Outside Oberlin

Internet instantly gratifies sports fans
By Brad White

Today’s sports world has turned into one of instant gratification. Remember back in the day, when reciting the stats from the back of your baseball cards was itself a national pastime? When you would beg your parents to let you stay up and watch Sportscenter because you just had to see how the boys from Philly did? When sports information and opinion was not so proliferated and easily accessible as to make even the most avid sports fan annoyed?
Well, whether or not you remember it, there was a moment when all these things were the life of the sports fan. Not just the young sports fan either — across the generations, enthusiasts yearned to hear and read the slightest amount of information about “their ’Heels” or “their Red Wings.” Then came the internet revolution of the 1990s and the transformation of the sports world.
How many hours a day do you spend surfing sports websites? Wait, that number is sure to be too large to calculate. How many hours reading espn.com? Two? Three? Either way, I’m sure my roommate and I have you beat.
If there is any score or update that is desired, one simply need browse espn.com for a couple minutes. And if you want more than the score, that’s no problem either — almost all the major websites have highlights of the day’s action. Let’s just say that you aren’t after any sort of stat, you want to hear what the nerdy John Clayton has to say about the case of Barrett Robbins. Or maybe you want to hear the guest psychologist that espn.com brought in to write an article concerning the peculiarity of Robbins’ actions under the mental strain of bipolar disease. This poor man’s mental breakdown was dissected by football analysts, not to mention the rather unkind opinions of his teammates. Did I mention the timeline that detailed the events that led to Robbin’s tragic collapse?
The internet revolution has given a voice and incredibly large audience to thousands of sports writers, who would, if it were ten years ago, probably be teaching high school English. Six years ago nobody would have gotten a forum to lambaste the toughness of Robbins. Today, loyal readers would write in to espn.com calling for the editors’ heads if they didn’t get three “Robbins update” articles during the week following the Super Bowl.
Just to illustrate the power that this new field of writers has, one need look no further than one man (well, really, one boy): LeBron James. In a recent poll on espn.com, LeBron, or King James as he might prefer to be called, was voted the “greatest prep athlete ever.” I doubt that very many people got to watch highlights of Magic or even T-Mac dunking all over skinny, short white kids during their high-school glory days. Not only do today’s patrons get to see LeBron dunking, they get to read ten articles a week about how he is the savior of the NBA. Some may ask, why this kid? He must be really good if he is getting all this attention. Yes, he’s very good, but more importantly he has a personality that is marketable to young male sports fans. The Hummer and throwback jersey incidents actually boosted his popularity and even gave him some sort of “street credibility.” A kid has become the leading story on espn.com at least once a week. Sports writers know if they write something, anything about him, it will be read.
King James’ case illustrates how one individual can turn into a legend when writers come together in extolling his virtues. The case of Bill Simmons, better known to you and me as the Sports Guy, illustrates how one writer can take the forum he is given over the Internet and generate a truly enormous fan base.
If you have not ever read the Sports Guy, then really, you are not much of a modern sports fan. The Sports Guy’s forum is espn.com’s Page 2, where pop culture and sports opinion are mixed and dished out to the hungry millions of men, ages 15 to 30, waiting to eat it up. The Sports Guy had such a huge following of his articles on Page 2 that Jimmy Kimmel offered him a spot on his new late-night show as a writer. And his followers are not just casual readers, they are truly loyal. I know a few guys that came close to shedding tears when he announced he was moving to the West Coast. (No true Boston fan could ever leave the Sox or the Pats!) “What will we do without all the Doug Christie Jersey jokes, epic tales of Vegas trips and his truly precious ‘ramblings’ articles?" hundreds of thousands lament.
I, like millions of other Americans, can no longer imagine what my life would be like without Internet access. More importantly, I can no longer imagine a Sunday without nfl.com’s “game audiocast” that brings all of the hard-hitting action right through my computer speakers. Once the technological ball starts rolling it is often impossible to stop it (a little like Staudemire on his way up to dunk). Did you see the video of that dunk contest on espn.com? Amazing!
Don‘t be surprised when you hear this at Wrigley later this summer: “Who’s your favorite player, Tommy?” Dad asks. “Well,” Tommy says, "it used to be Sammy Sosa until Peter Gammons told me that he started thinking more about what the owners had to do to make the team better when he should have been spending extra hours in the batting cage learning some freaking plate discipline!”