At Carroll Academy, it’s not about wins and losses

For the girls basketball team at Carroll Academy, it’s not about winning and losing. It’s not about the stats and it’s not about being the popular stars.

It’s much more than just a game.

Carroll Academy is a day school in Huntingdon, Tenn., a school operated by the Carroll County Juvenile Court. It’s a school where kids who run into trouble with the law are sent in an attempt to get their lives back in order.

Earlier this year, in mid-April, The New York Times published a five-part series that documented the girls basketball team at the school. The account, which includes photo slideshows and a video, is chilling, and tells the tales, the trials and tribulations that face the nine girls on the team, their coach and the administrators that direct the school.

ESPN’s Matthew Lee: “Don’t be afraid, you can do it”

Matthew Lee remembers the day very clearly.

The year was 1998, and Lee was working as an online producer for the Washington Post’s website. He primarily worked night shifts, but on this particular day he was working a day shift — the day after working a shift until 2 a.m.

One of Lee’s responsibilities on this day was to put up a blog post on the website. One of the Post’s NFL reporters threw together a “thorough” 900-1,000 word post and filed it to Lee to publish. The story was “dry” and was very difficult to read, but Lee had to do it. And in these days, the Internet and computers were very primitive, and Lee estimated that it took about 15 steps to put the blog post on the website — and that’s if the machine didn’t crash.

Concussions in football: Where do we draw the line?

Hard hits, scary sacks and crazy collisions have all been a part of the game of football ever since we’ve been watching. Football fanatics rave about the sport’s intensity and indulge in the culture of survival of the fittest. For better or worse, it’s defined the game as we know it today.

But where do we draw the line?

Sean Glennon makes stop at UMass, talks recently published Tom Brady book

When making the case for a player as the greatest to play their certain position, there are a wide variety of perspectives and arguments that can become compelling.

For author Sean Glennon, when you’re talking about the greatest quarterback to ever play in the NFL, his answer is clear and concise: Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is the best to ever play at the position.

Glennon, a sportswriter and football historian who has contributed to the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix and written a number of other football books revolving specifically the New England Patriots, made a pit stop on Wednesday morning to our sports journalism class at UMass, where he talked about his latest book, “Tom Brady vs. the NFL: The Case for Football’s Greatest Quarterback.”

While Glennon did not delve too much into his specific arguments during Wednesday’s chat, he did reveal his thought processes behind making such a book and what he thought were the most compelling arguments against Brady. The biggest challenge of writing the book, Glennon said, was making an argument that Brady is better than former 49ers and Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana was.

Montana, the four-time Super Bowl champion, is highly regarded by many to be the best NFL quarterback of all-time. There are a number of arguments that can be made for the 49ers quarterback and the topic has been written about incessantly, including this blog post by Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2010. This post written by someone known as “Sportsmentary” on blogcritics.com is also worth a read as they break down the top 5 signal-callers ever, a list topped by Montana.

Of course, Brady and Montana aren’t unanimous selections for the being the best ever at their position. Quarterbacks from Johnny Unitas to Peyton Manning have been written on as such. Cold, Hard Football Facts writer Kerry Byrne published a top 10 piece back in 2008 topped by Bart Starr, while Clark Judge claimed Unitas as the best in May of this year.

Glennon admitted that it was difficult to figure out how Brady was better. He actually vividly remembers a time in which he was writing the book – which took him roughly eight months to finish – in which he suddenly realized the critical piece of his Brady argument and let out screams and joyous racket throughout his house, scaring his wife and son.

Should bloggers have equal access?

The question of coverage rights in the world of sports is an interesting topic — one illustrated in detail in this New York Times piece from 2008.

In today’s social media age, it’s hard to tell who’s in command when it comes to covering teams and games. Literally anybody can get on their laptop, create a blog or other website, and sound like they know what they’re talking about without necessarily having access to the things they cover like the actual beat reporters. In fact, when it comes to the topic of social media, several hundreds of faux accounts — especially on Twitter — have been created for the sole purpose of fooling fans, teams and the media into thinking they’re something they aren’t.

To put it simply, it’s hard to figure out who’s real and who’s not these days.

So, what kind of access should bloggers have?

Like I said, there are so many blogs out there that aren’t very legitimate — byproducts of couch potatos living in their basement and looking to stir the pot. But at the same time, there are also very many legitimate blogs out there on the Internet that have created positive attention. In fact, some of these blogs could arguably provide better insight than real beat reporters themselves. That’s just the nature of how the business is going.

But good bloggers shouldn’t be penalized for the actions of a few fake accounts. I’ll let the words of Terry McDonell, editor of the Sports Illustrated Group, speak for themselves: “S. I. does not own the sports history, but neither does Major League Baseball. That history belongs to everyone who loves the game.”

Such is true in all of sports, not just baseball. Just because a reporter has the ESPN or USA Today label printed on their credential badge doesn’t give them any more rights to access and knowledge of teams than anybody else. Sure, they have attained credibility — which is expected if you’re walking around and representing ESPN, but that also doesn’t mean bloggers haven’t. Some bloggers themselves have gained their own audience, gained their own credibility and it’s my belief that they should in turn deserve equal access. Some say one rotten apple spoils the whole batch, but that’s not necessarily the case in this instance.

In this day of social media age, it’s important to figure out who’s real and who’s not. Stripping any blogger of his or her access is doing a disservice to people who are hungry for the latest news of their favorite teams.