Hey, here's an interesting note that my friend wrote to me (actually its his opening monolouge for his sports talk show tommorrow from 3-5)
Read it if you want and comment accordingly, and warning, its rather long, lol.
Tuesday, Tommy Tuberville spoke at the Montgomery Quarterback Club. Someone asked him about another SEC team going undefeated and not getting to play in the national championship game. Tuberville said it is already done, that if USC and Texas stay undefeated, they will play in the championship. ESPN wants to see Matt Leinhart and Vince Young play against each other, and they are going to make it happen by having their analysts constantly talking about how good those two teams are and why the other undefeateds are inferior.
These analysts, by the way (said Coach Tuberville) are mostly former coaches who couldn't win (presumably Lou Holtz and Lee Corso). Now these guys are on TV every week telling people what to think about the teams. ESPN has so much power these days, it's almost scary. Coach Tuberville also blasted the way ESPN criticizes the players the coaches when they screw up.
Coach Tuberville was on The Dan Patrick Show Wednesday. Dan Patrick has a very elevated perception of his importance and the importance of his collegues in the sports punditry. He likes to talk about how he and the other pundits are journalists and they are morally obligated to talk about everything that happens and levy their opinions about everything under the sun (in sports). So Dan naturally takes great offense at Coach Tuberville's comments, and when Dan Patrick gets offended, like many people, he gets his back against a wall and starts spitting like an angry cat (I speak metaphorically). He basically tells Coach Tuberville that he has no right to criticise the analysts and he certainly has no right to impune ESPN, and Coach Tuberville responds by saying this: ESPN and all the other pundits and critize the players and coaches whenever they want. Why can the coaches not criticize the analysts.
My perspective: First, Coach Tuberville is right that ESPN has too much power. I myself am guilty of giving them that power because I give the opinions of their people far more credence than I give to anyone else's opinion (though I have recently noticed how often their opinions and predictions turn out to be horribly wrong, which is why I love talking to people like Chris Hoyler and Tedd Webb on this show, because those guys seem to have a much better grasp on reality). Coach Tuberville is doing the only thing that can be done: criticize what he sees as wrong. If enough people join with him in the chorus, maybe the market will shift in the other direction and the monopoly will disolve. I don't see that happening anytime soon becasue I know people like me will still tune in to ESPN Radio and still watch College Gameday, if for no other reason, so we can get mad at the studip things the analysts are saying.
Second, and related to the first: Coach Tuberville is right that coaches and players should be allowed to criticize the analysts when they say something stupid or wrong (like last year when they said Oklahoma was as good as some pro team). I find it kinda refeshing to hear someone telling these people that if they can't stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen. I personally would be pleased if someone told me I had said something totally stupid on the air for two reasons: 1. It gives me a chance to maybe improve my own performance as a sports broadcaster, and I mean that it will force me to examine what I did wrong, and maybe I won't repeat that mistake in the future. 2. It means someone was actually listening to me, which, for a hack like me, is the greatest of all honors.
Finally, I think Coach Tuberville was partially right when he said that people should not be so hard on his players when they mess up. Example: John Vaughn misses five field goals against LSU and the whole world spends the next three days ripping him for it. In a perfect world, fans and analysts would realize, as the coach said, that these are 19, 20-year-old kids, and I emphasize the word kids. They are not professions, and they are certainly not perfect. In a perfect world, we would realize that. But we live in a world riddled with imperfection, and one of the biproducts of that imperfection is a sports environment where even kids are expected to be perfect, or almost perfect, and that is especially true in the Southeastern Conference, the greatest collection of college football teams in this land, where the fans are rabbid and coaches can get almost fired for not meeting the misplaced expectations of pundits. And every coach, every player, who comes into the SEC knows what they are getting into, and if they don't know they learn very quickly. Now I like to defend people like John Vaughn, because I think in most cases they are held up as scapegoats, when in reality, the loss belongs to the entire team (and we will talk more about the LSU game later in the show). But I think this is another case of "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." If you can't handle the pressure and the instant feedback that comes with playing and coaching in the SEC, you should probably leave, because it's not going to change anytime soon. Besides, I think the intensity is what makes this conference so much fun. I know Coach Tuberville is trying to defend one of his players, but I think he needs to let this one go.
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