COMMUNICATION

It's already about the third week of the college sports season, and one thing already has me somewhat disgruntled, lack of communication betweeen SIDs.

We're all busy, I understand that. But please, please, please have some common courtesy. If you are hosting multiple events on one day and won't be able to get me the tennis, golf or cross country results until a later hour, that's fine, just let me know, so I am not hitting refresh on my email for three hours. If you ask me for a Stat Crew roster, and I send it, I somewhat expect a game file that same day. If we are hosting you and I ask you three times for your roster, please send it. I know its on the website, but a lot of times website rosters are incomplete or wrong, and plus, I dont feel like retyping your Stat Crew roster.

Folks, we are in the communication business, but I feel like the communication is eroding away as more and more veteran SIDs give up the business and the SID positions are full of web site and TAS whizzes who sit behind their computers all day and complain on the SID Board about why Stat Crew can't produce this or that meaningless stat. A lot of the basic communication and common courtesy in this business are gone. Thoughts?

Cough… Cough… I Feel a Slight Touch of Blue Flu Coming On

Six years on the job, and not one sick day. I am yet to miss a game because of illness. That is not to say I haven’t been sick. I have input basketball games with sweat dripping from my feverish face, aches up and down my body, sinuses set to explode and the kind of sore throat about which they make commercials with really bad actors. And there I was, not caring about the outcome, so long as it was over and I could go to my warm bed, and hopefully get better in six hours of sleep before the 9:00 a.m. meeting.

If I had left at 6:00 p.m. on a day that most would have taken off, no one would have been available to cover the rebounds, assists and blocked shots of the post-finals week non-conference showdown entertaining the tens of ones of fans on hand. The box score wouldn’t have gone on the web, the visiting SID would have been left in an awkward position without a game file or box score, and the papers without a press release to copy and paste into their pages.

The email would have piled up complaining about the misery of an athletic department that can’t post a score the same night as the game in a world in which almost everyone it seems is providing stats live. A new flurry would follow when the stats were not to the liking of fans and coaches on hand who had a better view than me as I tried to pick rebounds and the like from a video in which I couldn’t read the numbers on about three-quarters of the involved jerseys.

Oh, and while I was watching the video the next day, still more emails questioning my competence, intelligence, dedication, would roll in. Yeah, the annoying and insulting repercussions of not being in attendance would have provided a bigger headache than the one afflicting me during the game.

It doesn’t make me a hero. No, it doesn’t even make me special. All of us within the ranks do it, have done it, and will likely continue to do it. If anything, it just makes me an asshole. It makes all of us assholes. If you can’t figure out why without my further elaboration, you are a dumb-ass asshole.

I n this life, I have friends away from sports. On rare occasions, I actually get to see them. I call that fleeting period of my life summer. One of those summer nights, I sat out on my deck with a beat cop and a beer. He, along with several other members of his district, and several more from other districts around this East Coast megalopolis city had all contracted the same illness. Its side effects include a day of golf, fishing, lawn work and time spent with the family. It is brought on by being overworked and underpaid in a thankless but necessary job.

It seems that their inboxes do not fill with complaints when they are stricken with the illness known as blue flu, but when it strikes in the summer, which is sort of “season crossover time” in the world of police, the complaints from the city’s denizens become numerous, overwhelming supervisors, and eroding public confidence in the po-po’s leadership. That heat rolls the shit back uphill, if only for a few days, and somehow parties representing either side meet and work out grievances. Sometimes the flu hits pilots of airlines, and even nurses have been known to contract a similar illness.

So I am left wondering, what would happen if I became violently ill one day, and the SID I had shaken hands with earlier in the week had contracted the illness from me, and he had shaken the hands of two other SIDs that week, who had shaken two or three more hands, and the symptoms all coincidentially manifested themselves on the same Saturday?

What would Sunday’s newspapers look like when there was a Saturday on which no one was healthy enough to send out scores? What would web sites look like if no one was healthy enough post scores? Would people notice the starting lineups not announced, the programs not set out, and the lack of live stats?

What would be the reaction of parents and athletes who were replied to with the simple truth that I and all of my colleagues mysteriously fell ill on the same day, and our supervisors never had the foresight to recognize they have no redundancy in place for a technocratic position? Would they email AD’s? Would they email presidents?

Several of my colleagues and I have had the discussion about the work that would pile up in between, but as a firm believer in postmodern theory, I say if we treat it like a non-day, that is precisely what it becomes. The scores never get posted. The stats never get factored in. The kids who we don’t want to see get screwed get screwed a bit, but once in awhile, when you are being regularly screwed without the decency of dinner first, you have to look out for number one. The truth is, while we don’t want to see them screwed, mommy and daddy, and mommy and daddy’s checkbooks want to see that far less than we do.

