Sprints Is Beginning to Think Fayetteville Is Native American for 'Insane Asylum' // 08.17.10
by cocknfire on Aug 17, 2010 3:17 AM EDT
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PrintWe're sure this is Houston Nutt's fault
No one will ever call Renee Gork intelligent. In fact, it's pretty dumb for a Hog Sports Radio employee -- again, that's Hog Sports Radio -- to wear a Florida cap to a Bobby Petrino press conference. But there's stupid, and then there's reacting to stupidity with an even more massive act of stupidity.
Enter 99.5 FM in Arkansas, which responded to the hat miscue and Petrino's reaction to it by firing Gork. The station might not have had much choice; this is Arkansas after all, and Arkansas fans acted like Arkansas fans.
Fans online were upset by Gork’s hat choice. She spawned numerous threads on message boards and, according to posts, sparked an e-mail and phone campaign to the station and its advertisers.
There's apparently no truth to reports that a plane flew overhead the stations calling for her to be fired or that her cell-phone bills were requested under the state's open-records laws.
Arkansas Expats is resigned to its fate.
Breaking news: the sun rose in the east this morning, the sky remains blue, and the hyper-intense fringe of Razorback fans has embarrassed the rest of us by demonstrating a general lack of perspective on the importance of college football vs real life.
Again, Arkansas fans -- that's your blog on SB Nation, not TSK and not a liberal ESPN mainstream media conspiracy.
And how much ever anyone might not like what Gork did, remember that this ended up costing her a job -- i.e., her livelihood. In the worst economy in any of our lifetimes. (Apologies to any readers who were around for the Great Depression.) This is one of those classic "walk a moment in her shoes" situations: Everyone makes mistakes at work, and this relatively minor one (in a more sane universe) got this woman fired. The only person who deserves to be out of a job in this case is whoever was stupid enough to fire her.
Secret Agent Men: South Carolina officials preparing -- gasp -- a letter!
The Department of Consumer Affairs in the Palmetto State is taking action with regards to AgentGate. That is, if you count firing off a strongly-worded letter action.
"I would say it’s fairly likely that at least a letter would be sent out to our registered agents regarding gathering information on the player that the media reports have been circling around, and any agent activity surrounding that," [Carri] Grube Lybarker said Monday.
Actually, there's a chance that agents who know something but followed the law might comply; what better way to outmaneuver your competition than by helping investigators levy a $100,000 or throw him in jail. (All of them should be in jail if this is true, but that's another post.)
We'll go over this one more time
Brian Cook plays off this story in the Daily Cardinal to make the same point that Big Ten fans mistakenly make about their soon-to-be-pre-eminent media empire.
That's one reason the much-hyped SEC ESPN contract was overblown: when you're locked in that long the contract is shiny up front but by the end of it looks ragged. The BTN is excepted because the conference owns half of it and gets a revenue share, so that 112 million now won't be 112 in 2031. The SEC's deals will still be 150 and 55 in 2023.
All of which is true, except a few things: First of all, get used to 15-year contracts, because they're the future. Both the SEC and the ACC deals will be for 15 years, and my bet is that the Big XII's new "Save Our Conference" contract will be along the same lines. The reason for this has nothing to do with the economic of college football and everything to do with the economics of cable television. Part of how ESPN pays the bills for these contracts (aside from advertising) is the subscriber rates that cable providers pay to Bristol; as those rates have climbed, some cable providers have waged protracted wars with ESPN while some analysts have floated the idea of kicking sports channels into a separate tier.
Neither of those things is in ESPN's interests, which is why Bristol is trying to lock in fixed costs for years at a time -- it keeps the subscriber rates low (perhaps artificially low) in the out years and makes the battles with cable providers less frequent. What the Big Ten Network will do if it decides to ask for more per subscriber in the future and cable providers balk is an open question.
The other problem with this chart is that it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. SEC teams retain many of the rights that now go to the Big Ten Network, and the league also kept some of the digital and other rights that the ACC signed over to Bristol for the extra $5 million annually in that deal.
