The Old Perfessor

I'm a professor of journalism at Wingate University near Charlotte, N.C. I've also written about sports for newspapers and other publications for more than 30 years. This blog's about journalism, sports and whatever else I find interesting on any given Sunday or other day, for that matter.

Monday, April 26, 2010

An educational experience

The lawn on the Academic Quad on campus is starting to look like the fairways at Augusta National, a sure sign that graduation time is drawing near.

And as the school year ends, baseball season is cranking up. Every other spring there's a brief intersection of these two worlds as I teach the Sports Reporting class at Wingate -- I referenced this group of young people in my last post.

Just about all 19 of them have attended a Charlotte Knights minor league baseball game in the last week, each with an assignment to interview someone associated with the team, from the front office to a player or manager Chris Chambliss.

I hope they've absorbed at least one lesson from this experience, and that's something I've long thought was important for sports reporters to remember. We've talked about how to cover big events -- the NFL Panthers, NBA Bobcats or this week's Quail Hollow PGA event here in Charlotte for example. But more often a sports journalist's assignment is to make the routine or ordinary understandable and entertaining.

And Friday night's game was as challenging as they come in that respect, at least for the first four innings, after which Norfolk led 2-0. Then the game reverted to a more typical Knights Stadium game, with home runs flying out of the park with rapidity.

Charlotte catcher Tyler Flowers hit the biggest one, a towering three-run shot to right field in the sixth, but the Tides made up for it with a wave of three bases-empty homers and eventually walked away with a 5-3 victory.

We went down to Chambliss' office following the game. I wasn't writing for The Charlotte Observer on this night, but I wanted the students to get a feel for what the give-and-take between manager and reporter is in a post-game situation. So I asked him a few questions about the game.

Then I turned it over to the class for their questions, and to their credit they took advantage of the opportunity.

"Can we ask you about something besides the game?" one asked, and Chambliss said that was OK with him.

They asked some insightful questions. One student had done his homework, and asked the former New York Yankees' slugger what it was like to play for manager Billy Martin, as he had in the late 1970s.

Chambliss said that he had enjoyed that experience and -- in answer to another question -- had borrowed some elements of the feisty and volatile Martin's style in his own managerial career.

"I don't have that same kind of personality and I have to be me," he said. "But one of the things I did take away was to treat people fairly but differently. You have to know who needs a kick in the butt and who needs a pat on the back."

Another student asked a question that captured the minor league manager's daily balancing act: "Is it more important to win games or develop players?"

Chambliss said that it was important to instill a winning attitude in players but the bottom line was that he was in the business of preparing players to play in the major leagues.

Being in the skill development business myself, I was pleased with the evening's outcome. The students seemed to gain a little confidence in asking questions to total strangers in an unfamiliar environment, and as far as I could tell, they managed to take the encounters beyond the very superficial level at which most interviews are conducted.

It all reminded me of what I like best about being a college professor. On the good days -- and most of them are good days --- my students teach me just as much as I teach them, as long as I pay attention.

It was nice having them along.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Seasons change (and a "shout-out")

I'm going to see how many of my Sports Reporting students at Wingate University really read my blog today.

I told them I'd give them a "shout-out," in the language of the day, in this space before the semester's over and here it is.

I have 19 students, mostly either communication studies or sport management majors, in this class this semester and they've been a good group. In this class they've gained experience in writing a variety of types of sports stories, from game coverage to columns. I try to give them exposure to the history of sports reporting -- one student is doing her research paper for the class on columnist Red Smith -- but the class also addresses current issues affecting sports journalists.

I've enjoyed our recent discussions about media coverage of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger's legal issues and Tiger Woods' news conference and new Nike ad debut during Masters' week. We've also talked about ethical issues in sports journalism -- should media outlets have run the surreptitiously-recorded cell phone video of a drunken Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones? -- and the relative merits of blogging compared to traditional news coverage.

And one of my favorite aspects of this course is that they (and I) get to go on some field trips which I hope are educational as well as fun. We've visited the studios of ESPNU, the World Wide Leader's college sports network, in Charlotte -- where Wingate got its own "shout-out" during a live telecast by studio hosts Adrian Branch and Mark Gottfried. The students have also been to a Charlotte Checkers minor league hockey game -- as credentialed media members -- and a big group of them will go to a Charlotte Knights minor league baseball game on Monday.

I've always offered this class in the spring semester because -- as much as I love football -- it offers students a better opportunity than the fall to experience a wide variety of sports.
From the old sportswriter's standpoint, this is my favorite season change.

