(mildly clever title TBD)

(The blurry Blackberry picture I took of the tunnel at AAC; I didn't want to get busted in all my dorky glory so I didn't use the flash.)

I have a confession to make. As you may have read on this blog, I was a music journalist in the past. I loved music. I went to shows every night. And then, after a few years, I became bitter. I felt like I had been there and done that. No one could impress me. I basically existed just to rip into bands and hand them their aspirations on a plate.

So I stopped doing it. Then I started this blog. I loved sports. Specifically, I loved the Mavs. I would write about them even if no one read it, which was the case for many months. Then I started getting a little attention. Not much but just a little.

But with that attention, also came that feeling that ripping into teams and athletes and shaming them for actual losses or perceived failures was the key to personal success. And guess what? It sucked the fun out of sports for me again. My sense of Dallas sports fan entitlement told me that if my team “only” made it to the playoffs then got knocked out in the first or second round, they were losers. Burn down the stadium. Sell off the team.

So I stopped blogging about sports. In the meantime, I became a columnist for Quick. A nightlife columnist, if you want to get specific. And through that, I was offered the chance to write the 2010-2011 Mavs Season Preview. You will be able to read that preview on October 21st.

Today I went to Mavs team practice to interview players and Coach Carlisle. Like a kid from a high school paper, I stood outside the Mavs office during practice with clammy hands. I looked over my list of questions approximately 12.5 million times. Which ended up being fruitless since my questions pretty much went out the window the moment I opened my mouth.

Now all of this would have been an undeniably awesome sports moment for someone who started a Mavs blog out of sheer fandom room four years ago. But as the other members of the press and I waited to be given access to the players, we all huddled around a small TV to watch the Rangers game. I know it’s fashionable to downplay ones enthusiasm and to apply a liberal coat of indifference to writing about things like this. But you know what? It was fucking awesome. Waiting to talk to the team I have loved for decades while watching a team I have grown to love? It was a moment I probably won’t forget any time soon.

Then we were ushered into practice. I’ll save most of that for the article. I hope that it wasn’t too obvious that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I remember looking down at my recorder while Carlisle was talking and realizing that there were still beads of sweat across the screen from my nervous hands. I am as noob as it gets. It probably showed. My voice didn’t crack, as far as I remember.

I know I should be cooler about this. I should have asked some sort of hardball questions of the players. I should have been the young, snarky blogger who was there to call someone out. But it never crossed my mind. I’m a fan and I will give this Mavs team a chance and enjoy the basketball they give me and any games I am able to attend.

Because as I sit here at my desk listening to the Rangers play their first playoff game in 14 years (and lead it 5-1), I am just about as sports happy as a girl can be. If the Rangers can make it to the playoffs after all they’ve gone through this past decade, anything is possible. Losing my grip on sports cynicism is almost certainly a detriment to my career as a blogger. But the world needs one more cynical, armchair quarterback blogger like…….well, like the Lakers need one more ring.

Why I Love the Sport, the Franchise and the City But Ultimately Hate This Team

I love the Cowboys. No, wait scratch that. I am in a relationship with the Cowboys. I committed to them, for better or worse. It was a long time ago and there’s no way that I can switch allegiances. I used to feel sorry for people who grew up without an NFL franchise in their town. They never got to meet that perfect team. They never got to go through the courtship that is a Super Bowl season. I did. I do. I have the Dallas Cowboys and they’re my team and like a good Catholic, I’m stuck with them. Shackled to them for eternity, left only to offer excuses for them when they fail and explain away their shortcomings.

But I’ve come to realize that I secretly hate the Cowboys. Of course, I want them to win. Mostly for my own selfish, debauched reasons. I don’t even want them to win for themselves since I learned long ago that in the pantheon of things important to the Cowboys, winning comes in five spots behind ticket sales, sandwiched somewhere between cheerleader calendars and paper towel and charcoal product licensing. The greed doesn’t surprise me. You don’t become the NFL’s most valuable franchise without caring first and foremost about butts in seats and pro-shop merchandise. But at some point, you told me that you, quite frankly, didn’t care about me any longer.

