It’s amazing that it took me less than a year to become far less enthused about Oregon sports than when I first decided to enroll at the University.
It started early. Some of you might recall me saying I’d rather go to class than wait in line for a football ticket in a column in October. I never thought it would come to that, but it did.
Throughout the school year, I’ve become jaded about covering athletics, but despite it all, I still love sports.
I don’t know how to explain it. It’s that weird love/hate relationship that comes with the territory of being a sports writer, I guess.
The clichés, the repetitiveness, the hate mail and the stress under deadline are all factors working against me but I seemingly find a way to remain interested in a cycle that continues to repeat itself.
Part of me attempts to recognize how good I have it right now. After graduating, I’ll likely have to cover the prep sports scene in whatever part of the country I can. It’s not something I’m looking forward to. It could be awhile before I get the chance to cover a major Division I team again.
I know during the summer working at my hometown paper and I’ll be pining to come back to Eugene so I can start covering football rather than the nonexistent sports scene in my small community.
So maybe next year I should try and have more fun while covering the Oregon football and basketball teams and not be so cynical about the Ducks.
We’ll see, because I do enjoy being critical of nearly everything. But I know at least I’ll try to be more conversational this time around with some of the athletes and try to relate with them because, after all, we’re students. There are some things we have in common.
Some of the best moments of the year were when I could actually talk to the guys rather than asking them questions for a story. I engaged Bryce Taylor about his interest in the Arcade Fire and talked to Ray Schafer about my experience at the NCAA Tournament and related it to his. People are always more interested in talking about something that doesn’t consume their life (like their profession) and will almost instantly become more engaging because they don’t have to spit out clichés about sports.
Other highlights of the year include meeting the fellow sports reporters in Oregon, a sports writer from the San Jose Mercury News whose stories I had read since I was in middle school, having one of our lovely photo editors hit on by an Associated Press writer in St. Louis who invited us out to drinks and then ditched us once our photo editor made up an excuse not to come because the AP writer was such a creep.
But I’ll always remember how I made Tajuan Porter sweat in front of the cameras when I called him out on some B.S. response he gave when a television guy asked him about being named to the Pac-10 All-Freshman team.
“That’s individual attention. I don’t really care about individual attention,” Porter said. “I’m just trying to win.”
I had heard enough.
“You say you really don’t care about individual attention but you were gunning threes at the end of the game,” I said.
It wasn’t even a question. Porter tried desperately to break the Pac-10 freshman 3-point record in the final minutes of the Oregon State game and ended up missing five straight attempts.
“Uh, that was to break the record,” Porter said, trying to cover his tracks.
I followed with a loaded, smart-aleck question.
“So it’s records, not individual attention you care about?” I asked, knowing that individual records are, naturally, about recognizing individual achievement.
I don’t think Porter realized the connection between the two.
“Yeah, it was there, so the coach told me to go for it,” Porter said.
Hopefully at some point next year I can convince these guys to stop giving the media the safe answers. If I can’t, then I’m afraid it’ll be another year of my eyes glazing over while I listen to them droll on about the same PR-driven, team-friendly answers that make me question my desire to cover sports. Then I’ll remind myself, ‘Hey, it beats nearly any another job in the world.’ Because it does, no matter how much I complain about it.