Category Archives: Sportswriters

Yet another reason why beat writers shouldn’t be voting for awards: Backlash in Arizona over writer’s choice for NL MVP

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Wanted to catch up on this story from late last week. It gives me another chance to vent about the conflicts that arise when writers vote for awards and Hall of Fames, etc.

Last week, Nick Piecoro, who covers the Arizona Diamondbacks for the Arizona Republic, disclosed that he chose Andrew McCutchen over Paul Goldschmidt in his ballot for NL MVP.

Piecoro explained his vote:

I understand this is not a popular decision around here. There are certain realities you have to accept in this job. One of them is that you’re never going to please everyone. Today is a day to keep that in mind.

Voting for these awards isn’t easy for beat writers when the players we cover are among the candidates. If you give them your vote, you risk looking like a homer nationally. If you don’t, you catch heat not only from the local fans but also within the clubhouse you cover. What you try to do – the only thing you can do – is make what you believe is the best choice. You don’t make your selection based on the team you cover or based on what other’s reactions might be. You make your selection based on your convictions.

Piecoro deserves to be commended for not taking the easy way out and handing a hometown vote to Goldschmidt. However, the fact that he had to point out the inherent conflicts shows why he shouldn’t have been voting in the first place.

Sure enough, Piercoro did catch considerable flak in Arizona. Awful Announcing’s Joe Lucia even noted the beat writer got scolded in a tweat by Sen. John McCain.

However, there was a bigger problem. Lucia writes Diamondbacks pitcher “Brad Ziegler went on a now-deleted rampage about his teammate not winning.”

Piercoro now has to answer to an Arizona locker room about why he didn’t vote for Goldschmidt, including Goldschmidt himself. Hopefully, the Diamondbacks star will have more of an open mind than Ziegler and appreciate Piercoro’s objectivity. But you never know, especially since Goldschmidt likely had bonus money coming if he won the award.

Piercoro could have been spared this uncomfortable situation if he hadn’t been a voter. It should be an example for other beat writers too.

Once again: Writers cover news; they don’t make news. Piercoro was in the news last week for the wrong reason.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heated debate: Does Angell deserve baseball writer’s top honor at Cooperstown over Bisher, Durslag?

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My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana is on an interesting debate occurring in the sports writing fraternity.

From the column:

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The National Baseball Hall of Fame has been awarding the J.G. Taylor Spink Award annually since 1962, recognizing career excellence as a baseball writer. Spink, the long-time publisher of the Sporting News, was the first winner, followed by giants like Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyan, Red Smith, Jim Murray, to name a few.

The honor doesn’t mean there’s a bust of the writer wearing a team cap at Cooperstown. However, there is a nifty plaque with the roll call of winners. All in all, it’s pretty nice to have your name on that plaque.

Usually, voting for the award flies way below the radar. But not this year in the sports fraternity.

The finalists for the Spink are: Roger Angell, Furman Bisher, and Melvin Durslag.

At issue is whether either of the two long-time newspaper columnists (Bisher in Atlanta and Durslag in Los Angeles) who wrote on tight daily deadlines should get the nod over Angell, whose brilliant, if not iconic, prose appears only occasionally in the New Yorker and book collections of his essays.

Interestingly, the debate is taking place on Twitter and Facebook, light years away from when the three candidates began their careers lugging typewriters up to the press box decades ago.

As much as anybody, Dave Kindred is responsible for launching the conversation. In a Facebook post, he said that he voted for Angell over the late Bisher, his long-time friend.

Kindred wrote:

I’d be thrilled if Furman won. I’d go to Cooperstown for the ceremony. Hell, I’d make the speech for him if asked. Both Angell and Furman are Hall of Fame-worthy, but one’s a magazine/book guy, one’s a newspaper columnist — so their work is judged by different standards.

It just seems to me that Angell should have won this thing 25 years ago; few journalists ever wrote baseball with greater understanding for a wider audience.

Naturally, sportswriters being sportswriters, weighed in with their diverse opinions in the comments section of Kindred’s post.

Here’s some samples:

Mark Purdy: That’s one magnificent trio of nominees. But I have to go with Furman on my ballot. I suppose it’s partially because as a daily newspaper hack, I’m inclined to side with those facing multiple weekly deadlines rather than one every two or three months. And it’s not as if Angell, a wonderful writer, has been ignored in the awards department. He’s been honored by organizations that would never salute the likes of Bisher or Durslag. Angell was elected a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, for crissake (other fellows include Thomas Jefferson, Jonas Salk and Duke Ellington). Props to him. Spink to Bisher.

