Students who write for their school papers are in a tricky spot.
On one side, you have being a reputable journalist and upholding certain expectations like being unbiased to worry about, while on the other, you have the fact that you’re reporting the news at the school you have chosen to pay thousands of dollars a year to get your education.
One can see where a conflict of interest might sometimes arise.
Nowhere is this conflict more evident than in the sports department of the college paper. The staff is made up of sports junkies who undoubtedly grew up wanting to go to the same school as their favorite football team. But upon taking the job of covering the team, they were forced to drop the “rah-rah” school spirit bias and try to be partial.
Trust me, it isn’t a marriage made in heaven. After four years of journalism classes, I know it’s unprofessional to let your bias show in your work. Part of being a good journalist is reporting the facts and not letting your personal feelings shine through in your writing.
However, I’ve been a Duck fan since I was two years old. That sort of thing just doesn’t get pushed under the rug and since taking a job at the Emerald, I’ve struggled with being objective every day.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s impossible. I feel like in my articles (excluding my columns where I am entitled to an opinion), I’ve done a great job of reporting what happened and analyzing the news. In situations where the athletic department needed to be called out, I’ve done so. I take my job very seriously and I understand the importance of maintaining a neutral stance.
However, there are times when one can’t help but be a fan. This weekend is one of those times. It seems like things have aligned perfectly in college football to bless the University of Southern California and this University with the chance to play on Halloween night at Autzen Stadium for a potential Pacific-10 Conference title.
I just get goose bumps thinking about the crowd Saturday night. Dressed in black for the “Lights Out” effect, fans will get the stadium rocking to a degree that I have never seen in my four years at the University. Coupled with that, the pre-game festivities with ESPN College GameDay will make Eugene the place to be for the weekend.
But I’m going to stop myself there. I can imagine what it would be like to see the Ducks beat the Trojans and the fans go absolutely bonkers. I can imagine how high Oregon would climb in the polls.
I can imagine a lot of things, really, and that brings me back to my original point of being a student, a fan and a journalist. Leading up to the Boise State game, I thought Oregon was going to win. One hundred percent sure. So when they lost, I was in a small state of denial.
My journalistic instincts helped me through a little bit, and I watched the events unfold from the press box in Boise with a curious sense of detachment, but that night the game still gnawed at me. “How could the Ducks come out so flat in such a big game?” I asked myself.
I really couldn’t come up with a good answer over the next few days, but it did make me begin to look at things differently and temper my anticipation. The Boise State game made me realize that looking ahead and building up the hype and high expectations in your mind can only lead to disappointment.
Of course, this is fine for a normal fan to do because they want their team to win, but for a journalist, it’s not OK. Journalists should go into each and every game with an open mind and observe the situation. They should watch the game with a curious detachment and not feel the blood-surge when a team makes a huge play.
That’s what I strive to become, but I know I’m not there yet. There are instances where my front crumbles away and I catch myself smiling because of what I see on the field. At that moment I’m again just a 21-year-old kid not quite ready to embrace a professional life, and I find myself not yet wanting to throw away my youth and early college years when I would yell until I was hoarse, cheering for the Ducks. I can assure you, however, that I will be as professional as I can in the press box this Saturday. I’ll be wearing a nice neutral color like blue or brown that neither team wears, and I’ll sit at a table watching the game unfold on the turf below me without standing up and yelling. If I want to be successful in journalism, this is what I must perfect.
But I challenge the rest of you — the true fans — to cheer just a little bit louder under the lights on Saturday. Big games with these circumstances don’t come around all the time.
Yes, in a week there will be another team and another challenge to overcome, but forget about that and live for the moment. Because in the end, that’s what makes college football so great: the passion of the fans to forget everything else and just be fans.
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