NCAAbbs

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/...eabe3.html

Hopefully Friday night this will look like a ridiculous prediction.

Not including Dillard as a "Top Player" says she is not paying attention.

Soon as I saw that this morning I discounted the author's opinions immediately. He probably has never seen a CUSA game.

I am sure this may be inflammatory, however, this goes straight to my belief that women sports reporters have no business addressing football.

Not that the men can be much better sometimes, but I have yet to hear great insight from a female journalist with regards to football.

Clearly, she didn't put more than 15 minutes into the article, including all the time spent thinking up those snappy one-liners.

This follows a trend that makes little sense to me - Chase as the All-conference QB, Rice as the last place team. When was the last time you saw the ACQB on a last place team?

Soon as I saw that this morning I discounted the author's opinions immediately. He probably has never seen a CUSA game.


"He" is actually a she that has had a high school beat the last few years. After proving her incompetence there I guess she has been demoted to the CUSA beat. If it wasn't for smu the DMN would give CUSA about as much coverage as they give the Ivy League. The
DMN treats Rice, a former SWC member, as if they were a Division III team from another state - ie. with complete indifference.

Just one more reason to be thankful we have MK's extensive services...

...the fact that "she" hasnt listed JD or DeAndre Brown from Southern Miss shows how piss poor this preview is. A lot of newspapers assign younger writers these lesser conferences and the only thing they have to go on is other people's writing.

Jose Martinez, a kicker, is one of the top players in C-USA?

I object to this, obviously. My take is that the most journalists period don't have any great insights to offer about football. But somehow, a man who doesn't have anything insightful to say is not representative of male football writers as a whole, but a woman is.

I don't read enough football writing for me to give an example...but given the dearth of female sportswriters in general, it probably only would take one or two good women for the percentages of insightful male and female journalists to be the same.

OK I normally don't get up on my high horse, feminism-wise, but let me register a quick "that's ridiculous." Have you really been keeping track of journalists by gender?

I agree 100% with your last line, and the tone of your post. I don't know exactly what TThomp meant by his comment, but I would say, in a similar vein... that I believe that the best sports writers love sports... and that I've met a number of women who love sports who don't love football. Not saying they hate it... but they don't love it... and few have ever played a game similar to it... so perhaps they don't get the nuances as they might baseball, especially if they'd ever played softball. AC (and are there many more avid cheerleaders for Rice than AC?) doesn't attend football games (or so I think I read in another thread) and I've seen more than one comment on this board by women who generally love sports critical of football because of its impact on women's sports, or the impact on a university as a whole. In NO WAY does this speak to all (or perhaps even a majority of ) women... all women who love sports... or all women who think football has a negative impact on the college experience or on womens sports... but it speaks to some.

I don't think this disqualifies women in any way... I just think that just because a woman loves sports, DOESN'T mean she loves football... and someone who doesn't love football shouldn't report on it. It appears that this woman is either simply a poor journalist (most likely I suppose), or she doesn't care enough about football to do any investigating.

Well said......wait, what did you say?

Hambone's greatest exposure came from Rice's FEMALE football beat writer in the mid-80's. I saw her spend more time with the kickers. Come to think of it, I think Hambone was giving her color commentary.

That must explain TThomp's stance - he is colored by the conclusion that female sports writers, in his experience, got their understanding of the nuances of football from kickers. And we all know that beyond knowing that they are supposed to "keeeck de bol" and try to "score a goal", nobody knows less about the game of "american futball" than a kicker. Now the real question is whether Hambone managed to convince her that he scored lots of points and was really the reason the team won any games...

Okay Mr "Drop in the Wells".

Doc, that's why we got along so well... She was the only person out there who knew less about the game than I.

I keed, I keed. She loved sports, and was a Rice supporter... but really (imo) didn't understand the game very well. I don't think she could have put together a rational prediction.

