I have a somewhat thoughtful post on Ted Haggard and meth-fueled trysts coming sometime soon, but before I write that, you'll have to excuse me, 'cause I've got some complaining to do.
The last five months have been some of the worst in recent Wisconsin sports history. It's one thing when your teams are just plain horrible, so you can quit caring about them. It's quite another when they tease you in every single game by losing at the last second. And I can't remember another year when that's happened to my teams as much as this one.
The Packers were the worst offenders, with an epically heartbreaking season. They had nine games that went down to the final two minutes or overtime, and they lost eight of them, including a streak of four straight games in which they blew a late fourth-quarter lead. They had an eight-game stretch this season in which they were outscored by just six points total, but somehow ended up with a record of 1-7. The NFL stat gurus Football Outsiders did an analysis just before the last week of the season showing that the Packers were the unluckiest NFL team in the last 27 years. I've never followed a season like that, where every time your team got a lead, you were so resigned to the fact that they'd eventually lose it--and they proved you right every single time. It's just not fun to have your pessimism backed up so consistently.
(Badger football, of course, was awful, too, though not quite in as gut-wrenching fashion as the Packers. They lost six times, with three of those losses coming on last-minute scores. But they also won three close ones, too. All in all, they weren't an unlucky team--just a horrible one.)
Then came winter, and with it, Badger basketball. This was supposed to be a down year for the Badgers, but nowhere near this painful. Back while football season was going on and no one was paying attention, they split a couple of close games, winning by a basket against two teams (Iona and Idaho State) that shouldn't have been able to hang with them and losing two tight ones against top teams (Marquette and Texas). Then came the conference season, and specifically the last four games. The Badgers lost two straight in overtime, then two more in the last minute to bring their losing streak to five, their longest in more than a decade. This quite thoughtful Badger fan's response after the most recent of those losses sums up my thoughts on Tuesday perfectly.
Oh, and Nebraska basketball? They've led big-time programs throughout most of their last three games, only to fall short in the final two minutes. Tom Osborne had to give them a pep talk this week to tell them, basically, that things can't possibly get any worse.
But enough of my whining. At least we still have Husker football, right? Those lucky dogs.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
I ain't done can write no more.
Today a reader pointed out to me probably the worst stylistic error I've ever made as a reporter. But it wasn't as bad as it looked, I promise. Allow me to explain.
I was writing an article on the state beekeeper of the year, and I started a sentence planning to write "... he still hadn't done anything." I stopped midsentence and decided instead to write, " ... he still hadn't gotten started." But I forgot to remove the word "done" from my first start. Thus I was left with this doozy:
But a year later, he still hadn't done gotten started.
Ohhhhhhhhh no. Wow. Just wow. We'll just call it a "Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel" moment, and then we'll move on and pretend it didn't happen. Right? Right?
I was writing an article on the state beekeeper of the year, and I started a sentence planning to write "... he still hadn't done anything." I stopped midsentence and decided instead to write, " ... he still hadn't gotten started." But I forgot to remove the word "done" from my first start. Thus I was left with this doozy:
But a year later, he still hadn't done gotten started.
Ohhhhhhhhh no. Wow. Just wow. We'll just call it a "Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel" moment, and then we'll move on and pretend it didn't happen. Right? Right?
Monday, January 19, 2009
Yup, Ricki Lake made something more respectable than Ben Stein did.
I saw two documentaries on consecutive nights last week--Expelled and The Business of Being Born. Expelled is Ben Stein's pet project and could have been subtitled, "What's So Wrong With Intelligent Design?" The Business of Being Born is Ricki Lake's pet project and could have been subtitled, "What's So Wrong With Home Birth?"
I could write a post or two (or ten) about each of these movies*, but I'll focus on one thing that I think distinguishes the latter film as a much better one: Authenticity.
*Five-second reviews: Expelled is pretty meh, though you'd probably like it if you're part of the choir it's preaching to; Business isn't perfect, either, but it's much more compelling, as long as you're OK with seeing a few no-holds-barred live births. If that assessment is all you cared about, you can quit reading now. (As if you needed me to tell you that.)
