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TUES, 29 OCT 2002

Sports writers really know their stuff
By Jade Janes
Editor in Chief

Heaven knows I hate to admit this, but it looks like I was wrong.

My entire life I was under the impression that covering a football game was easy. I could do that, I thought. You go to the game, you sit in the press box where there’s an amazing view. You eat all the free food and jot down your little notes, enjoying the camaraderie of all the other sports writers.

Then after the game you type up your little shpeel and move on with your life. Piece of cake.

I wasn’t too wrong about how it all goes down. But it wasn’t until I attempted to cover the UI-Middle Tennessee State game Saturday that I realized sports reporting requires a little something I just don’t have—an attention span of more than 30 seconds.

I started out with the best of intentions. I may not be the biggest gridiron fan in the universe, but I’ve seen more than my share of Playstation 2 college football games; I know what’s up.

It’s too bad there isn’t a video game that depicts college writers covering football games. That sort of training would have been much better.

By the second quarter, I gave up on writing about the game and started writing about the experience. Instead of cryptic notes like “Grab by Belser, 8:24 left in quarter,” I started writing things like “Cable does spread eagle; surprisingly agile for big guy” and “Kody Kraus is a serious hottie.”

Before long, I quit writing notes altogether and concentrated all my efforts on enjoying the view Š of Kraus in gold spandex from behind.

Through all this, I thought I was at least fooling everyone else. It wasn’t until well into the third quarter that I realized all the other writers were just humoring me.

That’s when I got really confused. I looked around and saw some of the characters in the press box. How on earth were they able to stay focused on the game? I knew some of these people.

We’re talking the cream of the ADD crop here; yet they seemed to have no trouble writing only things about the game, as opposed to my “I need a nap” and “pow, pow, pow Š fireworks.”

Pathetic.

So sports reporting ended up a bit harder than I had anticipated. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. Aside from Kraus, I enjoyed other aspects of the game.

I was right about the camaraderie business. Football writers are good people. Well, at least they’re interesting people with interesting things to say in interesting ways.

In between bites of hotdogs and baked potatoes, these mouths spewed out some of the foulest things I’ve heard in a while. Never mind the innocent-looking girl with pigtails in the corner; they just went off.

Then there was all the entertainment when one of the writers spotted a Ron Jeremy look-alike. I wasn’t sure who that was, but he informed me he’s a famous actor. I wonder why I haven’t seen any of his work before.

As I was wondering about that and jotting little notes about it in my handy notebook, UI scored and all the other writers started jotting things in their books.

I thought about recording the series leading to the score as well, but kind of shrugged it off. Just like my dreams to be a WNBA star, it looks as though my goal to be a first-class college football writer just wasn’t meant to be.