You probably all know me well enough by now. If there is going to be a non-sports rant on this blog, there's a pretty good chance it will spawn off a Daily Show or Colbert Report bit.
I mean, what kind of news director decides to do a story like this? Why?
Frankly, it's something I'd expect to see in a small market, where a news director and reporter at least have the excuse of "I'm trying to make a name for myself in a tough business."
This is freaking Indianapolis. Not a small market in any way.
It's every bit as exploitative and stupid as you think it is. Not only that, but it manages to confirm most stereotypes you hear about today's news media.
Yeah, we have freedom of the press in this country. That doesn't mean the press has a right to do stories like this, instead of chasing real news that actually matters to people.
Longtime readers know that TSN/NBC hockey commentator Pierre McGuire grinds my gears. While the media star has no shortage of contacts, and he usually possesses great insight to the game, his seemingly never-ending shots against college hockey are getting old. Fast.
During the 2009 draft, he beat the "major junior over college hockey" drum so many times that it damn near broke. He asserted that multiple U.S. college-bound players would be better off going to major junior hockey, despite a mountain of evidence that it's not the "fast track" to the NHL they make themselves out to be.
He got his wish when John Moore decommitted from Colorado College to join the OHL, and he was probably doing a happy dance when goalie Jack Campbell blew off Michigan to sign in the OHL.
Monday night, NHL Network aired a special edition of "On The Fly," its magnificent nightly highlights/analysis show. This show focused on the announcement of NHL Central Scouting's midterm rankings of 2010 draft prospects. McGuire -- one of the preeminent hockey voices in Canada, certainly when it comes to the draft -- joined the program to discuss the top three.
One of those, defenseman Cam Fowler, is an American kid who turned down a scholarship to Notre Dame to play major junior. That was all the ammunition McGuire needed to throw another cheapshot at the college game. Watch just after the 4:00 mark.
Now, college hockey is a "soft route" for development. Nice to know, but it seems that there is a growing percentage of the overall NHL population that would argue this point with McGuire.
I maintain the position I have held for years. Neither major junior nor college hockey hold all the answers for everyone.
There are players who will benefit more from the major junior environment, and there are guys who would be much better off going to college. The fact that Fowler chose major junior doesn't mean college hockey is less of a developmental tool.
It means Fowler decided it wasn't right for him.
The problem with McGuire -- and numerous analysts, bloggers, and fans who want to opine on this topic -- is that their tendency is to speak in absolutes, in black-and-white terms.
Issues like this aren't that simple, and McGuire does a tremendous disservice to his audience when he speaks as if he has an axe to grind against American colleges, even if this isn't the real case.
There is simply no reason for Fowler to become the latest poster boy for the college/major junior dispute. After all, no one bothered to talk about Notre Dame freshman Riley Sheahan's meteoric rise to fifth in the latest rankings. Why doesn't that validate the college game as much as Fowler's development seems to discredit it?
Just think: Had Fowler chosen a different path, he and Sheahan would be teammates at Notre Dame right now. Then what would McGuire have to say?
I've been around more than a few television news reporters in my day. Some of them are really good in the field, able to ad-lib under the most intense circumstances.
Others, however, are less blessed. They need the good ol' teleprompter in order to make everything work. Without it, they have issues functioning, much less delivering a competent news report.
A good example of teleprompter overreliance was found on Fox News Channel Tuesday afternoon. Popular anchor Shepard Smith was giving his audience the latest information on the Steve McNair murder, and the prompter -- a machine that scrolls the anchor's script so s/he can read it without looking down at the paper copy -- started acting up.
As Smith tried to ad-lib, we learned a very important fact about McNair's case.
You could take this as a rip on whoever decided to put the story on the air. After all, there's no relevance to it when McNair wasn't doing anything illegal. Who the hell cares how drunk he was when he was shot?
Then again, if McNair had been awake and aware, maybe none of this would have happened.
Some of you may remember former major-league pitcher Rob Dibble.
The fiery reliever spent seven seasons in the bigs, and has been able to cultivate a career for himself in broadcasting.
While co-hosting the old Dan Patrick Show (the one that used to be on ESPN, that is), Dibble made a name for himself by blasting anyone who dared share an opinion about baseball without having played the game at a high level.
Since he got canned at ESPN, I haven't had the misfortune of hearing much from him.
When the baseball season started in April, my free preview of MLB Extra Innings allowed me to discover Dibble working Nationals games. Not surprisingly, he is still a jackass.
ESPN.com columnist Rob Neyer, who was a many-times guest and great friend of my old radio show, noted Dibble's displeasure with a called third strike during Randy Johnson's 300th win last week, which came against the Nationals.
Really, I just wanted an excuse to write about Rob Dibble. For years, I was less than a fan of his work at various networks. So you can imagine my shock, when I realized that I sort of like him in his current role with the Nationals. Yes, he's still a blowhard who believes that if you didn't play the game, you don't know anything about it. But he's got a good voice, he's quite a bit smarter than you probably think, and he's not been pulling his punches while the Nationals have become the biggest joke in the game.
Hardly a cheap shot. In fact, everything Neyer wrote about Dibble and wonderfully competent partner Bob Carpenter was accurate.
Dibble, naturally, went off. He did it on Twitter, as noted by The Big Lead.
I'll admit some bias in this case. Neyer was great to me for a number of years.
However, anyone who knows anything about baseball media also knows that Neyer has been around the pro game longer than Dibble has, and he's written more really good stuff about the game than Dibble could ever hope to read (assuming, of course, that Dibble bothers to read stuff other people write about baseball).
Oh, and most people also know that Rob Dibble is a richard. Always has been, and always will be.
I've never bought into the elitist argument that you have to play a sport at a high level to know anything about it. The fact that one of the best managers in baseball is former journeyman player Terry Francona -- and former small-college player Bill Belichick is one of the most accomplished coaches in all of the NFL -- should help you understand how this works.
Dibble can continue to wage a useless war against good people if he wants to, but since he works for the Nationals now, it's doubtful anyone will pay attention.
