Every Little Breeze...

...seems to whisper winds of playoff hopes and Super Bowl contention for every NFL team this time of year.

Every free agent acquired and every draft pick is a "perfect fit." Every new head coach brings just the right touch. Every new coordinator will fix last year's 31st-place ranking on either offense or defense.

Puh-leeze. I've had enough. Every article sounds like a rewrittten press release. Can we have some real reporting,  please? And not just the latest Johnny Manziel update from Vegas.

These sound like spring training reports from MLB and training camp reports from hockey and basketball.

Please, it's the dog days of summer,  when baseball alone can't carry the load of keeping up my interest in sports. Three of the four majors in golf and tennis are over. The NFL is in training camp and we all know what that means (see above).

The Tour de France ends today and World Cup soccer is long ago over. The winning rider's Tour de France team is drinking champagne on the route. Yikes!

Stop the madness. Report something important before I start paying attention to real news.

The Rant is Back, Starting at the Gym

I'm back. And I'm ranting and raving. About everything except football, about which I rant and rave for thesportspost.com, the best sports post out there.

Am going to start feeding this post more often. LIke this morning, when the idiots at my gym dragged fans over to their cross-trainers to keep cool. Except it's on a clearly marked no-fan-use side of the floor.

These are people who don't want to sweat. These are people who are probably afraid to work up a sweat in the bedroom. These are people who don't want to take a shower later and probably don't and then sit down next to you on the commuter bus or train. These are people who have gained weight and blubber over the years despite all those times showing up at the gym.

And a lot of it is in their brain matter. Wake up. Read the signs. Follow directions. Be smart.

Or is that impossible?  Rhetorical question.

Until next time...

RICKY DON'T LOSE THAT NUMBER...

Ricky came to town this week in Sports for Social Media (#sasm) class. Ricky O'Donnell, that is.

Somehow, despite himself, he inspired our kids anyway, Inspired them to work through, past and around adversity when it hits. Inspired them to conquer their fears and go for their dreams. Inspired them to achieve.

I'm proud of Ricky. He "...learned from the best," as he put it in addressing the class. Oh, wait, he was referring to me. Wasn't he?

Ricky has helped SB Nation maintain its razor edge in sports coverage. As one of its writers. One of its editors. One of its best, to put it simply.

Ricky got laid off somewhere else. At least it happened to him for the right reasons (pissed off an influential writer who subsequently put the mark of death on him with management). That writer is no longer as influential and has even lost some social-media privileges. Like, his Twitter account.

So just because Ricky suffered the consequences doesn't mean he was wrong.

All the while, the kids are taking notes (well, mental notes). They have to blog about the blogger. They have blogged well so far during this mini-semester course. They've earned their seats at the Twitter/blogger table.

Now can they earn a seat at the over-achiever table, because that's what it's going to take to make it in this industry.

I'm confident they can do it and I'll see the results of such in Sports Reporting and Advanced Sports Reporting classes this spring.

Ricky has outlasted many of his classmates who have given up on the industry. But it's what he knows how to do and he does it well.

See class? I told ya' to take notes.

For a reason.

DAWN OF A NEW MEDIA AGE

Pay a visit to Comcast SportsNet Chicago and you come away with a new vision of what's going down in sports coverage.

This is not just television anymore. It's communication, anywhere, anytime, about Chicago's vibrant sports scene and all the characters in it. There's no such thing as a normal day anymore. No 9-to-5 employees. No days off, so to speak. Sports news doesn't break on a schedule most of the time, so neither does coverage thereof take place on a schedule, by necessity.

And the coverage is a two-way street. Viewers/fans/rabid opinion-leaders always have something to say, whether it's about Luol Deng being traded by the Bulls or Adam Eaton being acquired by the White Sox or just how well that Theo Epstein plan is playing out on the North Side.

If fans are talking about it, Comcast SportsNet Chicago wants to capture it and forever capture those fans doing the talking. And capture their buddies and their buddies and their buddies after that.

But even though it says "Dawn of a New Media Age" at the top of this blog, that's almost misleading. It's a constant dawn, a moving-target dawn, an evolution of sorts that is ever ongoing. It will produce the next great platform for everyone to chat on, the next great app on which everyone will post immediate reaction to breaking stories and the next great think piece by the insightful writers, analysts and columnists who comprise Chicago's lively sports community.

