Sports is truly the toy department of life. Anyone who is fortunate enough to find their livelihood from the world of sports should understand this right off the bat.
Sports media is just like the media at large, only that they are fortunate enough to be covering events that don't carry the same gravity as terrorism, or war, or our crumbling infrastructure. We shouldn't seem surprised when the same pitfalls occur in sports media as occur in the media at large.
One of the most popular trends in the news media today is for a storyline to be created, then parroted by all of the other voices in media. The most expensive undertaking for a news organization is investigation, because it requires significant overhead, and because it often doesn't yield results. Both government and corporations have found that they can publish news releases and have the media reprint them verbatim, because it's cheap and easy.
Once one news organization has constructed a perspective, you will find other news organizations copying that perspective. Why? Well, what's easier than taking someone else's idea and trying to make it your own? It's the new national pastime.
What does this have to do with the Jets? The popular refrain over the last few days is that the Jets have a little too much hype and a few too many questionable character guys to succeed. This was actually the narrative I was expecting, and I would imagine that Rex Ryan and company should have been expecting the same thing. In a 24-hour timeframe several days ago, there was the Mike Lombardi Kentucky analogy, followed by a Colin Cowherd show where he wasn't "buying" the Jets, followed by Bill Simmons saying that this season had "6-10 disappointment written all over it."
Being a sports fan in 2010 means that you must maintain an uneasy alliance with ESPN, for better or worse. Whether you like it or not, the ESPN brand is omnipresent, and simply getting sports news and programming requires you to be exposed to however they want to spin the sports world to you. Too often, both their on-air and online talent takes their exposure as something of an endorsement. Colin Cowherd actually encourages groupthink (are you in the herd?). Bill Simmons has taken his regional bias and made a cottage industry out of it.
As a sports fan, as long as you take these talking hair-dos for what they are, they are relatively harmless. Cowherd and Simmons are possessed of no special knowledge about sports above the level of a fan. As a matter of fact, I'm still waiting for any bit of expertise about anything from Cowherd. At least Bill Simmons has some grasp of the NBA salary cap for the purpose of transactions. Neither one is going to give you an actual "football" reason as to why they have an opinion about your team. Simmons is normally just left with comedy, telling us that the reason that Peyton Manning doesn't succeed is because of a face he's making. I wish I was kidding.
I don't blame these guys. Most sports fans would like to be compensated for the endless hours we spend engrossed in our interests. You're only a fool if you expect any of these personalities to provide you with an actual insight, which they're not capable of. Mike Lombardi should do better, though. He's an actual ex-front office employee. He should be able to provide me with a "football" reason as to why the Jets won't succeed in 2010. If I want a strained analogy about Kentucky basketball, I'll read Bill Simmons or listen to Colin Cowherd. And, trust me, I don't want a strained analogy, and neither do a lot of fans like me. We know enough football to handle the truth, even if the personalities in the media don't.
The fact of the matter is, most of the Jets fans I read online haven't put all of their eggs in the 2010 basket. The Jets have a solid core of talent around age 25 (Mark Sanchez, Shonn Greene, Nick Mangold, D'Brickashaw Ferguson, David Harris, Darrelle Revis, etc.) and if the moves that GM Mike Tannenbaum made in the offseason don't pan out, this team will be built for the next few years as well. There's no need to panic. I've been waiting for thirty-three years, and if I have to wait one or two more, I think I'll live.
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