By Kyle Jorrey
Sports Editor
OK, I admit it.
I’m not always right.
To be honest, when it comes to issues dealing with sports, I’d be confident to admit I’m probably wrong more often than I am right. But yet I can spout off my opinions here in this column each week like some kind of amateur Jim Rome without fear of rebuttal, barring an e-mail or letter, but really, who’s got the time for one of those?
While I wouldn’t go as far as to say I have no qualifications. It’s apparent that anyone with a couch, TV remote and one of the 13 variations of ESPN could probably fill this spot. In fact, I am fortunate enough to meet with individuals like these each week that read my column. And if they’re not poking fun at my picture, they’re usually mentioning how they could have done a better job “inebriated” … whatever that means.
But, from what I’ve experienced, that is the nature of being a sports writer, and especially a sports columnist. No one can really figure out what gives most sports writers and commentators the right to say and write what they do, aside from a college degree and a keen knack for descriptive adjective usage.
The point being, there isn’t much standing between your local sports reporter and your local arm-chair quarterback, besides a half-eaten bag of fried pork rinds and one of those old high-school football mesh practice jerseys that stop just before the belly button (think A.C. Slater). But that is just what makes sports writing so unique — the reporter is really just an extension of the fan.
When professional athletes make the fans mad, it is up to the sports reporter to make them pay. Last summer, when San Francisco Giant Jeff Kent told his teammates and fans that he was injured falling off the back of his pickup truck when he actually hurt himself trying to play Evil Knievel on his crotch-rocket, it was the press who ridiculed him.
Same goes for guys like Randy Moss, Rasheed Wallace, Eric Lindros — players we love to hate. When professional athletes like these slip up, you’re going to read about it in the paper, hear it on the radio or see it on your TV screen. They get to make millions, we get to laugh when one of them gets caught on Santa Monica Boulevard at 3 o’clock in the morning sharing a cab with an unusually masculine model named “Josephine.”
So the next time you find yourself about to say something mean-spirited about my column, go right ahead, I’m just happy you’re reading it. But keep in mind that I’m a sports fan just like yourself, only my random opinions and observations get a badly-lit picture and a 2-by-10-inch piece of paper to back them up.
Legendary Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theisman once said, “Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”
I think that just about says it all.
—Think you can do a better job than Kyle? E-mail Kyle Jorrey at kyle.jorrey@pepperdine.edu
November 14, 2002