Philip Hersh: I went with Roger. At his best, pure genius on a page. But Mark’s argument is solid.

Claire Smith: I honestly do not think I would have recognized the magical connection between beautifully crafted prose and the sport that was made for writers if it were not for Roger Angell. Good choice, Dave. Will follow your lead.

Orange County Register column Mark Whicker engaged in a spirited Twitter debate with Kindred. Whicker is pro-Bisher. One of his tweets said: “My view is the Spink is not a Pulitzer. It should go to those who regularly wrote about the game, on mundane and profound days alike.”

Indeed, a big issue is the exact criteria. Is the Spink supposed to be limited to beat reporters or columnists? Or can it include someone like Angell?

On his blog, Joe Posnanski notes there are no instructions on the ballot.

Posnanski writes:

Everyone is just supposed to know what it is all about. But I’m not 100% sure so I looked it up. The award is given for “meritorious contributions to baseball writing.” What does that mean? As you know, we in the BBWAA love to parse words so that “most valuable” doesn’t necessarily mean “best” so let’s take a look at the words here.

Meritorious means “deserving reward or praise.” That’s pretty simple.

But “contributions to baseball writing” is trickier. What the heck does that mean?

Actually, the “contributions to baseball writing” makes the task quite simple here, in my view. It has to be Angell. As Kindred says, it is stunning that his name wasn’t engraved on that plaque a long time ago.

Sure, Angell doesn’t write on deadline and has months to polish his essays “into glistening jewels,” as Posnanski writes. That shouldn’t matter. To suggest that you could come close to writing like Angell with the extra time is like saying with a lot of practice, you could get a hit off of Sandy Koufax.

Indeed, perhaps there’s your comparison. Angell is the baseball writing equivalent of Koufax, a one-of-a-kind artist on the game. Fortunately, unlike Koufax, Angell’s career has spanned generations. At age 93, he still is writing about baseball as only he could for the New Yorker.

Here’s a passage from Angell on one of Mariano Rivera’s final games at Yankee Stadium:

Mariano came on with one out in the eighth, and surrendered a single but no runs, and along the way gave us still again his eloquent entering run from deep center field; the leaning stare-in with upcocked mitt over his heart; the reposeful pre-pitch pause, with his hands at waist level; and then the burning, bending, famed-in-song-and-story cutter. All these, seen once again, have been as familiar to us as our dad’s light cough from the next room, or the dimples on the back of our once-three-year-old daughter’s hands, but, like those, must now only be recalled.

Angell’s writing blows me away now the same way it did more than 35 years ago when I discovered his work as a young kid who aspired to be a sportswriter. I still have memories of being held captive by his first book, “The Summer Game.” Angell’s writing on baseball truly inspired me, and as Claire Smith says, I’m sure many others too.

This isn’t a vote against Bisher, one of my all-time favorites on a professional and personal level, or Durslag, who had a distinguished career. And memo to the Hall: Time to get Dave Anderson of the New York Times on the ballot sooner than later. He’s certainly worthy.

Rather, more than anything else, it really is time to give Angell overdue recognition at the game’s most revered address. When you talk about someone who contributed to baseball literature, how many people rank higher than him?

Angell deserves to have his name on that Spink plaque, along with Rice, Smith, Runyan, Lardner, Murray and the others.

 

 

Leonard Shapiro: Longtime NFL writer laments he didn’t write more about violence of game, injuries

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My connection to Leonard Shapiro is through golf. We walked many fairways in our day and even did a book together, Golf List Mania. We’re still in the process of negotiating the movie rights.

Len, though, also wrote about another game: Football. He was the long-time NFL writer for the Washington Post. If you go to Canton, you’ll see his name on a plaque at the Hall of Fame.

When it comes to respect from his peers, Shapiro sits among an elite group among the golf and NFL writers.

Now semi-retired with time to reflect, Len wrote a piece Sunday for his old paper with this headline: “For too long, sports journalists glossed over football’s violence. I was one of them.”

Definitely pay attention.

Len writes:

I covered the NFL over four decades dating back to 1972. Now semi-retired myself and five years removed from day-to-day football coverage, I have one main regret: not focusing more of my reporting and writing on the absolute brutality of the sport, particularly the painful post-football lives of so many players.

