Don't ask me why, but today on the Mike and Mike ESPN radio show, Mike Greenberg had on Will Perdue and Buster Olney. That may be the oddest combination I've heard of in a while, a former stiff basketball big man and a baseball expert, but whatever.
Anyhow, Perdue pretty much out of the blue all of a sudden started dissing blogs.
"How much merit do these things have? They're just somebody's opinion," Perdue said. "These guys just write these blogs which is their opinion, next thing you know it becomes fact, and then we're talking about it because it's on some blog that's started by some guy that lives with his mother in an apartment in Hackensack, New Jersey."
Not the "live in their mother's basement" line again. How many times to have to make this clear - I live in a van down by the river!But rather than have the discussion turn into a "let's bash blogs and fans who have opinions," Mike Greenberg took a very smart route. Here's what Greenberg said:
"Yes, you should not take as gospel the things they say, but on some level everything is just someone's opinion," Greenberg said. "Everything I say on this show is just my opinion."
And he wasn't done with just that, either. He had even more to say."When someone writes something nasty about us in the New York Post, that's really just one person's opinion, and when someone writes something nasty on a blog, that's also just one person's opinion," Greenberg said. "That opinion is no more or less valid than my own."
Olney also finished up by saying their are many baseball blogs and independent sites that provide excellent baseball analysis.I'm not writing about this occurrence to toot my own horn as a blogger. I think it has wider ramifications. Fans such as you and me (meaning you reading this) have always had opinions about sports. But for the longest time, we weren't able to express them to any kind of community outside of friends at the bar.
The only people who were allowed to have their opinions read by any large scale audience were people who went the traditional route and worked for newspapers or TV stations.
Now, fans are increasingly finding a voice, be it on blogs, internet radio, or sites such as this one. And while the truth is that most of our opinions are not quite as well researched and presented as many experts out there, there are some of us that do make better arguments than the experts. And that scares a lot of people in mainstream sports media, like Perdue.
In the end, you and I are the ones who are helping guys like Greenberg and Perdue (he's an announcer) get paid. We listen to them give their opinions and pay attention to them supposedly because they know what they're doing. But at the same time, we have valid opinions as well, that can sometimes be more valid than the ones they give. Greenberg understands that on some level, and that it shouldn't be ignored, especially given how fans are continuing to assert their authority.
And if the mainstream sports media wants to survive, it's going to have to start realizing that as well.
For other takes on this, see Fanhouse and AA.
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