During our discussion of Expelled at church, Matt noted that movies like these are really not documentaries at all--they're feature-film-length essays. He's right: whereas a documentary is ostensibly someone just turning on a camera and filming reality by depicting a story or illuminating some aspect of culture (Hoop Dreams and Spellbound are great modern examples of what I'd consider true documentaries), these films are meant to make a point. That doesn't mean documenting reality; it means documenting reality as far as it fits the point you're trying to make.
There's nothing wrong with making a movie like this, but Expelled runs into trouble when it spends most of its time pretending that it's just an honest, old-fashioned documentary. Stein frames the film as his globe-trotting quest to determine whether Intelligent Design is as horrible as the evolutionists say. All the transitions went something like this: "I couldn't believe it--could the ID scientists' stories of being booted out by the science establishment really be true? I decided to go Seattle to find out." Do you honestly think we're that stupid, Ben? Of course you think one side is right and the other is just pompous and arrogant--that's why you're making this movie in the first place. Don't try to play it off like this movie is an honest depiction of your search for truth that just so happened to lead to Intelligent Design. It just leads the viewer to wonder, 'What else is being misleading about?'
Lake's approach with Business was the complete opposite of Stein's. Her film is a video essay, too--but it's pretty upfront in acknowledging that that's exactly what it is. She has all the talking heads explain why hospital births are often manipulative and not as safe as they're made out to be, and why home births are a completely safe and reasonable alternative. But then she does something that's almost jarringly honest: She follows five couples through their home-birth process (including her own and her director's).
She doesn't just edit to only show the relative calm between contractions and then cut to the post-birth euphoria. She shows it all: Women in pain; women grunting, groaning and pushing; husbands and midwives trying to talk them through the experience. (Then she shows the euphoria, too.) When an urgent problem develops during the director's own home birth, the scene doesn't get cut. Instead, she's shown hurriedly gathering her things, collapsing in pain in her apartment building's lobby, piling into a taxi and being rushed into the hospital for a C-section. It's not pretty, but it's what happened. And even though it's not the ideal home-birth experience, it makes for a more compelling argument: She lays her cards on the table, tells you what side she's on, then makes it very clear that she hasn't stacked the deck. Despite the chaos on screen, it's quite a reassuring effect. Strange as it feels to say, Ben could learn a thing or two from Ricki.
I could write a post or two (or ten) about each of these movies*, but I'll focus on one thing that I think distinguishes the latter film as a much better one: Authenticity.
*Five-second reviews: Expelled is pretty meh, though you'd probably like it if you're part of the choir it's preaching to; Business isn't perfect, either, but it's much more compelling, as long as you're OK with seeing a few no-holds-barred live births. If that assessment is all you cared about, you can quit reading now. (As if you needed me to tell you that.)
During our discussion of Expelled at church, Matt noted that movies like these are really not documentaries at all--they're feature-film-length essays. He's right: whereas a documentary is ostensibly someone just turning on a camera and filming reality by depicting a story or illuminating some aspect of culture (Hoop Dreams and Spellbound are great modern examples of what I'd consider true documentaries), these films are meant to make a point. That doesn't mean documenting reality; it means documenting reality as far as it fits the point you're trying to make.
There's nothing wrong with making a movie like this, but Expelled runs into trouble when it spends most of its time pretending that it's just an honest, old-fashioned documentary. Stein frames the film as his globe-trotting quest to determine whether Intelligent Design is as horrible as the evolutionists say. All the transitions went something like this: "I couldn't believe it--could the ID scientists' stories of being booted out by the science establishment really be true? I decided to go Seattle to find out." Do you honestly think we're that stupid, Ben? Of course you think one side is right and the other is just pompous and arrogant--that's why you're making this movie in the first place. Don't try to play it off like this movie is an honest depiction of your search for truth that just so happened to lead to Intelligent Design. It just leads the viewer to wonder, 'What else is being misleading about?'