God knows they aren’t afraid to pick up a phone or click an email link to get what they want.

Back by Anonymous Demand

The SID Board did not deliver a death-blow to Disgruntled. It sure did smack it down onto life support though.

I am a big fan of the board and have found it quite useful for things within the profession, but alas, I have found it detrimental to the agenda put forth by we folks here ay disgruntled. While a thread on Statcrew improvements has its value in my life, the only pressing issue that matters to me is left generally undiscussed elsewhere.

Today is January 12. The most recent post on the Work/Life Balance forum was November 21. So while the SID board serves a genuinely good purpose, it seems that it will serve to maintain an untenable status quo. November 21 is proof that Disgruntled is not dead, and it shall remain a forum for the advancement of SIDs who want to see the inside of their homes longer than the time it takes to walk in the front door, up the steps and off to bed.

Staffing in our profession is yet to catch up with our technology. This spring, baseball, softball, lacrosse(s), and tennis will all need to be in Statcrew and to the conference by 11 am following the contest. Me, in a one-man shop, will get it done, and all of the other office business will be taken care of because I am conscientious enough to be sure the I’s are dotted and T’s crossed. Everyone else in my conference will achieve to the same end.

We are our own worst enemies.

We are victims of our own successes. As a group we have pulled resources and are generally helpful to one another, easing the strain a bit. We have always done what has been asked. Like sausage and laws, no one cares to see sports information made, provided the sausage tastes good, the law does not have a deleterious impact, and the assists agree with the parental assessments.

While we cling to the sides of the lifeboat, I wonder how many are going to fall off of the side at the end of this year. I see the fingers of four slipping. Four good ones at that. In the meantime, as we desperately clutch, another technological tidal wave is steaming towards this overburdened craft. It resembles a camera with an Internet cord and headset, all ready to drop as streaming technology is set to become another mainstay of small school sports.

And with our innate tech savvy, and the infamous “other / various duties as assigned by the A.D” conspiring to drop yet more responsibility on our laps, I can’t help but wonder how can we make this better for ourselves. I can’t help but wonder who I will be working alongside at my peer institutions next semester.

It is a point that has been beaten to death on this board: the crux of the issue is not money, it’s help. It’s alleviating the burdens of the one-man 18-30-sport shops. It’s having an intern who can cover a Sunday. It’s having a person who puts their meals on their table in this profession working alongside. It’s having the security to know you can attend a family wedding, funeral, or gathering in the school year without coming back to a mountain of work and in inbox filled with hate-mail because L’l Johnny’s (insert sport here) score wasn’t posted. It’s about having one day a week where the cell phone is off, the email is unchecked, and all of a SIDs thoughts are somewhere outside of the world of collegiate athletics.

And with that, I anonymously and seriously ask CoSIDA, what is being and what has been done in the almost year since the initial CoSIDA post hit this board? I ask my SID brothers and sisters to jump on board here, and let’s discuss the pros and cons of joining our bosses at NACDA, with or without the body of CoSIDA.

Crossover Time

Ahh yes, its SID's beloved time of year, crossover time. All the fall sports, including football, are wrapping up, basketball (and hockey for those in northern climes) is starting up, not to mention swimming, indoor track and wrestling. Am I the only one that feels there aren't enough hours in a day? I mean, in the next week I have an exhibition basketball game at a Division I school, a big road football game this weekend followed by our home finale next weekend, ice hockey starting up and about 10 other things I can't think of. But does anyone care? No, all I get asked is what we are doing to promote the DI basketball game over and over, when, believe it or not, I have been working on it, just because there hasnt been anything YET in the almighty paper doesnt mean there won't be. Just let me do my job!

Office Space...

"I did nothing, and it was everything I thought it would be."

I bagged work on Friday. Not really to do anything as much as to not do a damn thing. Wasn’t so much planned either. I rolled out of bed, put the dog outside, saw the rain and thought the last place I needed to be was in the car, in the rain, and on my way to work. So when the dog came in, I went straight down to the basement, turned on SportsCenter and drifted right back to sleep.

Around 11, I woke up and debated checking my email and phone messages. Around 11:01, I thought the better of it. Went up, got a now burnt cup of coffee, put the dog out again and noticed the sun coming out. Around 11:15 I debated cutting the grass. Around 11:16, I thought the better of it.

Back to the couch a little world cup preview. 20 minutes of that, and back to the zzz’s. As I dozed off, I thought, “I think I am going to skip a lot of work once the copa del mondo gets underway.”

