Sporting Life

The ‘Boom goes the dynamite’ video is the holy grail of hilarious sports announcing and has become YouTube legend, but this video may be even better. It’s footage from the finals of a Magic the Gathering tournament (Magic is a card game for people who like to play Dungeons and Dragons, but don’t like painting little plastic wizards). I have no idea what’s happening in this clip, but the play-by-play guy’s reaction to the final card is absolutely priceless. The whole video gets kind of old, so you might want to fast forward a few minutes in. Here’s the video.

I reported on the men’s race at the famous Wharf to Wharf run from Santa Cruz to Capitola last weekend. It was one of the best experiences in my short career as a sports journalist. Oh, except for the part when I almost died.

I had never covered a road race before, so Sunday offered my first opportunity to ride in a media truck. I didn’t realize ‘media truck’ and ‘flat bed livestock hauler’ were synonymous.

The truck does it’s best to stay in front of of the lead group of runner without getting in their way. Apparently this is harder than it sounds. Even though the fastest runners are only going about 12 mph, the driver was accelerating up to 25-30 mph and breaking down to five, throwing me against  flimsy rails with signs all over them that read, “DO NOT LEAN ON RAIL.” My hair was being brushed by tree limbs over hanging the road. I was supposed to be taking mile split times for the runners, but my mind was somewhere else. Mentally I was planning my tuck and roll for when I was ejected from the vehicle.

The truck speeds up near the end of the course so all the media members can climb down and get in position for when the top finishers cross. Right when we’re reaching top speed, a guy takes down the gate in back. It was just about then fellow Sentinel sports reporter Julie Jag jumped behind me and pushed me forward, obviously planning to use me as a sled when we fell out.  She’s a road race veteran, so she knows all the tricks.

Somehow I survived, and it was fascinating watching some of the fastest distance runners in the world do their work. These guys’ second gear is about as fast as my fifth, and they maintain it for six miles. It takes them all of 4 minutes to recover at the end of the race, and then they’re laughing and doing interviews. It really looked like the truck ride was harder than the run. Still, I hope I get to tempt death again next year.

See results and coverage of the Wharf to Wharf on the Sentinel Sports website.

NCAA representatives ejected a reporter from a college baseball game for blogging on Sunday. According to the story, it is against NCAA policy to provide live updates from an event.

The article didn’t explain why the NCAA has this rule, but we were speculating here in the Sentinel newsroom that it probably has something to do with broadcast contracts restricting the right to provide instant information to whatever TV station is showing the game.

The editor of the paper that the reporter worked for is saying that this is a First Amendment issue and the paper may take legal action against the NCAA. I’m interested to see where this goes. Yes, it is the reporter’s right to provide information about a public event, but it is also the NCAA’s product, so I can see why they would want to control when and how information about it is reported.

I think the NCAA will eventually have to give in on this and allow blogging from games, because if anything, blogs are complimentary material to TV. I don’t know anybody who would choose to read 5-minute updates over watching the game. Running blogs are useful because experts can provide instant analysis and feedback without interrupting the broadcast. ESPN and its TrueHoop blog have done an excellent job of this during the NBA Finals. If anything, the running commentary has been more entertaining the the actual game.

If the NCAA really can’t stand watch people knowing what is happening in college sports without it making money off of it, one solution be to offer mandatory advertisements that must be run in any blog a reporter is doing for an NCAA event.

Anyways, why wouldn’t the NCAA want as much exposure as it could get for college baseball? I can’t blame people for wanting to read what was happening instead of having to hear the ping of those metal bats.