Lake's approach with Business was the complete opposite of Stein's. Her film is a video essay, too--but it's pretty upfront in acknowledging that that's exactly what it is. She has all the talking heads explain why hospital births are often manipulative and not as safe as they're made out to be, and why home births are a completely safe and reasonable alternative. But then she does something that's almost jarringly honest: She follows five couples through their home-birth process (including her own and her director's).
She doesn't just edit to only show the relative calm between contractions and then cut to the post-birth euphoria. She shows it all: Women in pain; women grunting, groaning and pushing; husbands and midwives trying to talk them through the experience. (Then she shows the euphoria, too.) When an urgent problem develops during the director's own home birth, the scene doesn't get cut. Instead, she's shown hurriedly gathering her things, collapsing in pain in her apartment building's lobby, piling into a taxi and being rushed into the hospital for a C-section. It's not pretty, but it's what happened. And even though it's not the ideal home-birth experience, it makes for a more compelling argument: She lays her cards on the table, tells you what side she's on, then makes it very clear that she hasn't stacked the deck. Despite the chaos on screen, it's quite a reassuring effect. Strange as it feels to say, Ben could learn a thing or two from Ricki.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The guys on TV don't hate your team. Get over it.
We've just completed college football's bowl season, the time of the year when Americans engage in two time-honored traditions: 1) watching mostly meaningless bowl games and 2) whining about how We've just completed college football's bowl season, the time of the year when Americans engage in two time-honored traditions: 1) watching mostly meaningless bowl games and 2) whining about how much the media hates our favorite team/conference.
I've heard more of it this year than any other I can remember. It's the vicious circle of the victim complex: Big 12 fans complain about the media pushing the SEC's "speed" agenda, while the SEC kvetches about having some combination of schools in Texas and Oklahoma being foisted on them by ESPN every Saturday night. Meanwhile, USC picks up its annual grievance about being left out of the national championship game by the media who forget the Pac-10 exists, while the rest of the country complains about how the media is once again calling a USC team who's played exactly no one since September the best team in the country. And the Big Ten realizes (rightly) that everyone hates them right now, and that certainly doesn't stop everyone else from whining that "biased" ESPN keeps pushing mediocre Big Ten football on them.*
*I think much of this collective pity party stems from our culture's obsession with victimhood in general, but that's a sociological discussion, not a sports one.
The problem is, pretty much all of it is complete crap. First of all, the national sports media (and by this I mostly mean ESPN) can't possibly hate everyone. (Well, I suppose that's possible, but I'm not that cynical...yet.) More importantly, that media has no deep-seated love or hatred for any of those conferences or teams within them. They're biased toward one thing: money. They're in favor of anything insofar as it can bring in more viewers, clicks or advertisers. That means their coverage will be heavy on teams that more people care about. That's most obvious in baseball, where the disparity in size of fan bases is greatest, and much less of an issue in the NFL, where so much of the fan interest is spread league-wide (you can thank fantasy football for at least part of that).
But as regional as college football is, it doesn't make any business sense for ESPN to hold any systemic grudge against any conference, thereby alienating an entire section of the country.* And ESPN controls enough of the sports universe that it has a tentacle--and therefore a business interest--in every corner of the sport.
*Of course, it makes complete business sense for them to favor major conferences over minor ones, so if your favorite team is in a non-BCS conference, then, um, disregard this post's title.
As for the individual announcers/analysts/reporters, I can tell you as a journalist (though many of them are far from journalists) that their only real bias is in favor of good stories. For them, covering games is like when I cover a meeting: I really don't care which side wins; I just want the end product to make for a compelling story. And I'd imagine that the feeling is even greater when your audience has to watch the thing with you. So when Thom Brennaman made his rather ridiculous ode to Tim Tebow on Thursday, it didn't mean he or Fox is in the tank for Florida and the SEC; it just meant he's in love with the story of Tim Tebow.
A final note: Just because an announcer says something negative about your team, it doesn't mean he hates them. (Exception: Billy Packer and mid-majors.) Think about it: You make negative comments about your team or the people on it all the time, and you're a fan of them. So, for the last time, the fact that Kirk Herbstreit said this once does not mean in any way, shape or form that he hates Nebraska. It just means that, like any sane college football fan, he doesn't believe Nebraska has both of the top two teams of all time. Say it with me: There's no cheering in the press box.
