stuart scott irl posted:

Badfinger posted:

There is a book.

Badfinger posted:

There is a book.

John Steigerwald posted:

"Just Watch the Game" is not your typical Pittsburgh Sports book. No punches are pulled here. I honor the good guys and great performances that I covered and I trash the bad guys. I also remember the good-old days when watching and playing sports were about the games. Before "snack moms" and everybody getting a trophy.

If you're of a certain age, it will bring back fond memories. If you're too young to have experienced it, as my Dad used to say, Read this. You might learn something.

Stories gathered and opinions formed from covering and watching sports in Pittsburgh for more than 50 years:

The greatest coaching job in american history and the best player ever to play a team sport in North America
How female sportscasters have set back the feminist movement 50 years
How Bill Cowher ruined Kordell Stewart Behind-the-scenes look at local TV and the decline of local news
Up close-and-personal experiences with Howard Cossel, Bob Prince and unfortunately Milo Hamilton
20 years of traveling with the Steelers Riding the buses in the minor leagues
My punishment for Usama Bin Laden
Why I would choose the Three Stooges to watch my kids over Mr. Rogers
The exploitation of the black "Student Athlete"
When the "Game Experience" was watching the game
The demise of the pick-up game
Why voting "NO" on Pittsburgh's new stadiums was the right thing to do
Helping Mario beat "THE FIX" to get his new arena
Best and worst interviews and assignments

Vogon Poet posted:

John Steigerwald posted:

Stories gathered and opinions formed from covering and watching sports in Pittsburgh for more than 50 years:

How female sportscasters have set back the feminist movement 50 years

The exploitation of the black "Student Athlete"

Why voting "NO" on Pittsburgh's new stadiums was the right thing to do

SporkOfTruth posted:

Hm, these might actually have some merit, I wonder if he'll treat them with reasoned analysis and insightful sociological comment--ahahahahha, who am I kidding.

euphronius posted:

I wanted to point out your avatar has a disquieting similarity to said journalist.

this crazy dude posted:

How Bill Cowher ruined Kordell Stewart

Grittybeard posted:

I thought this guy of all people would be all over the "Kordell=gay" thing.

quote:

Why voting "NO" on Pittsburgh's new stadiums was the right thing to do
Helping Mario beat "THE FIX" to get his new arena

Toona the Cat posted:

He has a point about getting the Consol Center Built. The super-corrupt mayor of Pittsburgh tried steering the contracting bids to a casino operator who was friendly with the even more corrupt state gaming board, and was almost bankrupt. Mario worked out a deal with another casino company to have them build the arena using zero public funds. This led to Mario using Kansas City as a smokescreen to get a deal done.

As far as the vote no, it was a city referendum that would have put a half-cent tax on the hospitality industry, which really would have been a better option than the funding that the city ended up with. He's just being obtuse about that.

Mornacale posted:

What I'm saying is that crowing about voting no for public stadium financing and then immediately turning around and crowing about helping move forward with a publicly-financed arena is pretty loving stupid.

quote:

OK. It appears that my recent column in three local newspapers has gone viral and I could be on my way to becoming this week’s Most Hated Man in America.

Here’s some of what I wrote followed by some comments on the reaction:

Maybe it’s time for sports fans to grow up.

As I’m writing this, Bryan Stow, (Unfortunately I referred to him as Snow in my column and apologize for that stupid mistake.) A 42 year-old paramedic with two kids from Sacramento is lying comatose in a Los Angeles hospital with a fractured skull and serious brain injuries.

Part of his skull had to be removed in order to allow for the swelling of his brain.

Stow went to the Los Angeles Dodgers home opener on April 1st wearing a San Francisco Giants jersey. That was obviously too much for two twenty-something guys wearing Dodger blue to handle. Witnesses say that, after the game, they came up on Stow from behind in the parking lot, knocked him down and kicked him as they spewed expletives about the San Francisco Giants.

It’s probably safe to say that the two “Dodgers” were high on something or things, but somewhere in their sick, juvenile minds, they probably thought that that they were doing their duty as Dodger fans.

They were protecting Dodger turf.

Just before he was beaten within an inch of his life, Stow texted some friends and said that he was scared “inside the stadium.”

(Here’s where I started treading in dangerous territory.)

Maybe somevbody can ask Stow, if he ever comes out of his coma, why he thought it was a good idea to wear Giants gear to a Dodgers’ home opener when there was a history of out of control drunkeness and arrests at that event going back several years.

(For that sentence, I am being accused of “blaming” Stow and saying that he had it coming. Two of the more popular analogies are the one about a woman who’s wearing a short skirt “asking” to be raped and the the one about the provocatively dressed rape victim who ”had it coming.” To say that Stow’s decision to wear the Giants jersey resulted in his beating is not the same as blaming him or saying that he had it coming. It is, however questioning the wisdom of ANYBODY wearing Giants gear to Dodgers Stadium on opening day, when fans have been drinking and tailgating all day. A day or two earlier, I had interviewed a reporter for the Los Angeles Times on my internet radio show and he spent several minutes talking about how the crowds had changed –for the worse– at Dodger Stadium over the years.