And April is an especially good time to be a sports fan in Charlotte this year. The Charlotte Bobcats are in the NBA playoffs for the first time. The Checkers are ending their 17-year run in the ECHL with a nice post-season run. (A brand new Checkers team will debut next year in the American Hockey League, as noted previously in this blog.)

As those seasons end, the Knights, the Triple A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, and the Charlotte Eagles minor league soccer team have just begun their seasons. I've covered both for the Charlotte Observer for nearly 15 years.

The Knights are off to a good start at 7-3 with a team that's made up to a large extent of last year's Class AA Birmingham Barons, who were in the Southern League playoffs.

The Eagles, who lost in the championship game of United Soccer Leagues' Second Division (two steps down from Major League soccer) last summer, also have a new look. The Eagles lost the best player in the team's history when forward Dustin Swinehart retired after an a 11-year career in which he scored more than 100 goals. (If you don't know much about soccer, trust me, it's impressive.)

There are lots of new faces and, as usual at this level, the roster was still in flux as the Eagles started their season started tonight with a 3-2 loss to the Charleston Battery (insert your favorite electricity joke here.)

Both organizations are media-friendly and it's always a fun way to spend a summer. There will be some Knights stuff on the blog for the next few months. The Eagles, who are owned by an entity called Missionary Athletes International, also have some interesting stories and I'll be following them here as well.

Saturday, April 03, 2010

A night with the Bobcats

I've always preferred college basketball to the professional variety. But I never wanted to be one of those fans who insists that they hate the NBA when they haven't actually been to a game since Bird was playing Magic.

So I generally stay away from the games and keep my opinion to myself. But last weekend a friend gave me a couple of free tickets to last night's Charlotte Bobcats game against the Milwaukee Bucks at Time Warner Cable Arena, so Jayne and I decided to make it a date night uptown.

It was only the second time I've seen the Bobcats in person. The Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger paid me to see the first one in 2005, a game between the first-year Bobcats and the New Jersey Nets at the second Charlotte Coliseum (the one no longer standing) out on Tyvola Road. The Star-Ledger's beat writer had to come home for some sort of family emergency and I was a last-minute fill-in.

And I honestly don't remember who won that game, but I do remember that ex-North Carolina Tar Heel star Vince Carter was playing for the Nets at the time and he scored 38 points, including a basket on an acrobatic shot where he literally jumped over somebody.

But I digress. The Bobcats are on the verge of wrapping up their first-ever spot in the playoffs and the Bucks are one of several teams with whom they're vying for position, so there was some buzz around the game and a big crowd was expected.

And I have to admit, it was a fun evening with good entertainment value. Jayne and I arrived about 90 minutes before game time, found a convenient parking lot near the arena and walked to a nearby soul food restaurant we like a couple of blocks away. For the first time since we spent the fall in London in 2008, we felt like real city dwellers.

Like I said, the experience of an NBA game is just different from going to a college basketball game, starting with what happens before the game. The late Al McGuire, when he was commentating on college basketball games for NBC, used to call the opening shot from a college game the "'Gone With the Wind' beginning," complete with screaming fans, bands and cheerleaders, contrasting it with the opening shot from an NBA telecast, with players desultorily shooting warmups.

And here's the view from where we were, my first trip into the upper reaches of this arena, but not a bad seat overall.



Once this game got started, the crowd -- listed in the box score as 18,118, but with some obvious no-shows, got into it. The game had a playoff feel to it, close from start to finish and maybe even more hotly contested from the sidelines.

The Bobcats engaged in a running battle with the officials, culminating in the second quarter with Coach Larry Brown's ejection after being hit with two technical fouls and with new owner Michael Jordan, who recently bought controlling interest in the team from Bob Johnson, screaming at the guys in stripes from his courtside seat as the half ended. For Bobcats fans, that's certainly a refreshing change from Johnson, the classic absentee pro sports owner.

I was impressed with Stephen Jackson, whom the Bobcats obtained in November in a trade with the Golden State Warriors. The 32-year-old Texan has become their top scoring threat, setting a Bobcats' team record with 43 points against the Houston Rockets on Jan. 12. He scored 32 in this game, including a three-pointer with 52 seconds left in overtime which turned out to be the winning shot in Charlotte's 87-86 victory.

"He never met a shot he didn't like," I heard one fan behind me say at one point in the game.

True enough, but this game ended up being settled by a decidedly less spectacular play. Neither team scored after Jackson's three-pointer and the Bobcats ran out the clock football-style when reserve center Tyson Chandler swatted a rebound of Raymond Felton's missed shot back to Felton to run out the final seconds as the crowd roared.

Good win, good atmosphere. Enough to make us want to actually buy a ticket and go back? Well, still not sure. When I watch the Final Four games this evening, I'm sure I'll remember why the college game is still more compelling to me.