Failing Sports Media: 24 for Hours of Irrelevant Sports News

Throughout the last century, sports have been and will continue to be a factor in pastimes of the United States. This constant has increased in popularity, especially over the past few decades. One reason for the increase in popularity has been the advances that have been made in technology. Now everyone across the nation, and even the world, has access to every major sporting event and even those smaller ones, such as the Little League World Series. While technology has allowed the media to provide access to those across the world, this same technology has begun to tarnish the game as well. Twenty-four hour sports news networks are providing fans with news and updates around the clock, but the information that these journalists are providing is misleading. Journalists run out of breaking stories to cover, so these journalists will key on an irrelevant storyline and completely blow it out of proportion.

College football has been hit the hardest by blasphemous media takeover. College football season is now in full swing and has dominated the sporting news headlines over the past few weeks. Most football reporters are NFL experts and only have some knowledge on the college game. With this in mind, there reports will key in on one story that appears to have some relevance and completely blow it out of proportion. Take for example the Norte Dame Quarterback situation. Heralded freshman Jimmy Clausen is fighting for the starting position and as of the day before their first game, head coach Charlie Weiss had failed to name a starter. First of all, Notre Dame is not a top twenty five team and most experts have predicted them to finish with a sub five hundred record on the year. Why is a sub par team dominating national headlines, when there are much better storylines to be covered? Secondly, it is almost unheard of for a true freshman to start at Quarterback for any division one team, much less for a team with the tradition the Notre Dame has. Clausen missed much of spring and fall practice with injury and his off the field trouble has left him behind learning the new offensive system. With this in mind, the media has overplayed a situation that will not likely happen and for a team that should not be dominating college football's media coverage.

The second topic dealing with college football's media is the scheduling of "cupcake" teams for national powerhouses opening games. Most teams from major conferences schedule a weaker opponent for their opening game to ensure a win. This allows the favored to get rid of any problems they have before they open up their tough conference schedules. The media has blasted teams for doing this for two main reasons. First, the media claims that fans do not want to see blow outs occur the first week of the season. Fans have had to wait the entire year for the start of the season and should be given a quality football game. Secondly, the media has pointed out that the larger schools are much superior and are placing the opposition's health in danger. This idea mainly came out after a Mississippi State defensive back was knocked out by a Louisiana State player, in the opening college game of the year. This idea is completely senseless. Smaller schools need to play teams from big conferences because they receive a large payment for playing in addition to national media exposure. These two factors help smaller programs build up and recruit higher profile players. In addition to this help the underdog sometimes is able to pull the upset. Look at Appalachian State, a division one double A team holding its own against Michigan in the Big House this weekend.

No one is perfect and this is especially true about the media. While the sports media provides some good information to the nation, it also provides some blasphemy. Instead of worrying about filling up programming for a twenty four hour sports news network, the media should focus on fewer stories with more significance.