Story 2, Memorabilia Collecting

Sports Memorabilia More Than Just a Hobby

            Cards, autographs and bobble-heads are not just for kids anymore. Some of the top collectors of the world happen to be of an older demographic. Some collectors even have the child like mentality, being excited to open up a fresh pack of Upper Deck cards revealing the glossy print of a famous ball player and releasing that new card smell.
             Bigger collectors, and I mean bigger, run their own businesses or even own one of the largest collections in the world. Memorabilia collectors use eBay as their outlet to sell a portion of their collection. Some of them can also be prominent sellers in the industry.
             Locally, the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame is one of Chicago’s largest collections of sports memorabilia. I have contacted the Hall of Fame and plan to tour within the week. I also plan to go around some card collecting stores and contact some buyers and sellers of sports memorabilia.
             What the focus of this story is the art of sports collecting. How do collectors get what they have such as autographs, jerseys, and rare items? Is collecting really worth it these days especially the state of the economy and possibly a sidebar to the authentication process of autographs and game used pieces.
             The only difficulty I see with this story is finding the right people to talk to and getting the people to talk about what they do in order to get what they have. Their tricks of the trade so to speak.  

Tiger Not an Ambassador for African Americans

Eric Casillias, who filled in for Tirico and Van Pelt on ESPN Radio 1000 on Wednesday April 7, 2009, said this and I quote, “Tiger Woods does not advocate for African Americans in golf, and that is okay with me. Woods is not obligated to do it, but it would be nice if he did.” 

Now I do agree that Woods does not push for more African-Americans to play golf, but who really cares? I sure don’t. Why should he use his ethnicity as a crutch to push for more African Americans to play golf?

Woods already does plenty in the youth community, helping underprivileged kids learn about the game and how to play it. And yes that does even include African American children who take part in the Tiger Woods Foundation.

Woods is undoubtedly the face of golf now and many years to come, just as Michael Jordan is to basketball. But Jordan was never really an advocate to get African Americans into the game. Why should he be? I’d hate to sound politically incorrect, but correct me if I’m wrong when I say this. African American players dominate most of the NBA. So Jordan didn’t have to do anything to get African Americans involved in his game.

Professional golf has one of the most diverse fields of players on the tour. There are players from all across the world. Yes, the amount of African American golfers is few. Even I can’t name another African American on the tour other than Tiger.

Race should never be an issue in the sport. The love of the game and the passion to win should be the overall factor for getting involved with the sport in the first place. And for the record, Tiger Woods is not only African American, but he is also Asian as well. Some people tend to forget that he is a “Cablanasian.”  

Where has all the coverage gone!

     Another professional athlete made headlines off the field again. Sure it wasn’t as major as the “A-Roid” fiasco, but it is still a headline. It’s about damn time we hear something positive about a professional athlete. And what do you know; it’s an about an NFL player!
             Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes sold the most expensive pair of game used gloves at $70,200. It was the same pair he wore during Super Bowl XLIII, where his game winning catch earned him MVP honors. 
             Holmes didn’t put up the gloves so he could make a hefty check. But he did it for a different reason. He did it for his son. Santonio Holmes III has sickle cell disease, and the elder donated all proceeds of the glove to the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America. 
             For one, this is a great story that goes to show that some NFL players still have a heart. But of course, the negative MLB doping story still makes headway for the day. 
             Why? Well it could be for the fact that A-Rod is a proven superstar whom we have looked up to since his early days in Seattle. Holmes is relatively unknown outside of Pittsburgh. This wonderful sports media world of ours is unique. Unfortunately, sports coverage has become like Hollywood reporting and getting to far into the personal, if not negative coverage of our athletes. We focus heavily into the bad things of what our “heroes” have done, and end up bypassing the good in them. 

Bloggers Speak for Fans, Journalists Speak for the World

    Old school versus new school journalism, also known as blogging, has taken away the art what it means to be an actual journalist. Don’t get me wrong, but blogging is actually a great tool for aspiring writers as well as for people who just want to publish their insight online. Even some professional journalists have their own platform in the blogosphere. 
            As journalist and deadspin.com editor Will Leitch had said, blogging takes a lot of work, as does writing an article for a print paper or an online publication. Leitch and many other “pro” bloggers are an exception of those writers who have a well-qualified background to be an expert. 
            But, of course, in the online world, we have a bevy of bloggers who act as if they are qualified writers. At times, these “writers” tend to have too much feeling and bias to a particular team or athlete, which can constitute them as not being journalists. As journalists, we are taught to not have a bias to what we write about or cover. But that bias and passion for a team or a game is what brought us to writing here in the first place.  