I've heard more of it this year than any other I can remember. It's the vicious circle of the victim complex: Big 12 fans complain about the media pushing the SEC's "speed" agenda, while the SEC kvetches about having some combination of schools in Texas and Oklahoma being foisted on them by ESPN every Saturday night. Meanwhile, USC picks up its annual grievance about being left out of the national championship game by the media who forget the Pac-10 exists, while the rest of the country complains about how the media is once again calling a USC team who's played exactly no one since September the best team in the country. And the Big Ten realizes (rightly) that everyone hates them right now, and that certainly doesn't stop everyone else from whining that "biased" ESPN keeps pushing mediocre Big Ten football on them.*
*I think much of this collective pity party stems from our culture's obsession with victimhood in general, but that's a sociological discussion, not a sports one.
The problem is, pretty much all of it is complete crap. First of all, the national sports media (and by this I mostly mean ESPN) can't possibly hate everyone. (Well, I suppose that's possible, but I'm not that cynical...yet.) More importantly, that media has no deep-seated love or hatred for any of those conferences or teams within them. They're biased toward one thing: money. They're in favor of anything insofar as it can bring in more viewers, clicks or advertisers. That means their coverage will be heavy on teams that more people care about. That's most obvious in baseball, where the disparity in size of fan bases is greatest, and much less of an issue in the NFL, where so much of the fan interest is spread league-wide (you can thank fantasy football for at least part of that).
But as regional as college football is, it doesn't make any business sense for ESPN to hold any systemic grudge against any conference, thereby alienating an entire section of the country.* And ESPN controls enough of the sports universe that it has a tentacle--and therefore a business interest--in every corner of the sport.
*Of course, it makes complete business sense for them to favor major conferences over minor ones, so if your favorite team is in a non-BCS conference, then, um, disregard this post's title.
As for the individual announcers/analysts/reporters, I can tell you as a journalist (though many of them are far from journalists) that their only real bias is in favor of good stories. For them, covering games is like when I cover a meeting: I really don't care which side wins; I just want the end product to make for a compelling story. And I'd imagine that the feeling is even greater when your audience has to watch the thing with you. So when Thom Brennaman made his rather ridiculous ode to Tim Tebow on Thursday, it didn't mean he or Fox is in the tank for Florida and the SEC; it just meant he's in love with the story of Tim Tebow.
A final note: Just because an announcer says something negative about your team, it doesn't mean he hates them. (Exception: Billy Packer and mid-majors.) Think about it: You make negative comments about your team or the people on it all the time, and you're a fan of them. So, for the last time, the fact that Kirk Herbstreit said this once does not mean in any way, shape or form that he hates Nebraska. It just means that, like any sane college football fan, he doesn't believe Nebraska has both of the top two teams of all time. Say it with me: There's no cheering in the press box.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Yes, that's right. A year-end list.
You thought I'd let a year's end go by without a list? No way, man. Well, yeah, I guess I did, since it's January 8 and all. Consider this my one-week-late, end-of-the-year (and-as-many-hyphens-as-possible) list of the top five sports events I saw this year.
5. NCAA basketball: Kansas State 80, USC 67.
This game really can't match the drama of the others on this list, but it gets a big boost because it's the only one here that I actually watched in person. Actually, Dana and I watched only the second half after being scalped for tickets, but that was plenty. Beasley vs. Mayo may have been the biggest freshman/freshman matchup in NCAA history, and they (mostly) lived up to it. Beasley was an absolute beast throughout the second half, and Mayo, well, shot a lot. Bonus: we sat with the K-State fans, so we were happy by osmosis.
4. NCAA basketball: Davidson 74, Georgetown 70.
I could have picked any of Davidson's games from this year's tournament for this one--though, let's be honest, I wasn't going to pick Davidson-Wisconsin--but this one really was Stephen Curry's coming-out party, when we all learned how to pronounce his name (rhymes with, um, effin'). Just based on his wispy, almost-fragile-looking body alone, he was possibly the most unlikely athlete I've ever seen dominate a game.
