I just read the sports section and it reads more like a National Enquirer.

Author: Jeff Fisher

January 20, 2010

Jeff Fisher's E-Take is sponsored by Elite Performance Centres, the inventor and leader in High Performance Training in Winnipeg, with over 12,000 athletes trained to date. www.elitewinnipeg.com

I just read the sports section and it reads more like a National Enquirer. How did “We” let this happen?

“We” as a culture already spend an inordinate amount of time escaping our own lives by watching these athletes live theirs…and I get it, sport is fun to watch.  Watching is nothing like playing, but for your average Joe, often that is all that is available.  The “identification” with a team, the camaraderie… great; but don’t you find it a bit hypocritical to place these people on a pedestal, watching, buying team jerseys and then celebrate their misery if their personal life collapses?

I train many of these people that you watch on TV and spend your hard-earned money to watch play.  True, these people aren’t your average “Joes”.  Between their drive, their athletic gifts and their overdeveloped self-preservation instincts they do things that you cannot and probably would not want to do.  They live their lives in a way that is much different than most can imagine, far beyond the glory and pageantry of the big game, they definitely pay their dues outside of the athletic arena.

From their vaulted status that the frenzy of sport has created, their privacy is often invaded.  They live under a microscope with the public just waiting for the fresh blood of a fallen hero’s private life.  Why do we want this?  Human nature?  Very “gladiator-ish”…haven’t we come further than that?

Sure people make mistakes both in personal and private lives in and out of the employ of pro-sports.  Let’s put the shoe on the other foot, do you have a skeleton in your closet?  Really?  I bet someone in your immediate family does…something, that if was plastered in every rag for all to read would cause some significant collateral damage to your family.  The coverage is not something they would ask for: no stone left unturned, full exposure for all to see.  Very classy.

While so many of these sports reporters look for scraps, just like a Remora on the belly of a shark to feed the the big business of tabloid sports, these reporters are often the ones we have to rely on for our daily fix.  McGuire, Tiger, Coach Kelly…people make mistakes, whatever it may be…and many learn from them, but it doesn’t help anyone except for the bottom line of the sports business, to create and reiterate ad nauseum (see Mike Kelly coverage over the last two months) the suffering of the people involved.

Sure, if you are unhappy with your life because deep down you know you didn’t do your best effort and you want to feel better about yourself, I understand how this swill will quench your thirst.  But for the sports fan that dons a jersey for home games and games at home, and I know there are millions of you…do you want the misery and mistakes of others choked down your throat?

Take a minute and leaf through the first 5 pages of Monday’s paper.  Look at the vermin that walk amongst us every day without their 15 minutes of fame on the Sunday sports cast.  We grant many of these people, car thieves, robbers, and drug dealers, relative anonymity without “reporters’” repeat public floggings.

Professional sport is something that I respect immensely, and for 15 years made my livelihood from it.  The behind the scenes are not as glamorous as you would imagine and I wouldn’t judge unless a mile was walked in their shoes.  But these Sports Heroes are definitely not what we have made them out to be.  They are just people with a gift that we have attached a value to, whether it is a coach or player.  They are human and should be treated and respected as one.

In the “new-age” of journalism where information is instantaneously acquired from the far reaches of the globe in a fraction of a second, sports reporters seems to have hit an all time low and have become the new “shock-jockeys” of the decade, suckling off of the misery of others.  Sure there are some of you that we can rely on to get the goods on what happens between the lines…and I commend you for that.  But for the others, how about looking inside, and turning one of these stories around and show what you are made of.  You guys are the first line for much of what we get in our daily sports feedings…you have a choice to make a difference.

Come on guys, how about bringing the “Cactus Jack” back into sports reporting and a little less Joan Rivers.

jeff@elitewinnipeg.com  www.elitewinnipeg.com 

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