When I was a kid forming college dreams, Weber State was on my list because they had an outstanding journalism program.
It was a long time ago, when reporters adhered to principles like having two sources to credibly support the facts, and being uninvolved in the stories.
That sounds certifiably mad today.
Sportswriting was always a little different. If you held sports reporting to same editorial standards as news, the items sounded mostly the same, while only the names were different.
Television changed everything, by turning athletes into deities, and encouraging the talking heads to scream.
When I was a journalism student, all I needed to remember about Weber State at Oregon State was the Beavers shot 85 percent in the first quarter. These days, I’m expected to have an opinion.
The roles of the readers has changed, too. 40 years ago, if I said Oregon State shot 85% in the first quarter, you could look it up. If the Beavers hadn’t shot 11-for-13, I wasn’t doing my job. Today, I can say: “I stake my life on either Dasia Young or Jenna Johnson having a career game Thursday”, but if they’re both terrible, you don’t expect me to fall dead.
I don’t know what a career game for Dasia Young looks like, really. I hope it would be splashy, because a career game for Jenna Johnson might not reflect so brightly in the boxscore.
I nearly forgot what I sat down to write in the first place. I plan to call Coach Roberts Tuesday, and if she asks me what I thought of the Southern Utah game, I need an answer. That’s not how it would’ve gone 40 years ago, but today I’d say we looked like a young team again.
Which is sort of a weird thing to say. Nine months ago, Utah was a young team, reaching the round of 16 without one senior. One of the notions behind Utah’s expected rise to the rounds of 8 and 4 is that a single summer turned sophomores Kneepkens, McQueen, and Johnson into seasoned veterans.
Then Gianna got hurt, and her minutes are going to players younger than she.
In the first three minutes of Sunday’s Arizona/Arizona St. broadcast, someone brought up Utah’s devastating blow to the roster. Which reminded me to turn off the sound, though it was mostly correct.
Gianna put excellent numbers in the boxscore, but she was also the emotional leader. Pili and Young are seniors, but neither is outstandingly expressive.
Yeah, losing #5 was a major setback, but the team can’t remain set back, and media can’t use it as a primary talking point for another four months, can we?
Again, it makes me feel old that I even have “talking points”.