus has apologized profusely and, I believe, sincerely.

However, what I find really interesting is the responses to these incidents. Like I mentioned before, I only know about the Finebaum incident because I was listening to it the day after it happened. That right, the day after. They were still talking about it, and callers repeatedly expressed their outrage and sadness that this particular comment was made. Finebaum never got defensive about it, acknowledged his own mistake in the incident, and basically agreed with all callers that the statement was reprehensible.

The Imus case has of course been relatively big news nationally. He has gone on an apology tour, and now the Rutgers team he has offended have expressed their own shock and sadness over the incident (in agreeing to meet with him).

It just seems to me that in both of these incidents, there are reasons not to consider it such a big deal. In the Finebaum case, it was only a caller. We can dismiss a caller as "just some idiot we don't need to listen to." Alabama prides itself on not being "politically correct", and I'm sure Gene Stallings is a very thick-skinned man. He was an SEC head football coach for crying out loud. I'm sure he doesn't think twice about what some random asshole says about his son. The outpouring of shock and sadness from this rather rough-tongued community came as a big surprise to me. This is not to defend the random asshole, who clearly stepped well past the decency-line. I just think it should have been immediately dismissed and forgotten as not particularly important in the grand scheme of things.

In the Imus case, while it isn't "just some idiot", Imus has in fact apologized. And it's not a half-way insincere "I'm sorry you got offended" apology. It's an unambiguous "I totally screwed up" apology. Over and over again. Maybe I just believe in second chances more than most. I think his mea culpa is sufficient to return him to his previous standing, whatever you may believe that to be. After all, this isn't Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter saying outrageous things and then standing behind them. Imus has actually disavowed his outrageous statement, and that disavowal has in my opinion completely eclipsed the wrongdoing.

I welcome dissenting opinions. After all, being a pasty white guy, maybe I'm just being undersensitive to the whole "nappy headed hoes" thing. Maybe, because I don't have a mentally disabled close relative, I don't know how it feels for someone to be slurred like that. I'm willing to be convinced, I guess.