Apparently, I'm Big News in Arkansas...

Note to future journalists: take the forthcoming example as a lesson in how not to write and report. Especially, NEVER EVER write an article based around things you've cut-and-pasted from Google News.

Apparently, some sportswriter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette either had a little too much time on his hands, or was running close to deadline and became extremely desperate for material.

So, the writer featured a portion of my quite controversial article "The Ten Most Overrated Things in Sports" as the top-billed item in their "Second Thoughts" segment.

Particularly, he features my snippet stating that SEC Football is the eighth most overrated thing in sports. 

I couldn't help but laugh out loud as soon as I saw this:

http://www2.arkansasonline.com/news/2008/jul/23/second-thoughts-20080723/?print

I love the headline: "His Ratings are Really Overrated". So clever!

The sad thing is that this professional sportswriter doesn't understand the definition of the word "overrated". See, for something to be overrated, it has to be rated in the first place. My rankings, posted on an open source blog site, only netting about 500 hits before I had to delete it due to obnoxious and profane responses, isn't exactly what I'd call pertinent sports news.

Even better, the writer completely misses the point of his own article, as he doesn't even try to address any reasons why my rankings are overrated. Column space isn't an issue here —he could have taken key snippets from my post and retorted them, instead of being lazy and copying-and-pasting my entire item.

But, although he apparently didn't have space to rebutt my arguments, this skimpy writer did have plenty of room to launch a little personal attack! He continues:

"Of course, it appears Beakley doesn’t like anything about sports that is supposed to be the best of the best, also including the Super Bowl and Olympics in his top 10. Maybe John Madden, who is also on the list, can “scribble” him some directions to something that can’t be overrated - like Denver’s cup stacking championships."

What's really hilarious is that this cocky advice about cup stacking comes from a newspaper with a writer dedicated to covering— bowling. Yes, that's right— the Democrat-Gazette has a beat writer whose assignment is to report on overweight hillbillies rolling a ball at ten pins. What nerve.

Also, it might have been a good idea for this professional journalist to actually read the article and notice that I never said I hated the Super Bowl or the Olympics —I said that they're overrated —as in they don't live up to the hype created by ESPN, Madison Avenue, and corporate sponsors.

The Super Bowl is undoubtedly the biggest sporting event of the year, but it doesn't live up to the luster and hype that surrounds it: two weeks of wall-to-wall media coverage, six hours of pregame, three different concerts throughout the game, etc.

There have been many good games, especially recently. But overall, most Super Bowl games are lackluster in hindsight.

And, the Olympics consist of boring sporting events like running in straight lines and riding horses. Their appeal is commercial: deriving from American jingoism, and ballyhoo by multinational corporations.

Some people would have been offended by this pathetic Democrat-Gazette article, but I'm not. My article was intended to be an outside-the-box look at major sports from a realist's/cynicist's perspective. A lot of people were up in arms about it— and that's okay, because my views of sports are quite different than most sports fans'.

But, my article had no place being trashed in a supposedly reputable journalistic publication. The Democrat-Gazette's criticism of me is yet another piece of evidence to show why print journalism is dying a slow and steady death.

Besides, going by the poor news judgment skills of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sports staff, they may very well send a reporter to Denver for comprehensive coverage of this year's World Cup Stacking Championships! Right alongside their award-winning bowling reports! Now that's front page news, Arkansians!