Another pet peave: sports media coverage

OK, let me take this discussion of sports one step further. Therese and I were talking about this last night, so I will get this off my chest here and now.

I don't know whether you want to say that sports journalists are lazy or conservative or what, but I feel like they constantly cover the story that is easy to cover rather than covering the story they should be covering. Let me explain.

This weekend 22 year old Rory McIlroy took the golfing world by storm, winning the US Open and in the process shattering numerous records. He led from start to finish, and after the second round of the tournament on Friday, he was already 6 shots ahead, and it was pretty definite already at that point that he was going to win.

Imagine my surprise when I picked up the US Today in my hotel in Boston and found, accompanying the front cover's lead story on the US Open, a photo of Phil Mickelson, and a story of how Mickelson and other stars were not playing very well in the Open. But I should not have been surprised, because this is routine for sports media of all kinds. They would much rather put their energy and their money into covering the obvious thing, even when that is not really the story.

My hope, staying with golf for another moment, is that McIlroy's success will draw attention and we will finally not have to hear every week stories about what is wrong with Tiger Woods. Don't get me wrong: I am a fan of Woods and hope that he returns to his level of excellence and breaks the record for Major Tournament victories. But I really don't want to hear about every little detail of what he is doing with his swing coach or whatever. Especially not when there are other players like McIlroy who are showing off their talent while the endless drivel about Woods' problems continues to flow.

And this is common among all sports. Look at basketball and the media's focus on LeBron James. Or how about football and all the stuff about Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco? I know that Owens is still a legitimate player at wide receiver, but he is no longer the no. 1 receiver in football. But if he speaks up and says anything at a press conference, in no time flat it's all over all the sports news.

I understand that controversy is appealing, and controversial athletes are always going to get more attention than ones who "just" play their sport at its highest level. I also understand - or maybe this is just my take on things - that journalists have a hard time dealing with athletes who don't give them what they want, and so anyone who is the least bit complicated or elusive is going to be labeled a problem or, worse, a flake, and treated like a joke.

What would I like to see? How would I like to see sports journalism change? Well, to say that it should adhere to the same standards as other journalism is a joke at this point, since most broadcast and print news is distraction and drivel. But I think it would be a lot better off stretching itself, working a little harder to tell not just the stories that immediately sell newspapers. I would like to see some journalistic ethics and editorial vision applied to deciding what stories will be told and what stories should be told. When a person implodes, for example, anyone with any sense of decency would either look away, or help to calm the person down and see if they can do anything for them. They would not look for ways to make the person lose control even more, which is the equivalent of what we see in sports journalism all the time.

Of course, there are many reasons why a lot of the best and most compelling stories from sports never get told, or at least not until a great deal of time has passed after the events have taken place. For example, the parties involved would lose their competitive edge over other teams. But I'm sure that many athletes would be more willing to forge relationships with journalists in the hope of getting the story told well if they were not convinced that journalists are not going to make them look like fools. In that respect I can understand why journalists focus on the few superstars that everyone is talking about - at least they are going to get some story from Tiger Woods or LeBron James. But I would be more impressed to see that one journalistic outlet or newspaper who, the next time everyone is writing the same story about how LeBron didn't play his best, decides to spend their energy on who is playing their best and why. In other words, I would like to see sports jouirnalists do the job that we expect all journalists/reporters to do: hunting down interesting things that noone has heard about and telling us why we should be interested.