Let us, for a minute, consider the circumstances that caused Oklahoma State University football coach Mike Gundy’s exceptional tirade against sports media a few days ago. I’m aware that most of the readers of this site aren’t college football fans, so you might be in the dark as to the incident I am referring to in this post, so here’s a bit of context for you all.
This past Saturday, Jenni Carlson ran an article in The Oklahoman that accused quarterback Bobby Reid of being coddled, soft, and of not having the right kind of winning attitude in order to lead the football team. She claimed that while Reid was still technically the better quarterback on the team, OSU had decided to start sophomore Zac Robinson instead of Reid not because of his talent, but because Reid didn’t have the right attitude to win.
While the Cowboys did go on to beat Texas Tech on Saturday with Robinson at the helm, the only thing on coach Mike Gundy’s mind was Carlson’s article published earlier that day. Instead of talking about the win, Gundy went on a tirade against the sports media, most of which is captured on this video below:
I fear that Gundy’s outburst may have escalated the situation to a public level when it could have been dealt with in a much more subtle and effective way, but I do feel that this is a good time to comment on sports media and student athletics, and the role each of these bodies have to play in concert with each other. As much as I think that Gundy’s histrionics were excessive, I also believe that Carlson (and other members of the media who are not immune to this error) was out of line in her comments.
Columnists are opinionated people
I’ll be the first person to argue that the job of a sports columnist is to have an opinion. Anyone can attend a game and report on what happened: the reason that we value certain sports writers over regular beat reporters is because they have an opinion — an opinion shaped from either experience, research, or insight — that shapes their perspectives, which they then share with us, the spectators and readers.
Whether they are writing about the National Football League, the College Bowl Championship Series, high school Friday night games, or lunchtime pick-up games on the elementary school yard, reporters need to express this opinion in order to make their story unique, engaging, and worth printing. The question of whether or not we agree with that opinion is irrelevant; as long as the insight is expressed, the story is valuable. Sports writers offer a perspective that game statistics alone can never convey.
In that light, you can’t fault Jenni Carlson for speaking her mind: she had an opinion about Bobby Reid, and she conveyed that opinion in her article. Coach Gundy’s assertion that he doesn’t read newspapers because the media has become too critical of athletics is ludicrous. This kind of criticism is the fuel that athletic programs require in order to maintain their prominence in the public sphere: before you get people talking about you, you need to give them something to talk about. If it weren’t for the media speculation — the reporters, the columnists, the fantasy leagues, the analysts — the entire BCS wouldn’t exist, and Gundy would be unemployed.
Gundys’ claim that Reid is “not a professional athlete” might be true, but is completely irrelevant to this argument. Much like a professional athlete, who deserves to be criticized by the people paying his salary, Reid is a scholarship athlete at a state school — his education is being funded by taxpayers and therefore needs to be accountable. While I’m not claiming that all student athletes need to be treated like pros, I do feel that they need to be cognizant of the fact that they are representatives of their academic institutions and athletics programs, and this will involve media speculation and criticism.
Reid may understand this, and has remained mum throughout the whole affair, but his coach must be deluded to think that just because his player is barely old enough to drink alcohol legally, he is immune to public scrutiny. Mike Gundy’s postgame comments, when taken in this context, seem much more childish and immature than his own quarterback’s actions.
Coaches protect their players
Of course, I can still understand Gundy’s fury: Carlson was perhaps unnecessary vitriolic in her assessment of Reid. While I will uphold the journalist’s right to criticize the athletic-related actions of any athlete, I do not agree with making sarcastic and personal jabs at any individual that are completely unrelated to their on-field performance. Stooping to that level is not only unjust, but cruel, and I can therefore understand Gundy’s passion (but still not the content of his response) in his press conference reply. After all, a coach must protect his players against unwarranted personal attacks.