Instead, like many other sports journalists, I spent much of my career writing positive pieces about the league and its players — puffy features and breathless accounts of thrilling victories and agonizing defeats. I certainly covered my share of serious NFL warts: mounting injuries; the use of steroids and amphetamines; team doctors prescribing far too many painkilling pills and injections; the derogatory Redskins name; and, for many years, the dearth of African American quarterbacks, head coaches and ­front-office personnel. But until the past decade or so, most of us glossed over the brutality of the sport. Shame on us.

And more:

But it’s not just the NFL that needs to fess up. The news media — television, print and digital — also must take some responsibility for frequently glorifying the unadulterated mayhem of this perilous competition. This includes all those war images in our prose: all-out blitzes, bombs down the field, defenders striking like heat-seeking missiles and head-hunting linebackers.

We should have been on this story far earlier. It’s not as if this was a deep, dark secret. At every Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony each August in Canton, Ohio, it’s difficult to ignore former all-pros limping, leaning on canes or rolling onto the stage in wheelchairs. In conversations with countless former players, we hear about replaced knees, hips and shoulders, surgically repaired necks and backs. Worst of all, there’s clear evidence of memory loss and dementia from concussions either undiagnosed, shrugged off or totally ignored.

Shapiro concludes:

Still, when Washington hosts the Chicago Bears at FedEx Field on Sunday afternoon, I’ll surely be in front of a TV set, in my favorite chair and riveted to every play, just like so many other millions of fans across the country and the globe. The game is appealing and appalling at the same time. And I have no doubt that all of us, news media included, will continue to feed the beast, even if the beast keeps feeding on its own.

As always, good stuff from Len.

 

Huge honor for Claire Smith: Named first winner of Lacy-Smith Award

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Everyone is applauding this choice. Claire is one of the classiest people you’ll meet in any profession. And she has been a pioneer, breaking important ground to enable others to follow.

Congratulations, Claire.

The official release from the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism.

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COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Long-time sports journalist Claire Smith has been named the first winner of the Sam Lacey-Wendell Smith Award presented by the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. The award is given to a sports journalist who has made significant contributions to racial and gender equality in sports.

Claire Smith, a news editor at ESPN since 2007, has worked as a sportswriter and editor for more than 30 years at news organizations that include The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Bulletin and Hartford Courant.

The award was created to honor two pioneers in sports journalism   — Lacy and Smith – African-American sportswriters who battled prejudice their entire careers and were instrumental in the integration of Major League Baseball in 1947 by the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson.

“On behalf of Major League Baseball, I am honored to congratulate Claire Smith on being the recipient of the inaugural Sam Lacy-Wendell Smith Award from the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism,” said Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig.

“Claire’s decorated career covering the national pastime continues to embody the pioneering spirit of Sam and Wendell, who opened doors with their talents, character and passion for chronicling our game.  It is fitting that Claire, who has been a remarkable example for both her fellow journalists and those who aspire to report on baseball, will receive this wonderful recognition.”

Smith was chosen to receive the award by a committee that included Povich Center Director George Solomon, USA Today Sports Managing Editor Mary Byrne, Alicia Patterson Foundation Director Margaret Engel, Sporting News Editor Garry Howard, Merrill College professor Diana Huffman, Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel Sports Editor Greg Lee and ESPN-980 and Comcast SportsNet commentator Rick “Doc” Walker.

Smith will receive the award during a Nov. 5 luncheon at the University of Maryland. Comcast SportsNet anchor, Chick Hernandez, will be presented with a “Distinguished Terrapin” award as well. That night, the eighth annual Shirley Povich Symposium will discuss Maryland’s entry into the Big Ten in 2014.

“Claire Smith is a fine journalist who epitomizes the qualities of courage, determination and fairness displayed by both Sam Lacy and Wendell Smith during their exceptional careers,” said Povich Center Director George Solomon. “The Povich Center is proud to honor her, as well as Sam Lacy and Wendell Smith.”

The Sam Lacy-Wendell Smith award is the latest in a series of honors for Smith, who in the course of her career overcame many obstacles because of her race and gender.

A graduate of Temple University, she has previously won legacy awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, as well as the Mary Garber Pioneer Award from the Association for Women in Sports Media. She is the author of “Don Baylor: Nothing But The Truth, a Baseball Life” and is a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, as were Lacy and Smith.

About Sam Lacy and Wendell Smith

Lacy, who died in 2003 at the age of 99, worked for the Washington Tribune and Chicago Defender, before beginning a six-decade career for the Afro-American newspapers that were distributed in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.  A graduate of Howard University, he won the J.G. Taylor Spink award in 1997 and the Red Smith Award presented by the Associated Press Sports Editors in 1998.  He also is enshrined in the Maryland Media Hall of Fame.