You built a new stadium that has all the soul of a Roomba gliding along a taupe linoleum floor while Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music plays in the background. And when you announced the price point for tickets, you patted me on the shoulder and told me that you were sorry that I wouldn’t be able to attend any regular season Cowboys games while firmly guiding me to the exits. I didn’t take that too well. I’ve had to deal with the sideways glances and ridicule that comes with being a Cowboys fan for two decades now. And the whole time I stood my ground because you did care that I gave my time and attention and support and meager paycheck to you each Sunday.

Now, you’ve done it. I don’t know how I can look at my friends and say that I support you or your behavior. You apparently thought you would ingratiate yourself to the public by telling them a story about how Dez Bryant took the team out to a steakhouse and spent $55,000 on dinner for them. All of this to make up for some perceived rookie slight towards Roy Williams that everyone had already agreed was not actually a big deal. The whole thing was over and done with. Sure, Dez could have still taken the team out to dinner and the rookies could have paid for the team to dine lavishly. But wouldn’t you try to keep the story quiet, something just between your players and your front office.

Instead, this story has hit the media complete with quotes from team sources and Tweets from players, mid-gorging. So you’re proud of it. While you didn’t encourage it, you aren’t discouraging it either. Before you start giving me reasons why this is not that big of a deal, let me tell you that I think those reasons are, at best, weak and at worst, absolute bullshit of the highest order. You say that plenty of NFL players have had to pay up on bets or promises of steak dinners. You say that it is his money which he is free to spend as he chooses.

But unless your PR department is run by the same brain trust helming the BP PR department over the summer, you should know that you must immediately include a comparable donation to a food bank or charity of some kind to offset the gluttony and wastefulness of this gesture. Perhaps if the rookies were the ones who picked up the tab, the veterans can match that amount with a donation to Austin Street Center, the North Texas Food Bank or the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance?

But that’s not my real problem with this story. My real problem is that someone somewhere in the chain of command or amongst the players should have known that $55,000 is a lot of money. Money that the people who watch you on TV, buy your t-shirts and save up to attend your games would love to have lying around. There’s a pretty good chance that they don’t have it lying around though and because of that, they have had to give up certain luxuries once the economy took a nosedive. Luxuries like Cowboys games. So what you’re saying to Dallas Cowboy fans who fantasize about what a difference in their life $55,000 would make is essentially, “Sucks to be poor. Let us hear from you when you’ve got money again.” It’s a slap in the face and don’t think for a second that I won’t savor every morsel of news I hear about the team being broke.

Speaking of the team, I don’t blame Dez entirely for this situation. I blame the team’s mentality as a whole. You took a chance on drafting Bryant, a kid whose upbringing you would be generous to describe as “rough” and you told everyone to watch what a disciplined, good guy you believed him to be. And what lessons on character and values do you have to impart on him? A source says that, “Players ordered basically everything on the menu and even took home bottles of wine.” What kind of Latrell Sprewell-ian lesson is this to teach a kid who is young and impressionable? Grandiose displays of gluttony are apparently more important than discipline and humility. How utterly unoriginal that the team that plays in the most tacky and over the top stadium in the NFL encourages such displays.

Let me put it to you this way: you’re a 1-2 team going into the bye who hasn’t managed to get your mange-y, excuses-filled collective asses into a NFC Championship since Justin Bieber was learning to walk. Your second-in-command/coach-in-waiting is Jason Garrett, an offensive co-coordinator who squandered his choice of head coaching opportunities before his talent was discovered to be not much more than a momentary fluke.

Maybe it will take a losing season and empty seats and mounting debts for you to learn that $55,000 steak dinners eaten off the backs of the ever-dwindling number of lower and middle class fans who have the means or enthusiasm to support you don’t taste nearly as good as wearing a Super Bowl ring feels.

I Drank the Internet Kool-Aid and Now I Feel Queasy

Confession: a few years ago, maybe mid-‘aughts, I was that kid on a Hoverboard telling people who didn’t get behind new media that they were olds who were in denial and they needed to get on the Hoverbus or get left behind. Nice printed newspaper, Nonagenarian! You want a Werther’s Original with that copy of Newsweek? Here’s a nice crocheted shawl to keep you warm as you curl up with The New Yorker.

