The Nike Times published my surprisingly short-lived Out Of Bounds.
“It’s Time To Cut The Yawn” appeared September 16, 1983.
Of course, national syndication was the dream. – JDW
(Special to TNT)
Good morning. I was assigned the task of writing a sports column about how boring sports columns are. Seems an easy enough assignment, unless you’re one of those wild and crazy intellectual kind of guys who even finds boredom interesting.
Repetition of the unpleasant may be boring but boredom per se is a curious concept. It’s like life. I mean, you already know how it ends.
Sports are the same – somebody loses.
But win or lose, it’s a basic fact of life the opinions of others tend to be a little more boring than our own. And that’s what columns are; they aren’t a report, they’re opinion. So, the deck is already stacked against the reader, who basically is being asked by the writer to sit down and marvel at his profound observations. It is not surprising then, a columnist earns his keep by turning a potentially sleep-inducing exercise into the eye-opener. Unfortunately,there aren’t that many good ones – columns and columnists.
The reasons why are pretty understandable. Columnists have to turn out copy even if they don’t feel particularly inspired. It’s their job. And that’s to say nothing about being hung over, the girlfriend’s rabbit dead, or losing a promotion to an upstart ten years your junior. Sorry, boss.
The mere mention of some topics is enough to bore a stone. Take Howard Cosell, that little monkey. Sports Illustrated even put him on a recent cover. This is the same magazine that brings more of Cheryl Tiegs to you than your mother ever led you to believe was possible.
Howard’s very presence above the mailing label was boring, while I never seem to tire of Miss Tiegs, who has been featured annually for some time now. Those outraged letters to the editor asking for subscription cancellation are boring, however. Yes, I realize sexism is extraordinarily boring.
The medium is often the message.
If Howard Cosell is boring, why write about him? Doesn’t the Constitution protect us from double jeopardy? It’s like the designated hitter rule. Forgetting many will argue baseball itself is boring, a single specific regulation has got to be something less than exciting. Indeed, the rule, after all, does allow a fan to watch an aging star take his whacks in lieu of some pitcher who looks like he’s beating a rug. Unsuccessfully.
I saw a local newspaper recently which not only featured a column about the D.H. rule, but also followed the next week with a rebuttal.
Gag me to the max.
Let’s examine a few other topics. The USFL. A bunch of guys you never heard of playing football in the summer when they should have jobs which contribute to society. John McEnroe’s antics. So the guy occasionally displays the manners of a mongoose. He’s intense, a winner, and a genius at what he does. If it wasn’t for tennis’ holier-than-thou attitude, he’d be on a pedestal so high, he’d have snow on his head.
Let’s lump steroids and professional amateurs together. Everybody does it and everybody knows it, so why write about it? If you want to tell us Carl Lewis has a servant and three cars, fine, but don’t expect me to really care. All I can say is bless his young heart. Money is not boring.
Strikes are tedious, as are higher ticket prices. Guy going 15-13 and trying to negotiate the contract they renegotiated last year – that’s boring. George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, Steinbrenner and Martin, boring.
Cocaine has got to be boring ’cause it’s expensive, debilitating and stupid. It tells you that you’re more than you are while making you less than you were. I don’t need to read again about some wealthy, gifted youngster destroying his career with drugs. I have seen enough.
Pre-season predictions are really boring, not to mention meaningless.
You ever notice how few writers admit – after the season’s conclusion – how little foresight they had?
And older writers inevitably compare the newest phenom with some pre-modern-era jock you never heard of or couldn’t remember if you had. For some of these long-toothed journalists, today’s sports news is only a skeleton around which to clothe a yesterday when there was no artificial turf and the writer had hair. Now both the stadia and the writers wear rugs.
Probably the most boring of all sports columns are those about the outdoors. Is a worm better than an egg? Plastic or real?
Then there’s Four Ways To Kill A Duck. Evidently aimed at a guy whose idea of a good time is to get up at four (4) a.m. – still dark – to sit in a little boat and kill pretty birds who only want to keep their tail feathers from freezing over. That’s sports?!?
Hell, the dog does all the work.
I could go on and on. Honest. I really could. You know I could. You do.
I could.
Many sports writers do. It’s almost like they get paid by the word. But, let’s be fair, it ain’t always so easy to be entertaining.
Have some compassion for the poor scribe next time you are bored by a sports column.
As Damon Runyon said, “That man has not yet been born who has something worthwhile to say every day of his life.”
Epilogue. Mr. Runyon was unaware of Instagram and Facebook and Twitter.
And selfies of your vegan-paleo lunch.