Finally, while I'm not a fan of the 15-year contracts or conference expansion, the latter will destroy the former in the long run. At some point in the next five to ten years, most people believe the Big XII and / or the Big East will spin apart. That will bring on the next round of realignment, and we'll be right back to the SEC trying to get Texas A&M -- a move that, if successful, will open the TV contracts up to renegotiation (there's reportedly a clause dealing with this) and put Texas on the table in addition to any inflation factor the SEC wants to incorporate. In the meantime, the SEC can try to get Virginia Tech (locking in the DC market) or another team with a market or fan base to offer and get the deal it needs.
Finally, there's a publicity premium that comes with a guaranteed league game on national broadcast television every week and ESPN having a vested self-interest in putting SEC games in some of the best places on its schedule. Attention drives merchandise sales with licensing fees that ultimately flow to the schools as well. Do I know what that is? No, and anyone who tells you that they do is a liar. But until someone knows how to calculate things like that with some degree of credibility, there's no way to know the value of any of these contracts.
Pessimism in Tuscaloosa?
That might be too much, but outsidethesidelines outlines for Roll Bama Roll one of the problems with the idea that only offensive improvement will be able to offset the defensive and special-team losses for Alabama.
So, while it's easy (and accurate) to say that the Alabama offense needs to improve to compensate for expected declines with both the defense and the special teams units, the problem is simply that the offense generally played at a high level in 2009 and it is thus very difficult to significantly improve further, regardless of how many starters return.
That's buried deep in a thorough post on the one area for improvement that the Tide might have: vertical passing. I'm not as sure that I'm as skeptical about the possibility of an even better offense in 2010, but as OTSL points out, it's hard to hope for too much improvement when you're already averaging more than 32 points a game.
'Probation Bowl 2011' is off
Tennessee is trying to negotiate its way out of a series with North Carolina. The Vols wanted to move the home-and-home with the Tar Heels back a few years, but UNC never misses a chance to drop a series with an SEC team.
If somebody offered you $5 million to $6 million to play baseball, you would do the same thing
Zach Lee will get that much as a signing bonus for agreeing to a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. It is surprising, but really shouldn't be, as Frank McCourt has made one reckless decision after another with his money. Here's hoping Lee isn't another one of those.
Joker Phillips thinks grayshirts are ...
Elliott Porter joins Kentucky after the Great Grayshirt Controversy of 2010 at LSU.
Jordan Haden released
The brother of former Florida player Joe Haden will get to transfer anywhere he wants. Hear that, Derek Dooley? ANYWHERE HE WANTS WITHOUT CONDITIONS.
Two defensive prospects don't qualify at Tennessee
Josh Brown and Marcques Dixon will have to find somewhere else to play football.
Ja'Juan Story knows some mean women
Story was arrested Sunday night after breaking up a rather intense fight -- battle might actually be a better word for it -- between his brother's girlfriend and three other women.
"When I turned around, her and a woman and her two daughters was about to fight," Story said in a text message. "So I came over because there was knives and I took a box cutter from my brother's (girlfriend), but one of the other girls had two knives. I tried to tell her to leave but she wasn't listening."
Story said he tried to keep the women from fighting and got cut and his knuckle -- not to mention the arrested part -- for his trouble. Even if that part's not true, he should fit right in in Gainesville.
Well, he's colorful if nothing else
Mike Leach is going to be a game analyst on CBS College Sports Network, which means there are at least two chances for him to be in the booth for SEC games: Mississippi State at Houston on Oct. 9, and Tennessee at Memphis on Nov. 6.
This still makes no sense to me
Maybe it's because I'm a college football fan and not a college basketball fan, but, really, who's going to stay up until 4 a.m. to watch Central Michigan play Hawaii? In any case, ESPN is going to once again show 24 hours of basketball to kick off the 2010-11 season on Nov. 16, with SEC games including Ohio State at Florida at the far more reasonable hour of 6 p.m. ET on ESPN; Belmont at Tennessee at 9:30 p.m. ET on ESPNU and South Carolina at Michigan State at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN.
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She wasn't fired for wearing a hat.
I’m not saying that she should have been fired, but the unprofessionalism she displayed, both before and after the press conference incident, was staggering. Things like using her work twitter to tell fans that if they don’t like the hat she wore, to buy her a new one. If anything, the unprofessionalism is what got her, especially since she’s only been in the radio business since July. But, that doesn’t make for an interesting story.
