More about the Press (and sports press)

My thoughts on the press from my post I wrote the other day didn’t stop there. I have been thinking more and more about our wonderful fourth estate and the conclusions just aren’t favorable.

In fact, I have come to the conclusion the sports press does a much better job of following a story, following up to a story, and addressing and attacking an issue when necessary. And this is about tone, content, and quality.

There may be as many words or more on a webpage or piece of paper about the Presidential election as any sports issue such as deflate gate, yet the actual depth of the story is found much more in the sports section. Yes, there is tons of fluff in the sports world and maybe more fluff overall, but when a real story hits, the sports press is significantly more thorough.

For example, today is Saturday and there is a plethora of college football games being played and many on TV. It is possible for a mistake a 19-year old might make to get more in depth coverage than any of Mr. Trump’s or Ms. Clinton’s actual policy issues will for the whole week.  And right now, who knows how much coverage is going to be produced about the mistake the officials made in the Oklahoma State game. Probably since the game ended I have spent five minutes watching TV and thirty reading on the internet and there are more stories on this one call than I saw last month on actual policy discussions of what Mr. Trump or Ms. Clinton have proposed. Okay okay, maybe bad comparison since I was on vacation for two weeks. I think you get my drift.

And I am not talking about all the noise Mr. Trump receives over his tax returns or the Florida AG political donation or Ms. Clinton’s email scandal or whatever you want to call it. I am talking some kind of idea what these two people will do as President. And I have already criticized the one chance last week where Matt Lauer apparently blew that opportunity. Does anybody actually know what either will do as President? Anyone other than the campaign staff? And do they? This is what I am talking about. The press should be hot and heavy every day drilling down on the issues and this should be at least front page news if not headlines every day. They are going to be President. Yet the Oklahoma State coach has to admit he made a mistake by not properly running the clock out on the last play and this is going to be overanalyzed and over criticized all evening on the Sports Channels. One play! One play will get more noise than any true law and order policy from Mr. Trump or free college discussion from Ms. Clinton this whole weekend. Absolutely crazy and just goes to empirically prove one of my fears: we seriously got our priorities back end backwards.

There was a story on sex trafficking this week, truly one of the worst ways to degrade another human being, yet there is no noise from either candidate about this issue; even from Mr. anti-immigration himself, Mr. Trump. Think about it, people are brought here illegally for the perverse pleasure of a few yet he has said nothing about this horrible form of immigration. The press should be pounding him on the issue.  I cannot think of a comparable issue off the top of my head for Ms. Clinton right now, but I know there are many where we need more information from her. Or maybe we just haven’t heard enough of any policy ideas from her to even have a clue as to where to start. So….maybe the work really needs to begin.

And to be honest I love sports and will try and catch some more college scores and highlights before the evening ends, but there is a markedly different scale of effort being made between what the sports press will do to get to the bottom of a story versus what our national press has been doing on the campaign trail so far. Let us hope the debates produce much better work.

And on a side sports note and this probably won’t matter a hill of beans to you, but the Texas A&M announcer just ticked me off disproportionately to what truly matters in the world. I only listened to the last part of the game since I was running around all day, but heard this part on the radio while driving around. Yet…. I have to get it off my chest. Texas A&M is up 67-0 and there is 1:40 left in the game. Prairie View just got clobbered with a safety so you know they really want to go home. They punt to give A&M the ball. Instead of taking three or four knees to end the game (Sportsmanship here, adding points to a 67 score is not style points anymore for AP or Coach’s poll voting, it is running up the score) A&M decides to run some plays. Now it is up to Prairie View to stop A&M. Basically the Aggies are making Prairie View play the whole 60 minutes of the game. A bit much if you ask me in this situation. The Aggies even threw a pass one play which really isn’t the best way to run out the clock. And kind of smells like trying to do something.

The third play A&M fumbles so Prairie View gets the ball back with five seconds so they have time for one play. And normally I would say okay take the knee and go home because well, just well. Now back to the announcer, the whole time he was okay with the Aggies running plays and carrying on about the game. Did not once mention, take the four knees and end the game. Yet when Prairie View gets the ball he was like they should take the knee and end the game. So this got me mad. I was like throw the bomb Prairie View. I was hoping they would score. They did run a pass play and it ended the game. I don’t know why he got me so mad, but I got the feeling it was okay for his team up by 67 points to make the other team play the full 60 minutes, but didn’t think his team needed to when the other team had the ball and his team WAS UP BY 67 POINTS. Sheesh! The Aggies should have kneeled, but he had no right to say Prairie View should have kneeled when the Aggies didn’t. Again probably matters to no one, but that ticked me off so much I am still spitting and spouting about it.