Nobody involved was really aware of it at the time, but there was a rumbling shudder that coursed across the press-blog continuum this past Tuesday night. A pay-television sports show dedicated a segment to sports coverage on the web. The panel discussion featured America's most popular sports blogger, a Pulitzer-winning author, and some dude who plays football.
From the fallout posted here on the interweb, it would seem that all hell broke loose on HBO's Costas Now. Poor Will Leitch practically lived out that R.E.M. song about talk shows, ambushed by a crazy has-been writer, while an athlete sat in the corner wondering if he was in the right universe.
Me, I didn't get to see the segment until it was posted online yesterday (the show is carried on a channel I haven't received since Flight of the Conchords last aired). It certainly wasn't as explosive as everyone made it out to be, which was a bit of a disappointment. In fact, I'm just surprised how bad everyone looked coming out of it. From Bob Costas (the Voice of the Olympics) saying "fuck-face," to the athlete's description of his own web egosurfing, to the aged one's mouth-froth. Oh, the mouth-froth.
The only thing that advanced the discussion was the piece of paper that the host read from: a Deadspin post that contains the most expertly written deconstruction of the celebrity sportswriter culture I've ever seen, that details why working-class fans who have been priced out of the stadium feel alienated by that culture. Unfortunately, it was only brought up because it contained the word "tits."
(Buzz Bissinger was right about one thing: it was "Big Daddy Balls" who wrote that.)
Or maybe two things, that interesting closing statement about the "nebulous fan's voice." I haven't known the exact point where Deadspin is coming from for three years, and it was too bad that Mr. Leitch did nothing to clarify that position when offered that platform.
Before we go too much further, because most people aren't in any position to string the dots together: I have a fairly successful sports "blog" of my own that's operated five months out of the year (during college basketball season) since 2004. It's done well enough that it's landed me thousands of readers, a gig with the Worldwide Leader in Sports, and a column in an industry-respected magazine too. Not bad for somebody who left journalism school to become a graphic designer back in 1992, and later took a decade off to "monetize" websites for people. It's a story that could only happen in America, I suppose.
On Tuesday evening, all too coincidentally, I signed a contract to write my first book. It will be a non-fiction, hardcover book about college basketball, and it will be released on or near October 1, 2009 by Sports Publishing LLC (the folks who put out Hall of Famer Dickie V's autobio). Here's a 400-word overview.
There are 342 universities and colleges that compete for the NCAA Division I men's basketball championship every year, but nearly two-thirds of those schools languish in the shadows of the well-moneyed and constantly televised power conferences. For the past five years, I've travelled from coast to coast covering "mid-major" conferences like the Big South, Big Sky and Big West, leagues that are only as "big time" as their exceedingly hopeful titles.I plan to chronicle my 2008-09 season on the road, as I travel to and between over 100 Division I games. Along the way, we'll stop by hallowed halls like Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse and Penn's Palestra. We'll meet head coaches on the rise, as well as on career declines and rebounds. We'll visit with student section superfans and explore their odd rituals, and reveal heated local rivalries often overlooked by the national media. Invariably, a previously unknown school will leap into the limelight as a surprise nationally-ranked instant powerhouse. We'll discover players who go from unknowns to legends in a single episode of March Madness. And as winter turns to spring, small towns across America will become transformed, as tiny local colleges achieve berths in America's ultimate college sports showcase, the NCAA Tournament.
The real texture to this story of mid-major basketball, however, is provided by its inherent struggle. There will also be trips to run-down, dimly-lit 1,000-seat gymnasiums with empty seats, failed recruiting trips. There will be November "guarantee games," in which power-conference teams exchange five-figure checks for certain beatings, and long 700-mile team bus rides through the night. Players who excel in smaller leagues often have their weaknesses cruelly exposed against higher competition. All of these programs are defined by their relative lack of finances, and struggle to achieve or maintain excellence at the highest level. It's a world where big success becomes bittersweet --larger programs routinely lure away winning coaches with multi-million dollar contracts, reducing the role of mid-major schools to simple stepping stones.
The chronicle will be narrated in an even-handed, philosophical style that's been honed and perfected over three years as a national college basketball reporter. Travelogue-style elements will be woven into the story as I criss-cross the country for five months, driving tens of thousands of miles in pursuit of small college basketball's pulse. In book form, the 2008-09 mid-major college basketball season promises to be a patchwork of hope, faith, expectation, disappointment, pride and heartbreak -- it may end for each team with inevitable elimination, but it's always an interesting journey.
If you haven't guessed, I'm incredibly fortunate to have this opportunity and this advantage. Most first-time authors have to write the book first (or at least a first chapter), then have an agent shop it around in a humiliating cycle of outbound manila envelopes and incoming rejection letters. I haven't written a single word of this book, but I know when it's coming out, where it's going to be published and excerpted, and how long the book tour's going to be. I have a lot of people to thank, but they're going to have to wait 18 months to read it in print.
I really hope you'll buy it when it comes out.
After that ridiculous TV discussion show on Tuesday night, I'm more proud than ever of the internet. The internet made me. None of what's happened to me is possible without a "blog" -- that horrible little word splinter that's come to represent irresponsible reporting, tit jokes, parents' basements and anarchy. And there will always be artists who pine for expired times that made more sense to them, and art that won't outlive its own generation. There will always be preening celebrities who don't understand what happens in the seats that face them. There will, I guess, continue to be nebulous newcomers who can't figure out which swath of "brow" to stake out, who think they can occupy the high, middle and low simultaneously. From what I've seen, and even tried, it can't be done.
But I know what that word, "blog," really means. It's a synonym for endless possibility and a limitless blue sky, the freedom to plant a flag and proclaim to whomever cares to listen, "This is where I'm from."
And I think you know it, too.
Regular offseason workshop-style transmissions will resume from here shortly, along with announcements of other new projects. Stay tuned.
