Sports, LOL. ;)
By Staff
Justin Schuver, Sports Editor
Let's be honest here.
Sometimes I wonder why anybody bothers to read this sports section. In our world of instant gratification, I don't know too many people who like having to wait until Thursday to read about a high school football game that took place the preceding Friday. My challenge every week is to provide the kind of coverage to make you the reader turn to this section every Thursday, even though the news is often older than moldy Limburger cheese.
And if the growth of technology is any indication, I doubt it's going to be getting any easier for me. I believe the day is not too far away when high schools will have up-to-the-minute online scorecasts keeping track of their high school football games. The moment the scorekeeper presses the button to put a "6" up on the rickety old light-bulb scoreboard, you and a billion other people on the Internet will know about it.
Although we don't have that technology just yet, we do have the al.com message boards. On Friday nights, these forums become abuzz with score updates and alerts for the enjoyment of high-school football junkies across the state. With the evolution of Blackberrys, Sidekicks and other personal devices, fans can literally connect to the Internet from their cell phone and post a score update even as they sit in the stands.
TIGERFAN47 can post, "Patterson scored again, Lions 56-0. I'm getting sick of hearing that fight song! :-P" And then LIONS4EVAR can instantly reply, "Patterson for Mr. Football!!!11 :D"
By the time the stories come out in the Saturday morning daily newspapers, the games have already been analyzed, critiqued and examined in every way by the denizens of the al.com high school football forums. The discussion has already shifted to the next game on the docket.
Now, this can be both a good and bad thing. For every post simply providing information or a score, there will be a post that exists only to cause trouble. As anybody who uses a message board knows, nothing brings out the worst in people than anonymity and you will see everything from trash talking or criticizing players to posters calling out someone else for a fight. You will also see atrocious spelling, bad language, and sometimes information that is just plain wrong. The Internet is not a panacea just yet, but it can be a very helpful tool as long as you take certain things with a grain of salt.
On the other hand, back on January 30 a poster with the screen name of "aggiegrant06" made a post on the TexAgs.com message board that broke the news that his girlfriend – who worked at a Norman, Okla., car dealership – recognized several of the names on the payroll as Oklahoma football players. She also noticed that their pay didn't even remotely coincide with the number of hours they worked. At the time, the news was treated as an unsubstantiated rumor and message board administrators eventually removed the post.
Of course, this revelation eventually became a scandal that resulted in the dismissal of Oklahoma starting players Rhett Bomar and J.D. Quinn. Administrators at the message board realized their faux pas and reloaded the original post.
Other infamous stories that first broke on Internet message boards/Web sites include the firing of Mike Price at Alabama and the Dan Rather controversy.
With every year, the possibilities for Internet-based content become more and more exciting. Just this past weekend, my alma mater of Notre Dame introduced a completely new multimedia online experience on the official school athletics Web site at und.com. Before, I was forced to read through a text-based transcript of head coach Charlie Weis's media day press conferences. Now, I can watch live streaming video (with the help of a fast Internet connection, of course) of the press conference as it happens! And if I happen to miss the live conference, the Web site has a clip of the event archived so I can watch it again whenever I want.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. This year, the Web site will also provide streaming video of the Friday afternoon team luncheons and Friday night pep rallies, post-practice press conferences during the week and post-game press conferences after every Notre Dame football game. And if the game doesn't happen to be on television that particular week, I can listen to a live radio feed online as well.
And, of course, there's an endless list of message boards I can visit after the game to read insightful posts like "Brady Quinn for Heisman!!!11 :D"
Computers, once the domain of role-playing gamers and Star Wars nerds, are going to become just as pivotal to the American sports fan as beer and nachos. That is, if they're not already.
In the words of the Frank Sinatra song "Cheek to Cheek" – Heaven, I'm in heaven.