Wendell Smith, a graduate of West Virginia State College, died in 1972 at the age of 58.  He won the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in 1993 and co-authored with Robinson: “Jackie Robinson: My Own Story.” He had a storied career at the Pittsburgh Courier and later the Chicago American before becoming a sports commentator for WGN-TV in Chicago.

Both men worked and wrote with great passion in the late 1930’s and 1940’s trying to convince Major League Baseball to integrate, with Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers finally signing Robinson  to a contract in 1945.  Robinson played for Brooklyn’s Triple A team in Montreal in 1946 before breaking in with the Dodgers in 1947.  That season was chronicled in the movie “42” with Smith depicted following Robinson’s path those two seasons. Wendell Smith’s widow, Wyonella, lives in Chicago.

A good read: Florida golf writer continues watch over disabled son

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Many of Craig Dolch’s friends in the industry are circulating this story by Emily Minor of the Palm Beach Post. It is about Dolch’s son Eric. The piece also includes a video.

Back in 2005, Dolch experienced every parent’s nightmare. Eric came down with a fever that quickly escalated into much more. He eventually suffered from severe brain damage, leaving him disabled with little ability to function on his own.

Craig is a great guy and those of us in the golf writing community rallied around him back then. Since I’ve been off the traveling golf beat for a while, it has been a while since I have chatted with Craig.

So it is good to get an update and to be inspired by Craig’s courage and perspective about Eric.

Minor writes:

It wasn’t a mosquito bite that caused Eric Dolch’s encephalitis — although what does it matter, really? “It happened,” says his dad.

Instead, Eric tested positive for “mycoplasma,” a bacteria most commonly present in walking pneumonia. It’s unusual for mycoplasma to settle in the brain, causing the tissue swelling that’s the main marker of encephalitis. When it does, it’s not good.

And the bad news kept coming.

First, there were the seizures — huge, frightening, grand mal seizures, so violent that the medical team summoned religious services.

“I swear, it wasn’t 30 seconds before there was a minister at my side,” Van de Water remembers.

The question:

Is he in there? That’s the million-dollar question.

Does Eric Dolch know what’s going on?

“The thing that drives me nuts every hour of the day is I don’t understand what he knows,” Dolch says. “Is he in constant pain? Does he enjoy anything? Who wants to live like that?”

Dr. Resnick says it’s hard to know exactly what Eric does and does not comprehend, but he can tell you this.

“He gets depressed,” Resnick says.

Really? How can you tell?

“He cries.”

Carlos Restrepo, 31, the home health aide who spends the most time with Eric, says, without missing a beat, that his No. 1 patient is “absolutely” aware of what’s going on. “Oh, there is no doubt,” he says.

“Oh yeah, he’s in there,” says Elizabeth Keith, Eric’s longtime physical therapist.

The challenge:

The family has spent close to $1 million of their own money on Eric’s care.

“It basically ruins your life financially,” Dolch says. “If a child lives long enough, you’re going to run out of money — unless you’re Bill Gates.”

For years, Dolch had covered the sport of golf, establishing himself as a respected beat writer. He traveled a lot, sure, and it wasn’t always pleasant to saddle up to the likes of Tiger Woods, especially during Tiger Woods’ unraveling years. But when Dolch started the nonprofit to raise money and awareness about encephalitis, the golf community’s reaction was both quick and mighty. Jack Nicklaus, himself no stranger to tragedy, called early on to lend his support.

After all, professional golf is full of guys who make a living saying goodbye, leaving the wife and kids, missing PTA meetings and dance recitals and Little League games.

But for the grace of God …

“This is as personal as it gets,” says pro golfer Olin Browne. “This is their child, and to have it go on for all these years.”

Of course, through each struggle — the diagnosis, the surgeries, the two steps forward, the three steps back — there’s been a village forming around Eric Dolch. “Eric is our son, but he’s everybody’s son,” says Dolch.

The picture above is from the Eric Dolch Children’s Encephalitis Foundation site. Please check out the site for more information.

 

Glenn Stout: Long form sports journalism “is exploding”

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My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana University points out that there actually is a positive trend occurring in the profession.

Here is an excerpt.

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Myth: The current mode of sports journalism is limited to 140-character snarky sound bites. It’s all fast food consumed by people with shockingly short attention spans.

Reality: The long-form genre in sports journalism not only is thriving, it is reaching new levels on multiple platforms. Surprisingly (shockingly?), there is a growing market for long in-depth pieces with strong prose and reporting.