Around 4:00 p.m. or shortly thereafter, the dog decided to wake me up for our day’s exercise. The sun was out, clouds were on the horizon though. That squelched the brief second of guilt I felt about having the third longest lawn on the street. Ran with the dog for a bit. A bit is about all I can run nowadays. Came home flipped on Wolf Blitzer. He always makes me sleep.

6:15 the wife woke me up. Actually, the dog flipping out that her car was in the driveway woke me up. I showered, we went out, got some beers and wings at a local haunt and watched the Yankees whip the Orioles and Pittsburgh's rain delay filler at the same time - those old Willie Stargell era collars kick ass.

I thought about work twice during the workday. Both instances were fleeting.

I rolled in at 2:00 on this beautiful Monday, cause the damn grass still hadn’t cut itself. Seeing the fresh cut and listening to the birds chirp gave me the idea to play golf this week, so I have calendared two dates. Playing 9 on Wednesday, 18 on Thursday.

“Hey Peter, looks like you have been missing a lot of work lately.”

“I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it Bob.”

How’s everyone else doing in their quiet time?

Taking the Student out of Student Athlete

I love language. I studied language as an undergrad, and I find it fascinating the way it evolves. It likely stems from growing up with George Carlin on HBO – his rants on air travel and other euphemisms still kill me. My first communications professor I encountered as an undergrad stressed that effective, meaningful communication was concise communication.

And then he elaborated over the next 59 minutes.

Amongst his elaborative diatribes was the notion that extra words that do not further the message, almost always result in confusion, having the direct opposite impact the message was intended to send.

In honor of this professor, I’ll cut to the chase. Can we remove "student" from student-athlete? We are dealing with college sports, so they must be students, right?

Adding the word "student" may help some institutions assuage the feelings of guilt they have about passing students through their system who otherwise would not make it if they were not athletes, but at an institution such as the one that signs my check, I am fully confident that most of our athletes are students first. Those who aren’t weed themselves out rather quickly.

Many of them who do perform poorly in the classroom do so because they are student-Greeks, or more often than not, Greek-Students. That they are sometimes also athletes generally reflects more poorly on athletics than it does on the inter-Greek Council.

May my former professor excuse my digression.

Our drama students aren’t student-thespians. Our insect club does not consider its membership student-entomologists.

Putting the word student before the word athlete does little more than draw attention to the fact that at certain places at certain times, athletes were athletes, and not necessarily students. If this is still occurring, placing the word student beforehand is not going to solve the problem. Removing it from the phrase does not remove the kid from class, just as adding the word does not put a butt in a seat.

Other language I could do without:
First-Year Student: Freshmen and women (womyn), get over it. I want to hurl every time I come across a roster on the web with FY.

Not sports related but bugging me this morning nonetheless:
Person of Interest – Our current Administration has done more to harm language…. Sorry, different rant. This phrase was coined for the still unresolved anthrax attacks and its suspect, Steven Hatfill. Now every news channel uses it for the suspect in every case of a person who disappears. Let’s make this easier on everyone, there are suspects, victims, and sometimes witnesses.

In my world, a person of interest is generally a fan, sportswriter, or parent following one of our teams. I usually refer to them as fan, sportswriter, or parent, often substituting the word jerk for the first and third, and on occasion, the second.

There are many more, but putting them all out there would remove your incentive to share your own. What else should we eliminate SIDs? Let’s GIT-R-DUN.

The Rigors and Cure for Base-ketball Season

To most of the folks in the real world (that blurry place that exists off campus), Baseketball was just one of many goofy, easily forgettable movies. To those of us who breathe in the air on planet SID, it’s a real season, and we’re in the midst of it.

Some of us call it swretlaxtennis season, at other institutions it’s known as basketindoorsoftballgolf season. It’s kind of like that indefinable last few seconds between the last waking moment and first minute of sleep. It’s a punch drunk wooziness resulting from a football and basketball season that has raced by leaving the inevitable hangover that is spring in its wake. There is no amount of 4 a.m. Denny’s grease it seems, to sop up the metaphorical booze.

The tank is running low, the tires are running bald, but the finish line is in sight. The energy to post anything more eludes me.

The only cure for this hangover bordering on coma I can think of is found in a bag of clubs on a warm spring day, sans cell phone, email or any means of impersonal interpersonal communication. No mass communicating either. No communicating anything that doesn’t involve me lying about how many shots (golf or Jameson) proceeded my current, or isn’t otherwise related to the current journey around the circuit of silent relief.

Yup, that's really all I've got. I'm beat tired my SID bretheren and sistern. Beat tired.