Now, about the Cubs and that 106-year-old hole without a World Series title. And the 69-year-old hole with that little curse...

FLAMED OUT

The Flames got doused tonight in front of a "crowd" of 27, including all 14 of us from "Sports and Social Media" (#sasm) class.

The Youngstown State Penguins' (Penguins, really?) tall guys were too tall for the UIC Flames and hit shots from outside too. The Youngstown State guards were too quick and created too many turnovers for coach Howard Moore's host team (5-11, 0-2 Horizon League).

The Flames fell behind by 1 point on a 3-point buzzer-beater at halftime and never recovered after leading scorer (prospectively only scorer?) Kelsey Barlow got hurt and sat out and by the time he came back it was out of reach and he was playing like someone who resembled Kelsey Barlow but wasn't Kelsey Barlow because of his injury, whatever it was. UIC scored 7 points in the first 10 minutes of the second half and went bye-bye, ultimately by a final of 75-62.

Meanwhile, mascot Sparky flirted with the girls, played around with the kids and kept smiles on people's faces, to his credit, considering the size of the crowd and the temperature outside.

A few blocks away, the Luol Deng-less Bulls were surprising the Phoenix Suns. Much further away, Creighton was handling DePaul.

And if Northwestern played, they lost. Or will lose. Probably.

Tonight was about finding out what the Sports for Social Media kids (#sasm) could do online and in class, what they could write, coherently, and spell and punctuate and tweet. Like what I see so far but much reading to do the next few days.

Tomorrow we'll find out if they can blog. If they can't, they'll learn how, a lot how, next Monday when they blog away 5 hours (hint, hint, kids, write well, write carefully, proofread, spelling and grammar count and I've got the abacus out).

I'd suggest to my kids they study some other Twitter trails and blogs (Columbia grad Graham Couch at the Lansing, Mich., State Journal on Michigan State's game versus Ohio State last night) and my Juice This blog at thesportspost.com and David Haugh on anything and everything at the Chicago Tribune and Daily Herald sports beat writers like Tim Sassone (Blackhawks) and Mike McGraw (Bulls).

Oh, I work there too.

See you kids at a prep game, well some of you. Remember, grades for J-Term are due the last Saturday in January, so get's get to work. The sooner you write your blog, the better and the more you remember (like tonight or tomorrow, preferably).

Hugs,

HS

I Get Around...

I have ignored this URL long enough, busy focusing on my "Juice This" blog at thefootballjuice.com, the latest edition of which is coming later today (check it out). That's fun, but can't leave this one alone. My students are all over it, for God's sake, and it's getting linked, along with their blogs, to Beyond the Game, their self-produced, online magazine.

Besides, gotta' dis on the Bulls (yeah, I know they beat Miami, so?). Gotta' see who's gonna' be wrong again about MLB predictions. And one last shout out to an athlete who coulda' been a star but wound up outshining the rest of us anyway...

BULLS LOVE:

What is up with the all the love for the Chicago Bulls? Beat the Miami Heat. Ended the Heat's 27-game winning streak. Fan tried to steal LeBron's headband. Beat the crap out of the Heat physically and got away with a Flagrant Foul or two. Did it all without Joakim Noah, without Derrick Rose, without Marco Belinelli, without Rip Hamilton.

Let's see, lost to Sacramento earlier this month, 121-79. Got the crap beat out of them. With Joakim Noah. With Marco Belinelli. And the Kings without DeMarcus Cousins. Lost to Sacramento by 42. Same team that beat Miami.

The Bulls, despite all their injuries, are pretty good. When they feel like it.

RIGHTS OF WRONG:

They call March the rites of spring for Major League Baseball teams. Everyone has an opinion too on what team will finish where. Perform all the metrics and analytics you like, but mostly it's based on last year's finish and a key acquisition or two to patch a weak spot or shore up a pitching rotation.

So I'm reading predictions everywhere that the Detroit Tigers already have the AL Central wrapped up. That the St. Louis Cardinals will find a way in the NL Central. That the Los Angeles Dodgers have spent too much money to not make the playoffs. That the New York Yankees will spend their way through their hospital ward and make the postseason.

And the Boston Red Sox are back, the Washington Nationals will repeat and the Cincinnati Reds are the class of the NL Central.

Somewhere in all of that is the surprise team, the one that comes out of nowhere and wins everywhere, makes the playoffs despite itself and every pundit says, oh yeah, we knew all along they could do it.