Carlson’s points about Reid’s nervousness and injuries were well-founded — drawing an seemingly unconnected link between his athletic performance and the fact that his mom was feeding him chicken, however, was inappropriate. Indeed, her line questioning Reid’s off-field character — “Or does he want to be coddled, babied, perhaps even fed chicken?” — based on an incident in a parking lot was the perfect example of bad journalism and can not be defended. I understand that Carlson may have been using technique to make her article more evocative, but certain kinds of embellishment — particularly those that lead to unnecessary defamation — have no place in sports reporting. Save that for the politicians and mudslingers.
Gundy’s accusation that many of Carlson’s claims were untrue is an important one. If Carlson was in fact lying, or even just fudging the truth, in order to sell more copies of the paper, the editor of the Oklahoman should be held accountable for publishing untruths. Journalistic integrity is primordial to the profession, and any kind of blemishes to this integrity needs to lead to serious consequences, not only for the writer, but for the entire staff of the publication.
Fans make the final decision
It is clear to see that both parties are in the wrong in this situation: Coach Gundy in his content but not his passion, and Jenni Carlson in her disregard for integrity and civility but not her right to have an opinion. In the end, it is the Oklahoma State University athletics fan that is the final arbiter — disregard Carlson’s journalistic authority or disregard Gundy’s athletic authority? — and will ultimately choose what side of the equation is the correct one.
Going forward, I think the editors of The Oklahoman need to look at what kind of content is being printed in their publication and ask themselves what kind of damage this incident has done to their credibility and act accordingly. I also think that coach Gundy needs to look at the ways he deals with conflict and stress and ask himself what kind of damage his outburst has done to his authority and act accordingly.
“Whether or not you’re being praised or being criticized, you really have to maintain an even-keel approach. Good or bad — it’s always going to be there.”
I have just arrived in London after a great weekend in Lisbon. Despite being in meetings for the majority of the time I was in the city, I did get the chance to walk around, soak in the sun and the sights, and enjoy the over-thirty-degree weather that let me forget for a few short days that winter was on its way. This morning, as I got up and got ready to leave for the airport, the temperature had dropped, the sky was gray, and little droplets of rain were forming on my hotel room window. Lisbon was telling me that it was time to leave, time to head back to London.
So I spent a good chunk of the day in the airport and in airplanes, and arrived here in the Queen’s city a few hours ago. I’ll be here for about a week before I head back out to Toronto.
I took this photo while I was in London a few months ago, standing in Leicester Square, thinking about the past twenty-five years of my life. (I do a lot of retrospection when I’m away on business.) As most of you know, I was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1982, and since then have called several cities my home: New York, London, Victoria, Washington DC, and of course Toronto. People often ask me which city I truly call home, and while I may answer “Toronto” most of the time, it is only because it is difficult for me to explain that home for me is a state of mind rather than a physical location. Toronto (a city I truly love) is a springboard for me — a place from where all my travels begin — but my home rests in a consciousness of the urban environment: home is not a city for me, but is instead the concept of the city itself.
Case in point: I arrived in Lisbon on Friday evening and was already giving directions to taxi drivers (in a city I had never visited before in a language I did not speak) that same night. On my first ever visit to Montreal, I strayed from the tour group to spend the day in cafes in the old town and then met up with the group without incident later in the afternoon. In Hong Kong, I had found free lodging in the apartment of a previously-unknown local within 25 minutes of arriving at the airport.
All this to say that I am at ease in the city; in the essence of the true flaneur, I feel at once intrigued and at peace surrounded by tall buildings, large crowds, sprawling roadways, and urban malaise. While I do enjoy the periodic trip into nature — my years in Scouting has instilled in my ethos a necessity to escape into wooden and leafy obscurity with relative frequency — it is when I am in the city (the larger and busier, the better) when I am in my element.
