10/08/06
Surprise. Surprise? Surprise!?

Why, why, why is anyone surprised anymore? For the first four weeks of the NFL season, numerous commentators, analysts, pundits and fans have acted “surprised” that Daunte Culpepper has performed terribly... you know, the way he has performed in every game since the loss of Randy Moss. He stunk last year before his injury. Did everyone just forget this? The 12 interceptions and 2-5 record? All gone? He didn’t get injured before that, guys.
He is now in Miami, playing awful, and everyone is feigning shock. People are even trying to make excuses for him: his mobility isn’t back yet; his offensive line is terrible, etc. So? He played exactly like this last year when he had all the mobility in the world, and his offensive line was fine. Brad Johnson (not exactly a guy who is going to strike fear into defensive coordinators) took the exact same team Culpepper had, and went 6-3 with it. Why couldn’t Culpepper do that? Because he just isn’t good.
This same type of attitude is always visible in the critics’ criticizing. For instance, does anyone know who Adrian Beltre is? If you do, you are a baseball aficionado. Here are his career stats. Pay attention to *all* of the years besides 2004.

http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/stats/mlb_individual_stats_player.jsp?playerID=134181&statType=1

Remarkably consistent hitter, isn’t he? He hits between 15 and 25 home runs, drives in about 60-80, averages somewhere in the .260 range. So, his contract should be pedestrian, right? Orlando Bloom doesn’t get Harrison Ford type money, right? Uh... wrong, apparently. The Seattle Mariners signed him to a $64 million dollar deal. Now what is a glorified Craig Wilson doing with all that money? Probably wasting it, but as you probably guessed, the intent of my question was thus: what was Seattle thinking? Well, they were snowed. In his contract year, 2004, Beltre hit 48 home runs and batted .334. Clearly then, he was going to produce those numbers every year, and there was no sense in Seattle exercising the least bit of caution about a guy who only seems to hit in contract years. I mean, if they had given him a 1 year deal worth $20 million, it would have been a better idea. What possessed them to go all loony over a guy’s contract year? Yet still, they can be forgiven for playing the optimist, over paying in the hopes that Beltre had finally matured and would continue to produce, etc.
But how could anyone be surprised when this guy went back to normal? All over the place people were wondering why he wasn’t a regular Barry Bonds. Well, I’ll tell you why! He just isn’t that good.
The reason players so often disappoint is because players are almost always overrated. Who knows why, but except for the sarcastic ego-bludgeoning writers of Page 2 and other such columns, the experts and commentators gush about almost everyone. Why the strange optimism? Same reason they are surprised when Rex Grossman plays like a National Football League quarterback.
Contrary to their own opinion, the experts don’t predict, they extrapolate. Have you ever seen someone pick a team to go the World Series who had a losing record the year before? Probably not. They really only tell us what we already know. Because of this, when something new happens, i.e. Rex Grossman turns into a good QB, they act like they just saw the Sixth Sense for the first time. I mean, they drafted Grossman high for a reason. Stood to chance that someday he would be good.


Credentials: I do not know what type of resume one needs to land a job at ESPN as an analyst, “expert” or commentator, but the most basic of requirements—one would think—is the ability to annunciate. I cannot understand a darn thing Lou Holtz says. Can anyone else? I don’t want to crap on old people, and I think he is a stand up guy with—in the few instances I can understand him—non-objectionable things to say. But my goodness, he sounds like Mohammed Ali combined with George Bush, and that is not a swell combination. You would probably have a better shot at understanding Morse code than Lou Holtz.

Speaking of Which: Check out these quotes, from authors who will remain anonymous. At least two of the quotations come from those who hold the title “senior writer” at ESPN.com. Now besides the incorrect grammar in the last sentence that would cause the hair to stand up on the back of any decent English-teacher’s neck, these samplings are simply indicative of the dirt-poor writing one finds online these days.

“The much-anticipated showdown of NFC unbeatens turned into a beat-down, with the Bears beating the Seahawks 37-6.”

Beat-down plus beating. Most people would notice that the double use of a word is undesirable. The “beating” should most likely be replaced with “defeating” or something similar. This might seem picayune, but this is not an exception. These types of ridiculous sentences make up the majority of the reading available in articles on ESPN.com, MLB.com, and NFL.com, though ESPN has the largest problem.

“The Raiders completed just nine passes against the Browns on Sunday, and (the Raiders) still managed to blow a 21-3 lead to remain winless.”

“Still”? He makes one negative statement; then he follows it up with another negative, and yet interjects “still” in between. Suffice it to say, you will not be getting high SAT scores with horrific recognition like this. Is it that hard to write well? If so, I must be a genius because I have no trouble writing far better than this.

WARNING: If you suffer from post-grammatical-error-trauma, do not read the following sentence.

“It's also helped that assistant head coach/offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg coached with Reid in Green Bay and before that at Texas-El Paso and Missouri.”

If you cannot find the blatant grammatical error in here, I suppose you are exactly the type of audience ESPN.com is writing to appease. I don’t only blame this one on the writer; I blame the editors. How did they miss this one? If this was an isolated incident, one could conclude it a minor error that is almost inevitable given the number of things written on ESPN.com. Unfortunately, these types of nonsensical inaccuracies are all over the place. Is this what it takes to be an ESPN writer/editor? Nothing?

There are exceptions of course. Humorous or non-serious articles gain leeway because they aren’t meant to be professional. Small avoidance of grammar in official articles can be understood somewhat, even if not completely justified. (Example, using periods to denote frustration. “Don’t. Ever. Do. That. Again.” or something similar). But this complete lack of both grammar and writing ability astounds, from paragraph to paragraph. It is not hard to recognize any of the obvious errors listed above. One is an example of bad writing, with nothing grammatically faulty. Another uses a fallacious turn of phrase. The final sample is simply, horrifically wrong. I did not go searching for these errors either. I found them randomly within the time it takes to read three articles.
I write a blog which seven people read. I do it for fun. I don’t edit it. Even then, the only major errors are misspellings. Sure, a few things slip through the cracks but come on people, I could easily, easily write for ESPN by these standards of mediocrity, and in all likelihood, you could too! We could write far better, and that is not a boast on our part, it is an insult to their (lack of) writing ability. I demand that the major sports leagues, networks and sports’ sites start delivering premium, talented authors to provide us with information. This second rate garbage they are spewing right now is inexcusable for organizations as large and resourceful as they.