An ode to competition

The goal of this column was to ask questions about the world of sports journalism. Over the past weeks we’ve looked at journalistic conflicts of interest, sports personalities ranging from Darren Rovell to PFTCommenter, and suspensions of both professional athletes and professional pundits. There was, and always will be, plenty to gripe about. But in our last week together, let us not just complain. Let’s zoom back out to the most macro level and ponder one more time the sports we love and the people who cover them. In this week’s column, I’ll take a look at why sports are king and why no matter how bad the journos get, sports will always be king.

Some people care about things other than sports, such as music or movies. To put the coverage and purpose of sports into perspective, it may be helpful to take a look at the coverage and purpose of some of those other things. The most recent South Park episode provided interesting perspective on the entertainment industry and its portrayal in the media. In the ninth episode of the currently airing 18th season, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone continued the running joke that Randy Marsh, a 45-year-old geologist, is actually pop singer Lorde. Upset with his (her?) embarrassing performance at a concert, Randy-Lorde voices his concerns to a high level music executive. The executive scoffs at the notion that the performance was bad, and his evidence is that it generated comments. Entertainment, he claims, is not about making anything good, but simply giving people something to talk about.

This is where we are lucky to be sports fans. Although one could argue that sports and certainly the sports entertainment industry exist to give people something to talk about, mentions and comments can never be the sole determinant of worth. We are disciples of competition, and at the end of the day that competition will serve as the judge. Some players and teams perform well and win -- others the opposite. Undue attention can be cast on undeserving players for stretches, but it can only last for so long before correcting itself. Take for example former ESPN darling Tim Tebow. After being forced down the throats of Americans for years, Tebow disappeared from coverage because no NFL team considered him worthy of a roster spot. The feedback mechanism of competition helps guarantee that the players and teams talked about are the ones actually worth talking about. In other sectors of entertainment, popularity seems to determine success. Thankfully, with a large enough sample size, it seems to operate the other way around in the world of sports.

This is an incredible source of strength and longevity for sport as a source of entertainment. There is no need for tastemakers or academies to determine the best of the year -- there are games for that. Perhaps that is what keeps fans loyal and keeps professional and collegiate sports front and center. The ultimate safeguard against bad sports journalism is the fact that we don’t need anyone to interpret things for us. Sports are delightfully quantitative in nature, and therefore, they are consumable outside of traditional spins or agendas that may plague other entertainment sectors. We still need to watchdog the industry to make sure the coverage is ethical and that injustices within the leagues we love are brought to light, but a million idiot jock-club announcers can’t stop us from watching and genuinely enjoying sports.