“It’s really exploding,” said Glenn Stout. “The hunger is there. There is a tremendous appetite for long-form stories.”

Stout speaks from his perspective as a content editor for SB Nation Longform. Since launching a year ago, the site has produced 99 stories, ranging from roller derby to ultimate frisbee wars.

SB Nation Longform hardly is alone. Sites likes Grantland and Sports on Earth have sprouted as outlets for long-form storytelling. ESPN.com has featured several terrific in-depth pieces from Wright Thompson and others. John Branch of the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for a story on skiers caught in an avalanche.

Stout is elated about the revival of long-form sports journalism. As the long-time editor of the annual book, “The Best American Sportswriting” (the 2013 edition comes out in October), he has seen the waves in the industry during the last few years.

“If you look at the last five to 10 years, newspapers have gotten smaller. As a result, they are producing fewer takeouts,” Stout said. “The same with magazines. By the same token, the book industry also wasn’t producing the same amount of compelling non-fiction on sports. It left an open space (for long form stories) that wasn’t being filled.”

SB Nation sought to fill the vacuum. It reached out to Stout during the summer of 2012. He was told the site wanted a vehicle to differentiate itself in the crowded sports market.

“SB Nation was very well established in the blog field,” Stout said. “However, they weren’t known as a destination for good writing. They saw long-form as a way to highlight writing on the site.”

Thus far, SB Nation has had pieces written by authors like Pat Jordan, Peter Richmond, Jeff Pearlman, Michael Mooney, Elizabeth Kaye, Alex Belth and many others. Stout says some stories are assigned, but for some writers, they essentially get a blank canvas.

Stout tells writers, “What’s the one story that you always wanted to do, but nobody allowed you to do it.”

That approach produced a piece from Michael Graff about Earl Badu, the former Maryland player who committed suicide 10 years after hitting one of the biggest shots in the program’s history.

“That story exploded for us,” Stout said.

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Here’s the link for the rest of my column.

 

T.J. Simers first column: I’m 63, and the Orange County Register still hired me

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T.J. Simers made his debut for the Orange County Register at a familiar spot: Page 2.

He writes:

To everyone else, and keep this in mind when you get ready to complain to Register management, I’m on Page 2.

How hard is it to turn from Page 1 to 3 without looking? And I’ve got a problem?

I’m 63, and the Orange County Register still hired me. It’s probably the first time Human Resources has done paperwork on a new employee while also preparing retirement documents.

Then there’s this:

A few years back the Times directed its columnists to tone down criticism of McCourt, the publisher’s pal. They asked me to tone down criticism of Moreno recently; I guess it didn’t look good with all the advertising the Angels were doing on the Times’ website. I have no idea who influences news coverage in the rest of the paper.

But you can imagine my delight when I heard Ashton Kutcher bought the Register and was hiring. No way Steve Jobs buckles to pressure.

I haven’t felt this kind of excitement since asking a curvy blonde to dance decades ago. Who hires almost 200 employees these days to make a newspaper better?

Way to go, Ashton.

“Aaron,” I was told. “Aaron Kushner owns the Register.”

Boy, did I get punk’d.

 

New book captures greatness of Chicago sportswriting; Even includes story of Cubs winning World Series

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My latest Chicago Tribune column is about a new book celebrating Chicago sportswriting. You also can access the column via my Twitter feed.

Here’s an excerpt.

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Ron Rapoport decided there only was one fitting place to have a signing for his new book on Chicago sportswriters. Thursday at 5 p.m., he will be at Billy Goat Tavern underneath Tribune Tower, the famous newspaper haunt where the ghosts still linger.

“It seems only right to do it at the place where so many of them drank over the years,” Rapoport said. “Where the column logos of the likes of John P. Carmichael, Bill Gleason, David Condon, Mike Royko and many others will be looking down at us.”

Those legends and more are featured in “From Black Sox to Three Peats: A Century of Chicago’s Best Sportswriting.” The new book, published by the University of Chicago Press, is a collection of 100 columns by 59 Chicago sportswriters. They span from Ring Lardner and Arch Ward to David Haugh, Rick Telander and Rick Morrissey.

Rapoport, the former Sun-Times columnist who now lives in Los Angeles, served as the book’s editor. It was a daunting task to distill more than 100 years of Chicago sportswriting into a single book.

“Many of the people who wrote about sports in Chicago over the last century were as good at their jobs, or better, as the players they were writing about,” Rapoport said.

