He's not talking about us, is he?
In a blog entry today, Cuban reflected on his failed attempt to buy the Texas Rangers:
...a lot of "commentators" were villian-izing (sic) me. Suggesting I was trying to break things up. They were of the opinion that there was no way Chuck or Nolan would ever come on board. I obviously thought they were wrong. And I didnt care what they said. What I have learned in 11 years in the sports business is that the dumbest guys in the room are always the media guys.
Some do a decent job of reporting, most just spew opinions. And those opinions change more often than they brush their teeth. So what the media was saying was of zero impact or influence on what i was going to do. Listening to the media only increases your odds of failing at whatever you are doing.
No, don't worry, Mark's not talking about SB Nation. A few hours ago, someone arrived at SBNation.com after googling "How to be more awesome." We're definitely not the idiots in the room, and Cubes knows it. But what about "other" media?
Well, he raises a good point. With sports media, we're talking about a subset of society that's at least 60% of failed jocks, wanna-be jocks, or jock-sniffers. A decent portion of the sports media IS fairly obtuse. How do you think this Favre stuff perpetuates itself? And good God:
Listening to the media only increases your odds of failing at whatever you are doing.
That couldn't be more true if it were decreed from heaven on a stone tablet.
But for the record, if we're talking about Mark Cuban's methaphorical "sports business room," he's not giving some of his counterparts nearly enough credit.
Coaches? Players? Management? Blissfully obtuse and insulated from the realities of the real world, where the minimum salary is NOT mid-six figures, regardless of how badly you perform. They're not ALL this way, and neither is all media. But again: ignorance in the "sports business room" doesn't exactly discriminate.
And what of Cuban himself? This is a man who once entrusted his billion dollar business to Avery Johnson, operates said business at a steep deficit year-in and year-out, and, like most owners, has spent his life enjoying the fruits of some really, really great luck. If Mark Cuban were two years older or two years younger, he'd have mistimed the dot-com boom, and this conversation is happening with someone else.
Not saying he's not awesome... But let's use some perspective here.
You want to know what group's the smartest in sports, if you were to average it all out? The fans that have real jobs, and pay for this trillion dollar enterprise every year. As the esteemed scribe Fake Scoop would say, "Truth bomb...BOOOOOOOM."