So as I stood near the plaque in Leicester Square that reminded me that I was 7495km away from the city that I first called home, I realized that I hadn’t traveled as far as those numbers indicated. Instead, there I was, twenty-five years later, standing in the exact same spot where my life had began: in the middle of a city, the middle of the city, the middle of horns blaring and investors trading and panhandlers begging and skyscrapers towering, the middle of a place that, in my glass-and-concrete-and-stone-encased heart, still felt like home.
September has arrived. For many people, that means the return of school, a time of dread and disappointment. For me, however, it means the return of the Toronto International Film Festival, easily one of the most exciting times to be in the city.
Once again, this year, I will be covering the festival for blogTO (along with several other really talented film writers) so be sure to check out all the coverage on our special TIFF2007 section of the website. Expect several updates daily—including industry news, film reviews, filmmaker interviews, and celebrity party photos—from today until the end of the festival on September 15, 2007.
Festival flash
In the past week, I’ve been posting a series of articles called Festival Flash, where I’ve looked at a few hot topics surrounding this year’s festival. Here’s a quick look at each post. If they seem interesting to you, click through to blogTO where you can find the full text.
Festival Flash : Canadian Films
Canadian cinema often gets a bad rap, especially within Canada itself. After all, we live in the country that brought the world Meatballs III. Yet, for every Ginger Snaps Back we release, our nation also comes out with notable films such as Exotica and Les Invasions Barbares. The Toronto International Film Festival has always been an important locale for this country’s filmmakers to showcase their newest and best work, and this year is no different. There’s enough Canadian talent in this year’s festival to wash the taste of Johnny Mnemonic out of our nation’s collective memory.
Festival Flash : Short Films
My favorite film from last year’s TIFF wasn’t an intense Hollywood drama or an independent foreign feature. Instead, it was The Saddest Boy in the World, a short film by Canadian filmmaker Jamie Travis. Sadly, Travis doesn’t have any new films at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, but the lineup of short films playing during the Short Cuts Canada programme at TIFF 2007 is more than impressive.
Festival Flash : Big Blockbusters
In addition to all the movies you can see at TIFF that are never going to make it into wide release on our side of the world, the festival also features some large blockbusters that will be making their premiere here before they settle in megaplexes around the world. While I wouldn’t suggest using all your passes for the Toronto International Film Festival on major Hollywood pictures, there are a few features that might be fun to see before they hit the big screen in the upcoming months — even if it’s only to brag to your friends that you’ve seen them already.
Festival Flash : Hidden Gems
I’m still working on figuring out my picks for the Toronto International Film Festival, and unlike Matt, I don’t have such rigid criteria when making my choices. That being said, I too will watch anything starring Ellen Page, so at least Matt and I agree on that point. So here we are, about 24 hours before you have to hand in your picks, so it only makes sense I highlight a few movies that are promising to be quite good but may get overlooked when most people make their selections.
Festival Flash : Stars and Celebs
If the crowds of people, all wielding cameras and markers, that assembled in front of the Intercontinental Hotel in September of last year were any indication, the Toronto International Film Festival can sometimes be about the star power that assembles in our city rather than the wonderful cinema on our screens.
There’s a lot more than just the Festival Flash posts on blogTO, so be sure to stop by pretty often and check out all the updates in the upcoming days.
Film list
I’ve had a few people ask about the movies that I plan to catch at this year’s festival, so just to be nice, here’s my complete film list. Of course, there are many more films I would have loved to watch, but I was constrained because of scheduling and availability. If you do manage to see something that’s not on this list, let me know.
I apologize if it is a bit hard to get a hold of me over the next two weeks, but as you can see from the film list above (and the multitude of interviews I will be doing) I’m going to be a bit busy. If you really need to get a hold of me, ring my mobile: I’m almost sure to neglect my email during the festival.
If you’re in town and going to be attending the festival, you can find me either at the Varsity, Cumberland, or the Press Office for about 18 hours of every day. (I’ll be either writing or sleeping for the other six hours.) Drop me a line and we can grab a coffee.
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