Yeah, right.

Everyone who picked the Oakland A's last year, please stand up. They're the same people who had the Texas Rangers in the World Series a third straight year.

And still misses the days of smoking crack with the manager.

But Terry Francona is back and in Cleveland. Watch out.

FAREWELL TO ARMS, LEGS, BUT NOT SPIRIT:

Rob Komosa passed away. He wasn't the best football player, but he was the bravest. Paralyzed after a practice accident at Rolling Meadows High School, where he played, he carried on like no other, with enough spirit for us all.

No one deserves this. And I especially feel for the kids who hit him on the practice play on which he lost everything.

But his heart.

It beat strong for another 13 years.

So long, Rob. But not good-bye.

***

Howard Schlossberg is editor of the Journal of Sports Media. He's an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago, where creativity and learning are embraced hand-in-hand. And he still writes sports for the award-recognized Daily Herald in Chicago's northwest suburbs. @hschlossberg

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

I thought of it - again - while reading a column in Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal - why is there a disconnect between those in academia and those in practice?

Those who do groundbreaking research in sports journalism are not likely connecting with those who practice sports journalism. Sports journalists are not going out into the field to cover major events with the lingering thoughts of challenges and questions raised in research papers they sat and dragged themselves through.

And why not? Well, most journalists don't write their game wraps, features and sidebars with "Abstracts," "Literature Reviews," "Introductions," "Discussions," and "Conclusions," let alone "Bibliographies." Most beat reporters cut to the chase, get right to the winning goal, game-winning kick, clinching basket or game-breaking home run.

OK, with a little bit about PED users and abusers, athletes who are cheating spouses, labor-negotiation updates and "Sausage Race Highlights" thrown in. But nowhere in a sports story or broadcast are there any of the aforementioned sections cited in the previous paragraph.

And, dare I cliche it, therein lies the rub. Academics don't write the way reporters and editors do, let alone the way reporters and editors absorb information, usually on the fly, off an app, Facebook, a team web site or more likely Twitter.

So, when I read and review submissions to the Journal of Sports Media, which I edit, I know that the quality of the work will be offset by the fact that a whole 14 people will read it, including the authors, their parents and their tenure-review committee members. The sports editor of the New York Post and the on-duty producer at ESPN SportsCenter are not waiting for this with baited breath, regardless of its groundbreaking value, and many of the papers we publish have just that quality.

Authors Rick Burton and Norm O'Reilly of Syracuse University and the University of Ottawa, respectively, who both specialize in sports business management, made just that point in their joint article in Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal's Jan. 21-27, 2013 edition. In discussing the divide between academia and practitioners, they noted, "Is it because the academics who write papers for these journals have made their work so hard to understand (or so nuanced in what was researched) that the average practitioner can't see any value? Is the writing so dense that the key points are obscured?"

Truer words never spoken. OK, written. Having worked both sides of the fence now, and still working both sides actively, in fact, I can relate. I cover games and events for the Chicago suburban   Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Ill.) and write stories on deadline with no "Abstract," no "Introduction," no "Discussion," no "Methodology," no "Conclusion" and no "Bibliography."

I love both of my roles as sports correspondent, now in my 37th year, and educator, now in my 18th, all concurrent. Yes, I'm tenured faculty. But the next time I write a story in the Daily Herald about a game I covered that includes an "abstract," an "introduction" and a "conclusion," will be the first time.

It just ain't gonna' happen.

Keep plugging academia. But get real. It's time to get real. As in relevant. Not in your topics. But how you tell those stories.

***

I have a new motto, at least for now: "If you're not doing something crazy, you're doing the wrong things." That's courtesy Google CEO Larry Page, in the February 2013 WIRED Magazine, discussing how thinking big can produce big ideas.

Too many people play it safe, including me. Way too many with whom I work, who think that minimal change is "good enough." Except "good enough" isn't. They need to grow a pair and buckle down or die with the very industry they're trying to save.

Thanks, Larry Page. And thanks to all the people who waited patiently and worked tirelessly to cover for me while I recovered. That won't be forgotten. Xoxoxo...

***

Howard Schlossberg is editor of the Journal of Sports Media. He's an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago, where creativity and learning are embraced hand-in-hand. And he still writes sports for the award-recognized Daily Herald in Chicago's northwest suburbs.