I would tell anyone that asked, not that anyone asked but I would volunteer my thoughts on the matter loudly like any cocky mid-20’s person would do, that instant news is where it’s at. The overhead is lower, the writers are hungrier (quite literally) and the ability to turn a story out quicker and scoop your competition all signaled the New World Media Order.

I’m a fucking moron. Ok, I get the majority of my news online, as do most people I know. But as I’ve found out in the past few months, weeks and days, the list of online sources you can trust seems to be dwindling. It turns out that not every asshole who can think of a “clever” URL to reserve at Blogspot (see above) is the undiscovered Walter Cronkite of their generation.

Maybe it was the finality of words being immortalized in print and the money that a libel suit against a major publishing company could garner that made print journalists more diligent and trustworthy. It’s easy to get a hot head and think you’ve got something so incredibly clever to share with the world that, editing and self-censorship be damned, you’re going to just hit that Publish button and let everyone soak in your genius. And if it turns out you’re wrong about the whole thing or people don’t exactly lap it up, you can always go back and edit. Or even better, you can deflect any criticism by picking apart your critics.

I wrote about the Chief Brown kerfuffle yesterday. It’s a pretty good example of when emotions, vitriol and bias get in the way of pesky things like facts. Interpretation is a slippery slope when publishing doesn’t involve multiple editors and printing presses but a few taps on an iPhone screen. And now Deadspin has leapt at the opportunity to prove why, despite occasionally dressing the part and keeping up in the conversation, they don’t deserve to sit at the grownups table.

You can go here and read the entire thing. The synopsis is: girl tells acquaintance, we’ll call him “AJ”, who works at Deadspin an anecdote about Brett Favre leaving her voicemails and sending pictures of his man places. AJ says he’d love to get her on the record, in case you weren’t fully convinced that Deadspin is less worried about breaking worthwhile news stories and just concerned with trying to take rich pro athletes down a peg by embarrassing them. Girl declines offer. Favre retires (or doesn’t, which you would think would be the story they would be chasing down here) and AJ decides that they need to strike while the iron is hot. He remembers the wiener picture story.

This is where a story about cell phone pics of dongs and Crocs manages to get sleazier. He shoots the girl an email informing her that he would be running the story and if she’d like to get on the record with it or send those pictures along, that would be great but this story is just TOOOOO hot to pass up. Needless to say, she’s upset. It almost certainly could endanger her career and livelihood. Also, there’s the minor issue of the fact that he had a verbal contract with his source to not reveal her identity without her permission. But I guess when it comes to sports news that will shake the earth to its’ core, pesky things like promises and character should never get in the way. The good news for him is that AJ doesn’t seem to ever risk going to jail for not revealing his sources. In fact, just give him a slow news day and he’ll cough up names faster than Hedda Hopper. You wouldn’t know her. That was a reference for the olds.

The joke here is that Deadspin anted up its small pot of credibility it had with a story that is remarkably meh. So I’d like to offer up this open letter to Deadspin:

Dear Deadspin,

First off, you have my full permission to reprint any or all of this blog entry for whatever use you see fit. I know you find that an unnecessary step but it makes you look a little less like a multi-level marketing scheme run out of a PO Box and more like a real publication.

I saw your post about Brett Favre sending pictures of his ding dong to a cute girl and leaving her flirty voicemails. Now maybe my moral compass is way off but I default to an assumption that any rich, male professional athlete has done one of or both of these things. Multiple times. Married, divorced, widowed. Doesn’t really matter.

If I know a half dozen people in my small group of friends who have received that sort of picture, it seems to be a pretty common occurrence. Therefore the law of averages back up my assumption that a pro athlete, a man whose profession includes appearing hyper-masculine and showing off, is likely to participate in this behavior.

So you told me that one did. He didn’t have a love child, didn’t kill a stripper, didn’t do blow off the carcass of a bald eagle. He sent a girl he thought was cute a picture of his business. This is not news. This is not shocking. Please try harder next time.

Sincerely,
Deadspin reader

And so now I’m left with my sad realization that new media is maybe not the great youth revolution that I had previously claimed it would be. A lot of times it’s more of a party line with wild rumors and unsubstantiated un-facts being tossed around. The good news is that Deadspin has given fair warning to anyone who might want to give them a story or a tip that any promises of confidentiality are as non-binding as Favre’s retirement promises.

I feel cheated.