Rapoport viewed part of his mission to use the book as a way to document the history of Chicago sports. Yes, Cubs fans, there’s an actual story of the team winning the World Series: I.E. Sanborn’s account in the Tribune of the 1908 clincher. The Tribune’s Westbrook Pegler wrote vividly of Babe Ruth’s Called Shot homer at Wrigley Field during the 1932 World Series.

“Nor will you ever see an artist call his shot before hitting one of the longest drives ever made on these grounds,” Pegler wrote.

 

Omaha’s Shatel reacts to Pelini’s rant: “I’ve been cursed at by better coaches. Worse coaches, too.”

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Hard for me to believe anyone would curse at Tom Shatel from the Omaha World-Herald. My longtime pal is a great guy.

Obviously, Nebraska coach Bo Pelini doesn’t share the same opinion about the Omaha columnist. Shatel responded to Pelini’s 2011 rant that now has gone viral.

Shatel wrote:

I heard the audio. I read the comments. No apology is necessary. I’ve been cursed at by better coaches than Pelini. Worse coaches, too.

Over the years, I’ve found Bo good to work with one-on-one. Never dull. He’s yelled at me over the phone and 10 minutes later was baring his soul to me.

Shatel’s colleague, Lee Barfknecht, also weighed in.

Coaches and sportswriters have butted heads since the two professions met, and they will until the end of time. We don’t take it personally. Our skins are as thick as our heads.

But one fact must be addressed.

As the audio went public, some World-Herald readers expressed surprise that Pelini would swear so violently in his outburst. Sadly, it was no surprise to many media members in this state.

Multiple newspaper, radio and TV people have been on the receiving end of a Pelini cuss-bombing. My most recent one occurred when I got a call a couple of years ago while walking into Borsheims two days before Christmas. It was so loud and bitter, I had to step out.

Lee’s a great guy too. Pelini must be an angry man.

More Whitlock fallout: Leitch, Mariotti takes their shots at new ESPNer

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This story has considerable legs, doesn’t it?

A week after Jason Whitlock made his ill-conceived comments about Thayer Evans and Sports Illustrated’s probe of Oklahoma State, the fallout continues.

This time, it comes courtesy of Will Leitch and Jay Mariotti. They take their shots at sports journalism’s favorite punching bag.

Again, I can’t resist sharing, although I know for some people, the mention of Whitlock, Leitch and Mariotti, three highly polarizing figures, in the same post might cause their computers to explode.

Leitch in his Sports on Earth column:

4. People still listen to Jason Whitlock. This one always surprises me, but it’s undeniably true. When Whitlock fired his broadside against Evans on Tuesday, it changed the tenor of the conversation from “aren’t people tired of these investigative stories into college athletics?” to “wait, did Sports Illustrated screw this up?” almost immediately. Whitlock’s broadside against Thayer wasn’t unusual for him — and said with his typical taking-out-an-ant-farm-with-a-semi-automatic precision that got him tsk-tsked by ESPN — but it put Evans and Sports Illustrated into a defensive crouch it hasn’t escaped yet. This doesn’t mean Whitlock isn’t right about the mindset behind the piece, ultimately. Just that his double-barreled assault on Evans changed the way people talked about the piece.

Also: Whitlock said on Twitter that if ESPN had produced the same report as SI did, he wouldn’t have criticized it, out of company loyalty. This is an amazing admission, and, to judge from this incident, probably justifies whatever ESPN is paying him right there.

Meanwhile, Mariotti, who is back writing and talking again at his new site, Mariottishow.com (he has a daily online radio show), had this to say about Whitlock:

He says the SI investigation was “unsophisticated” — again, while not once explaining precisely what’s wrong with the series yet going into great detail on why Evans is a schmuck. This is shoddy, childish, embarrassing, bullying b.s. from Whitlock, who, if his Twitter feed reflects his life and career, doesn’t investigate much of anything except G-strings in strip joints. If you’re going to criticize those who are trying to break stories, you’d better try breaking some stories yourself.

Otherwise, shut up and sit down.

Mariotti also makes a good point here:

In his new capacity at ESPN, Whitlock has been hired not so much to be on the air — I investigated for myself and confirmed it — but to run a sub-site promoting African-American sports journalists. That’s a worthwhile mission, given the unfortunate dearth of minorities in the profession, but what’s he going to do with such a sensitive assignment? Will he teach his hires to trash the work of other journalists just because he doesn’t like them personally? That wouldn’t be very ESPN-like, and he won’t last long there if unprofessional tactics are his mission.

OK now, who’s next to take their shots at Whitlock?