Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Glance toward your blogger without hope or despair
#7 in a series of last-day posts
I'm here before you today to defend the college hoops blogosphere.
And it needs defending. It's become almost commonplace to decry the sorry state of blogdom where college basketball's concerned. (Hey, I've done it too.)
It's true that if you throw a dart at the mass of college basketball blogs you'll hit a middling target more often than not. That's true of blogs on any sport. But it seems like college football, pro baseball, and pro basketball have each seen the rapid coalescence of not only a core group of must-reads but also lively constellations of orbiting lesser fare. (With blogs on those sports, kind of like with music, I have the sense that I'll find more good stuff I don't yet know about if only I can make the time.) Blogs on college hoops? A little less numerous (many are team-based football blogs that moonlight in hoops—a gig that, granted, can on occasion be pulled off with excellent results), a little less lively, maybe fewer must-reads.
Still, let's not lose sight of the obvious. Issuing a cattle call for anyone with a keyboard to step forward may not bring in Shakespeare or Red Smith every time but it certainly leaves room for the welcome surprise. Or in this case surprises: the door was flung open and in came Ken Pomeroy and Kyle Whelliston. We wouldn't have them if not for this whole blog thing that happened—a few dozen middling and easily ignored blogs are surely a small price to pay.
Nor are blogs by people with first names not starting with "K" doomed to mediocrity. Quite the opposite. Given total freedom over what to write about and at what length, the potential to reach anyone on the planet with a network connection, hundreds of sports channels available 24 hours a day, the ability to record virtually any major-conference game with the push of a button, and access to years of the most detailed and enlightening statistics yet compiled on the sport, any blogger sitting down to a keyboard in 2007 has a set-up, albeit sans salary, that no New York Times sports columnist could have dreamed of as recently as 15 years ago.
So do it.
¶ 5:30 AM
#7 in a series of last-day posts
I'm here before you today to defend the college hoops blogosphere.
And it needs defending. It's become almost commonplace to decry the sorry state of blogdom where college basketball's concerned. (Hey, I've done it too.)
It's true that if you throw a dart at the mass of college basketball blogs you'll hit a middling target more often than not. That's true of blogs on any sport. But it seems like college football, pro baseball, and pro basketball have each seen the rapid coalescence of not only a core group of must-reads but also lively constellations of orbiting lesser fare. (With blogs on those sports, kind of like with music, I have the sense that I'll find more good stuff I don't yet know about if only I can make the time.) Blogs on college hoops? A little less numerous (many are team-based football blogs that moonlight in hoops—a gig that, granted, can on occasion be pulled off with excellent results), a little less lively, maybe fewer must-reads.
Still, let's not lose sight of the obvious. Issuing a cattle call for anyone with a keyboard to step forward may not bring in Shakespeare or Red Smith every time but it certainly leaves room for the welcome surprise. Or in this case surprises: the door was flung open and in came Ken Pomeroy and Kyle Whelliston. We wouldn't have them if not for this whole blog thing that happened—a few dozen middling and easily ignored blogs are surely a small price to pay.
Nor are blogs by people with first names not starting with "K" doomed to mediocrity. Quite the opposite. Given total freedom over what to write about and at what length, the potential to reach anyone on the planet with a network connection, hundreds of sports channels available 24 hours a day, the ability to record virtually any major-conference game with the push of a button, and access to years of the most detailed and enlightening statistics yet compiled on the sport, any blogger sitting down to a keyboard in 2007 has a set-up, albeit sans salary, that no New York Times sports columnist could have dreamed of as recently as 15 years ago.
So do it.
¶ 5:30 AM