PLEASE don't misunderstand me. I don't think you need to be a former player to be an expert... but it doesn't hurt. You also don't need to be an expert in something to write about it... but it doesn't hurt. I believe that most male sportswriters have played football, rugby, or at least what we used to call in the politically incorrect days... "smear the *****" at some point. I don't believe many female sportswriters have. It is hard to talk about the nuances of a sport if you've never played it or anything like it at a competitive level. I've played volleyball in church leagues... so I understand the game... but being vertically and gravitationally challenged, plus my cat-like reactions... IF the cat is my daghters 25lb Persian who most people think is a sculpture... I have nothing but awe for the things that the women and men do that play the sport 4 feet above the net... I would be a HORRIBLE reporter for volleyball of either sex... but even worse if I'd never played in the church league.

keep digging. It is a nice hole you are diggin so far...

Somebody tell Hambone at this rate, the Olympics will be over before he finishes digging that hole to that destination...

THRILL is the one after Asian Cheerleaders.

I have no such nationalistic biases. London "birds" in 2012 will be just fine

So your construction project is the uber-chunnel!

She gave us a week long series on the current status of Hambone's quest for a holder. Three in the running today with one starting to distance himself from the pack.... Riveting storylines from two-a-days. All the other schools had the same old boring QB, offense, and defense stuff. We had the battle for the #1 holding job. As hotly contested as the battle was, I think some would question the importance of this struggle. Of course, maybe she was on to something by stressing the importance of special teams way back then. Makes you start to question how good her football acumen really was.

Maybe you're right... She told me you'd never make it.

just a note, AC doesn't attend football games because she's a snob from Ohio and we aren't as good as Ohio State. Has nothing to do with gender...

But if that were true, then why did she attend so many basketball games and NO baseball games.

A true sage and exceptional writer. Took to heart the adage about telling the truth, but telling it slant. She just couldn't bring herself to publicly acknowledge that the distance between the first candidate and the pack was due to the pack pulling away...

But now we know why you were a holder - you got to compete with Hambone for talking time with the pretty reporter. Guess that bumper sticker that said you went to Rice so you must be smart wasn't too far off!

see... i told yall it was inflammatory.

let me clarify that it irks me just as much when john madden goes off on a tangent or points out the totally obvious.

I guess women aside, it is irritating when someone with little to no football knowledge or experience opines on players and teams.

... and for more fuel to the fire...

Fox got it right... put a cute one in front of the weather screen and let her do her thing.... works for me.... and Howie Long too.

I don't agree with that. Playing football at the collegiate level does not automatically make someone a good college football sports reporter. Hard work and appreciation of the game are essential, and women can demonstrate both characteristics.

I thought of my example: Christine Brennan. She's moved on to bigger and better things these days (column in USA Today), but when she was up-and-coming she covered University of Miami football (first woman in the locker room there, I believe) and later the Washington Redskins for the Post. If she's not an insightful football writer, no one is.

Anyway, I also don't agree that you have to have played a sport to be able to cover it well. You have to have watched and studied it, sure, and you have to watch and study in order to play (well, at least), but you don't have to play in order to watch and study. I do agree that you have to love it to be good--as is the case with any job, really.

And FWIW, you can (and I do) dislike the role of football--or any quasi-professional sport for that matter--within universities and still really like the game itself.

If you look at the track record of the "experts" predictions, I'm not sure anyone knows anything about football.

That's essentially the same reason a lot of people don't go to basketball games. We need to get over that kind of thinking. We are not Ohio State or UT or Kansas or whatever ESU your parents went to. Support the team anyway.

In fact, we dragged her to one, leading to hilarious text messages as she attempted to find Reckling. AND there were fireworks afterwards. Rather than celebrating my convocation, or whatever it was of graduation that my dad and I skipped to go to the game, they were obv. celebrating AC's appearance at a non-basketball sporting event.

EDIT:
Hey, I hit 500 posts and didn't notice! I liked the little pink label I got for 250-500 better than this light blue business. Hmph.