3. NCAA football: Texas Tech 39, Texas 33.
I watched this game all sped-up on Ben Reis' DVR, switching back and forth with the Wisconsin-Penn State game (possibly the best way to watch college football--two full games in three hours). By the time we got to the last two drives, we had given up on the UW game and were focused solely on Texas-Texas Tech. I remember feeling very confident that Tech would win with a field goal as they crept into Texas territory, but it's been a long time since I was as blown away while watching a play as Crabtree's touchdown. This is the first play that comes to mind, and that was a loooong time ago.
2. NFL football: Giants 17, Patriots 14.
One of the biggest upsets of all time. And it couldn't have been perpetrated on a better (and by that I mean worse) team. This just never gets old.
1. NCAA volleyball: Penn State 3, Nebraska 2.
If you're not from Nebraska, I know what you're thinking. "Seriously? Volleyball? What has Dana done to you?!?" If you are from the Cornhusker State, you know exactly why this match is here: When it comes to grit, will to win, gutsiness, teamwork, competitive fire, David vs. Goliath, all those wonderful cliches, I don't think I've ever seen a sporting event that tops this one. The Huskers were down 2-0 to a team that hadn't dropped a set all season. They then stormed back to take not one, but two sets in front of an insane crowd--the largest crowd ever to watch an indoor volleyball match in this country. Finally, the greatest college team in the history of the sport finished off the match and showed why they deserved that title. Couple that with the Huskers' incredible three-set comeback win the previous weekend at Washington, and I have to ask: Could you make a better case for No. 1? Could anyone?
5. NCAA basketball: Kansas State 80, USC 67.
This game really can't match the drama of the others on this list, but it gets a big boost because it's the only one here that I actually watched in person. Actually, Dana and I watched only the second half after being scalped for tickets, but that was plenty. Beasley vs. Mayo may have been the biggest freshman/freshman matchup in NCAA history, and they (mostly) lived up to it. Beasley was an absolute beast throughout the second half, and Mayo, well, shot a lot. Bonus: we sat with the K-State fans, so we were happy by osmosis.
4. NCAA basketball: Davidson 74, Georgetown 70.
I could have picked any of Davidson's games from this year's tournament for this one--though, let's be honest, I wasn't going to pick Davidson-Wisconsin--but this one really was Stephen Curry's coming-out party, when we all learned how to pronounce his name (rhymes with, um, effin'). Just based on his wispy, almost-fragile-looking body alone, he was possibly the most unlikely athlete I've ever seen dominate a game.
3. NCAA football: Texas Tech 39, Texas 33.
I watched this game all sped-up on Ben Reis' DVR, switching back and forth with the Wisconsin-Penn State game (possibly the best way to watch college football--two full games in three hours). By the time we got to the last two drives, we had given up on the UW game and were focused solely on Texas-Texas Tech. I remember feeling very confident that Tech would win with a field goal as they crept into Texas territory, but it's been a long time since I was as blown away while watching a play as Crabtree's touchdown. This is the first play that comes to mind, and that was a loooong time ago.
2. NFL football: Giants 17, Patriots 14.
One of the biggest upsets of all time. And it couldn't have been perpetrated on a better (and by that I mean worse) team. This just never gets old.
1. NCAA volleyball: Penn State 3, Nebraska 2.
If you're not from Nebraska, I know what you're thinking. "Seriously? Volleyball? What has Dana done to you?!?" If you are from the Cornhusker State, you know exactly why this match is here: When it comes to grit, will to win, gutsiness, teamwork, competitive fire, David vs. Goliath, all those wonderful cliches, I don't think I've ever seen a sporting event that tops this one. The Huskers were down 2-0 to a team that hadn't dropped a set all season. They then stormed back to take not one, but two sets in front of an insane crowd--the largest crowd ever to watch an indoor volleyball match in this country. Finally, the greatest college team in the history of the sport finished off the match and showed why they deserved that title. Couple that with the Huskers' incredible three-set comeback win the previous weekend at Washington, and I have to ask: Could you make a better case for No. 1? Could anyone?
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