Especially in the cheaper seats, where I believed Stow had been sitting. Nowhere did I imply that Stow deserved what happened to him. I thought that the difference between DESERVING a consequence and unwittingly contributing to one was implicit. Posters to this blog and blogggers around the country ripped me for saying that Stow “deserved it” or “was asking for it.” I was simply asking if, after the fact, and knowing the recent problems at Dodgers Stadium, Stow will be regretting or second guessing his decision to wear the jersey. It doesn’t matter how many times someone says that I said that he deserved it, it doesn’t make it so. I know it makes for a better story if there’s a guy out there telling a comatose father of two that he deserves to be in a coma, but it wasn’t written in this column,)

I’ve also been trashed for writing “if he ever comes out of a coma” . That was not an attempt to be flippant. It was my (possibly inartful) way of pointing out how serious his injuries were.

Then I wrote:

“Remember when it was the kids who were wearing the team jerseys to games? It was a common sight to see an adult male coming through the turnstile dressed as a regular human being with a kid dressed in a “real” jersey holding his hand.

Cute.

Are the 42 year -olds, (Some took this as a shot at Stow specifically –it was not meant to be.) who find it necessary to wear their replica jerseys to a road game, those kids who are now fathers who haven’t grown up? (It might not have been seen as insensitive if I had written 40-something instead of 42–Stow’s age.)

( Here is where I comment on the adult jersey phenomenon because I think the fans’ lack of perspective has contributed to the escalating violence at games –especially NFL games.)

“Are there really 40-something men who think that wearing the jersey makes them part of the team? It was cute when a 10 year-old kid got that feeling by showing up at Three Rivers Stadium in a Pirates jersey, but when did little boys stop growing out of that?

Here’s a tip for you if you actually think that wearing your team’s jersey makes you a part of the team:

It doesn’t.”

(My point here is that this feeling of being part of the team –reinforced by sitting in a crowd of people all wearing the same jersey –is a possible contributor to over the top behavior and/or violence.)

“The team is those guys down on the field, ice or court who are, you know, actually playing the games. They like the noise that you make as a group and thety love playing in front of you, but, it you’re an adult and you approach them in a replica game jersey with their name on it and your face is painted, you scare them.

If you don’t put that jersey on in the locker room with them and have your own name on the jersey, you’re not one of them.”

“Let’s review: If you’re sitting in the stands, you’re a spectator — a fan.. If you’re down on the field, you’re part of the team.” (Therefore there’s no need to feel like you’re taking one for the team or protecting your turf by starting a fight with someone in the visiting team’s jersey.)

“Obviously, not every fan who wears his team’s jersey to a game is looking for someone from the “enemy” to beat up, but maybe somebody should do a psychological study to find out if all of those game jerseys have contributed to the mob mentality that seems to exist in the stands these days.”

“There’s an outside chance that alcohol plays a role, but, apparently, the teams have ruled that out and continue to sell nine dollar beers.” (I’ve been saying for years that, until the teams at least consider eliminating alcohol from the scene, which would put an end to 99% of the problems, they can’t be taken seriously when they talk about improving fan behavior.)

******************************************

I don’t apologize for the column but I do apologize to the Stow family if this nonsense has reached them and in any way added to their pain. I don’t, for one second, blame Brian Stow for the beating he took. I do blame the ever increasing out of control, out of perspective behavior by fans, too many of whom are no longer satisfied with going to their stadiums and cheering for their teams. And I sure as hell don’t think –as some hysterical posters have claimed –that Brian “had it coming.”

quote:

JohnSteigerwald
in April 13th, 2011 @ 08:19

No Giants jersey. No beating.

a stupid shitmagician posted:

Especially in the cheaper seats, where I believed Stow had been sitting.

stuart scott irl posted:

Until now

quote:

JohnSteigerwald
in April 13th, 2011 @ 06:16

Yeah. Anybody who sits in the cheap seats is cheap and unintelligent. That’s what I meant. Thanks for addidng to the doscourse,

euphronius posted:

Hahah look at this


Goldmine.

ElwoodCuse posted:

For a guy that apparently considers himself a sportswriter and a sports fan he sounds like the people that come into the odd GBS sports thread and talk about how sports are stupid and sports fans are children and why do you get paid millions of dollars to throw a ball around but I only make $38,000 a year working 60 hours a week an IT Help Desk.

quote:

So, Pitt hires a black coach with the purpose of selling him as a guy who can win football games and serve as a good mentor and a role model for ALL the players but ESPECIALLY the black players. (Although the part about being a better role model for the black kids would go unspoken. I think it’s what people mean when they talk about an elephant in the room.)

But he comes to the job as an un-married father. That did nothing to damage his credibility as a coach but it all but destroyed his credibility as a role model. ESPECIALLY for black kids, many of whom, live with problems every day that are directly attributed to the obscene number (70%) of black kids being born out of wedlock.

I didn’t know that Haywood had a baby son until I heard the stories about his arrest.

And you know what?

Haywood would be Pitt’s football coach right now if not for one thing.

Having a kid out of wedlock.

ElwoodCuse posted:

http://tinyurl.com/3enegjp (goes straight to mp3 podcast of interview)

AlleyViper posted:

I tried to sit through this, I really tried, but I just couldn't make it. As soon as he tried to compare he role model argument to Weight Watchers I had to turn it off.

ElwoodCuse posted:

Yeah, he really reaches the Glenn Beck level of "I want to punch this guy through my radio/TV".

I hope this column goes national, I don't think anyone outside of Pittsburgh cared about his racist remarks about the football coach.