Fans Snubbed in All-Star "Game"

This past Sunday was the NFL Pro Bowl. But did anyone really notice it was on? Did anyone really care? Do the players really care? Well I know I sure didn’t. Hell, I didn’t even know what channel or time it was on until I looked it up, (3:30 on NBC).  
            The game had a rating of 8.4 percent of the market share, the second lowest in the Pro Bowl history. I guess it doesn’t help the cause knowing that there are marquee NBA matchups with the Lakers and Cavs and the Spurs and Celtics on ABC. 
            See the point is, the NFL Pro Bowl is a joke, well more of like a lost cause. Look at the two major papers in Chicago this past Monday, half a page of coverage and a sidebar on the game plus a small stat sheet. Look at the MLB All-Star game. A teaser on the front, full-page color splashed photo on the back, and a handful of stories, maybe more depending on how many hometown heroes participate. 
            The Pro Bowl has become more of like an NBA game, where the final two minutes of the fourth quarter are the most exciting minutes in the game regardless of the score. Sure it’s great seeing the best; well actually the most popular players of the NFL come together and have fun. But aren’t these “All-Stars” supposed to play like All-Stars? 
             Win or lose the game, players still get a hefty bonus check and a free weeklong trip to Hawaii. Not bad huh? But really, the players are just there for their bonus money, trip in paradise and oh yeah, to play a little “touch” football.
             As fans, we make a big deal on which one of our favorite players makes it to the Pro Bowl. But once the game comes up, we tend to not care anymore. The NFL needs to make some changes to make its version of the All-Star game a game worth watching.  

Oh God, Please Make Me a Better Story Teller!!

The NFL Draft: Finding the Talent

         While flipping through USA Today’s take on the NFL Draft, I noticed a lot of their material was based on numbers and statistics. The consensus shows that the bigger the state, the more athletes are produced, usually for the reason that the state has more schools and programs.

         Almost every sports freak has that burning desire to know the statistics to everything about their sports. Even in fantasy leagues, numbers mean everything. The numbers don’t lie. The USA Today even put together a compilation of the 34 biggest busts in the NFL Draft since 1988 by using their career statistics to determine the player as a bust.

         Statistics are a story within themselves. They tell the good and bad of a player’s performance on the field of play. Statistics also play a role not only with players but fans as well.

         Our story, which will cover the century long agony of Cubs fans; can have various aspects of statistics. Some stats we can use are; how many Cubs fans jumped off a building after they were swept for the second consecutive year? Or how many fans denounced their fandom in the Cubs? Or how many people are actually optimistic about the Cubs getting to the World Series? And no, this does not include the number of Cubs players buying their way to the Fall Classic.

         Broadcast students can create charts and tables displaying statistics of the data needed for the story. And of course look good on camera; while we print journalists do most of the grunge work. 

Monday Meanderings

Another semester and another class with the “Schloss.” After dealing with the usual business of getting settled into the Monday night class, we went into the real business of the sports world. This means another rant of “It’s all about the money!” or the newly updated “It’s about the money!” 
            True, the world of sports these days is driven by dollar signs. But what else is it driven by? Is it passion of the game? Greed? Fame? Fortune? The answer to that is something we as journalists will discover as this semester moves on.
              We were asked to give a short list of top sports stories, local and national, from to 2008 till the month of January. Most of us had a pretty intriguing list including the sale of the Cubs to the Ricketts family, Tiger winning on one leg, and the dominance of Michael Phelps in the 2008 Summer Olympics. 
             New to sports reporting realm of Columbia College is the “tech guy” Mike Reilley, who will assist us in our aspects with online journalism and reporting. Reilley presented us with an informative PowerPoint presentation and gave us some details on his highly qualified background, which includes teaching at DePaul University, and experience at various papers and magazines. 
             Finally moving on to the convergence room, we met our “rivals” who are in the Multimedia Sports Reporting class (TV people). We are slated to work together, combining our “talents” from print to TV and vice versa. The breaking up into groups didn’t equally workout however. Since the print class had far more students, we were asked to pair up with a pair of the TV students. One group, the group I’m in, has no TV students! I guess that’s the way the world works sometimes. And I’m okay with it.