Press Coverage: Losing A Legend, Remembering A Decade

One of the difficulties of writing a weekly column -- especially covering a holiday weekend -- is figuring out how to handle news that, in four day's time, has less of an impact on the reader. But, for melancholy reasons, there was no such problem this week with the news that legendary sportscaster George Michael passed away just before Christmas.

Michael was DC sports. Sure there's the Wilbons and the Kornheisers and the Feinsteins, who wrote for the Washington Post and worked their way on to television and other mediums to make national names for themselves, but they all deferred to Michael as the king of DC sports. Wilbon wrote about Michael's passing last week:

I spent Thursdays with George for 13 years, 40 Thursdays a year for nearly a dozen of those years. "Redskins Report" with Sonny and Riggo during football season, "Full Court Press" with Tony Kornheiser and David DuPree during basketball season. My professional life has been greatly influenced by two indomitable men named George. Solomon, who brilliantly ran The Washington Post sports section for a quarter-century, and Michael, who became the only sportscaster in America to develop a dominant national profile while working a local gig nightly for a quarter-century.

That's the thing about Michael to someone who didn't live inside the Beltway ... I didn't know he wasn't anything but a dominant national voice. I'd wait until the local sports was over to watch the Sunday night Sports Machine for the national highlights the local shows would never give us. His bombastic style was completely over-the-top, yet perfect in its own way. I hated him every week he ripped my favorite team but came back the very next week to see what the guy had to say. He was SportsCenter before I knew what SportsCenter was. And for a while, he did it better. An old co-worker of mine was fortunate enough to intern at the Sports Machine, and we talked about Michael's passing this week. Let's put it this way -- and Wilbon wrote this as well -- the guy didn't act like he thought he was the best in the business. He acted like he knew it. And he was right.

In most markets the Sports Machine was replaced by local knock-offs and eventually the prevalence of ESPN lessened the resonance of Michael's voice on a national level even more. But in DC, he was still the guy. He probably always will be.

 

This Is ... The Best of the Decade?
There was one of those internet debates going on during the month of December that -- since everyone is doing these decade retrospectives and all this week -- deserves mentioning. Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated picked Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel as the best sports show of the decade. It’s difficult to argue with that selection -- sappy Frank Deford woe-is-the-newspaper segment notwithstanding -- but it's what Deitsch didn't mention that seems to have gotten more attention.

SportsCenter has to be on the list, right? Deitsch gave the runner-up honors to ESPN's Outside the Lines, but -- unlike other categories -- decided against adding an honorable mention grouping for the likes of SportsCenter. ESPN's PR guru Josh Krulewitz took umbrage (somewhat tongue-in-cheekly) to Deitsch's omission in a reply on Twitter to both the SI scribe and SBJ's John Ourand.

Of course I love OTL. SportsCenter is great, the industry standard, yet often underappreciated. (see SI.com)

This went back and forth among the three for a while, and even spilled into last week when it was rekindled (with some of my needling as well) by Deitsch.

In SportsCenter's decade review, I look forward to features on HBO's Real Sports and Outside The Lines, the 2000s top sports shows.

I decided to ask Deitsch why he hates SportsCenter so darn much.

"First, I don't hate SportsCenter. Not at all. In fact, I generally like it," Deitsch offered. "There's no debating SportsCenter's impact on sports culture. It remains the most dominant show of its kind, and I have immense respect for those who put it together. It's producers and researchers are among the best in the business. Do I think it's been a better production this decade than HBO's Real Sports or Outside The Lines? I do not. You can argue that it's comparing apples and oranges but if forced to put all sports shows in one basket, Real Sports and OTL have produced more significant stories this decade.

"One of the more interesting developments to me this decade is ESPNews, which provides highlights, press conferences and analysis. It offers less sizzle than SportsCenter and about as much steak. If asked to name my favorite ESPN channel of the decade, it would get my vote."

While I'd agree about the impact ESPNews has on the way we've been able to consume instant sports news -- the network was a must listen for me through satellite radio feeds on long commutes for years -- there is no debating the fact that the cultural resonance of SportsCenter far out-weighs that of Real Sports or OTL. Sure, both those shows have done an unbelievable job breaking news (although far more news has been broken on SportsCenter), telling stories and providing television moments -- in the latter category so have, to a far lesser degree, E:60, Costas Now and even Joe Buck Live -- but SportsCenter has changed the way people consume the medium, and (probably not for the better) changed the way people play sports, in hopes of making it on SportsCenter every night. It may not be the 'best' sports show of the last decade, but it's clearly the most important. Besides, Deitsch wrote the column, so for him to make the point of being 'forced' to put all sports shows in one basket, it was a situation he forced unto himself. (Note: Deitsch and I talked more about his decade media lists as part of our lengthy 300th episode of On the DL.)

 

Urban Meyer and the Preemptive Eulogy
This headline sounds like a Hardy Boys mystery, but it's more about the coaching career of Urban Meyer, aka the best coach in America. There were many career-ending eulogies on Sunday when Meyer had announced he was calling it quits at Florida for health reasons. Most of them talked about how great a coach Meyer was and how not just Florida, but the entire sport of college football, will miss the man who left us far too soon. One such tribute was from George Diaz in the Orlando Sentinel:

Gator fans will mourn for a while, probably through the Sugar Bowl game in New Orleans when Meyer officially steps down after the Gators face the University of Cincinnati. But then the tears will dry, and the Next Guy will be expected to make things all better by signing the best players in the country.

College football allows no time for mourning. It's always about moving on, whether it's Bobby Stoops, Bobby Petrino, Mike Shanahan, Dan Mullen, Charlie Strong or somebody else. Urban Meyer now needs to go take care of himself and his family. The Gator Nation should wish him Godspeed, and cut the Next Guy a little slack. He's following Gainesville's greatest.

Good thing, a day later, we came to find out the Next Guy is also named Urban Meyer. Look, the news wasn't just an internet rumor that led to stories being published by both local and national media outlets. It was good information that changed the next day. It’s still fun to look back, a day later, at the over-the-top nature of some media reaction. Who knows, maybe Meyer had a change of heart after reading about how much everyone already missed him.

 

A Missed Opportunity by the Daily News
The New York Daily News has been in the decade retrospective game as well, chronicling some of the best and worst moments/players/coaches in the Big Apple throughout the decade. From the Red Sox curse being broken (as the worst moment) to the Subway Series (as one of the best), the Daily News has covered everything one could possibly remember. (And boy do they hate Stephon Marbury).

But what a missed opportunity for one of New York's tabloids to rip the other. Why not publish the Ten Worst 'stories' of the 2000s and just reprint ten New York Post articles. Lawsuit or not, it would have been legendary.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.