I don't know if she should have been fired or not,
but here’s a little PSA for sportswriters on how to play it safe in keeping your job when in doubt:
1. If you’re assigned to follow a team and report on that team in a homer-ish way, don’t wallpaper your work twitter account with another team’s logo – especially one that does not provoke fond memories of the previous year’s contest. Same thing for wearing caps.
2. Don’t use your twitter feed to bitch about your job covering said team or how you wish you could follow the team you wallpapered on your twitter account. For example:
Renee Gork Capshaw really wishes I didn’t have to get ready and work
this early on a Saturday..even if it is media day for the Razorbacks..if it
was Florida that would be a totally different story.
Renee Gork Capshaw is thinking how wrong my current status is…I’m
sitting here in a Gator shirt, drinking lemonade out of a Gator glass,
looking at the big Gator on my diploma yet am researching and reading
stuff about the Razorbacks….this new job really is a job!!!:)
One last thing for the talking heads on ESPN, Bobby Petrino did not get the girl fired. He was trying to make a joke, a quip, which I know is hard to discern since his demeanor is rather bland. But to jump on him for his comment is ridiculous.
Ditto
This Renee Gork deal is typical of the viral nature of our internet driven society. The lady did not like her job and she got what she deserved. Just the opposite of the HUD lady in Georgia. In both cases things got out of hand before anyone in charge had a clue what was going on. Trip Andrews is spot on!
Would you cover an Obama presser in Bush gear?
How about a Coke shareholders meeting wearing Pepsi gear?
As someone who has been unemployed, I’m sorry she lost her livelihood. I don’t mean to be glib about that.
But a profession is privilege, not an entitlement. When basic decorum and appropriate attire need to be explained to you, you’re out of your depth, plain and simple. Her Twitter comments and sartorial choices make it clear that she completely misapprehends something fundamental about the craft of journalism.
If she doesn’t blame this on crazy Arkansas fans, she’ll learn from this. Or she’ll keep making the same type of mistake and keep being surprised by how she keeps getting the same result.
As a journalist ...
I wouldn’t cover an Obama presser in any political gear. But part of the point about an Obama presser is that it deals with the future of our nation. Sports press conferences aren’t that important and shouldn’t be treated as such. That’s the whole problem with the firing and the debate about it. Sports coverage should be light-hearted; you fire someone over something more serious than that.
Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.
College athletic programs with annual budgets of $50-$140MM are big business. To say they are not important is a bit naive. I’m not suggesting I think it SHOULD be big business, but it is what it is and professional reporters know this.
It’s not up to you or me to tell other people what is important to them (at least not in what remains of our grandparent’s America). It is VERY important to the owners and other employees of that radio station since the success of their product determines their personal and professional success.
by Jim Grizzle on Aug 30, 2010 11:26 PM EDT up reply actions
As a former journalist ...
I would have a hard time telling sources “Hey, this beat isn’t as important as some of the others we cover, so if our partial abandonment of decorum and appropriate dress makes it appear as though we don’t take you as seriously, it’s because we don’t.”
Sports may not matter as much to you personally as other topics, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t give a reporter the right to flaunt that attitude in the face of sources and readers who see it differently. What got Gork fired was her inability to take seriously that Petrino and Hog fans take this seriously.
Be professional, period. Not just when an event matters to you personally. A journalist’s obligation is to his/her readers and sources, not to his/her personal interests.
Having been at three SEC Media Days and in several press boxes at the pro and collegiate levels, I’ve never known sports journalists to be overly concerned about “appropriate dress.” In any case, the hat is not that big a deal to me, particularly if it’s was a quick “let-me-grab-a-hat” mistake as Gork says. I think Petrino’s response to call her out was a good way to handle it. Everything else was overboard. I guess we’ll just have to disagree on that. (And if it was a joke, someone should alert the Arkansas sports information department. Because they told Gork it wasn’t a joke.)
As far as the tweets back to fans … eh, I can see some sort of discipline for that. I don’t think anything like firing her was called for, but I’m also sick of the attitude that the media should just sit back and take whatever criticism comes its way, so maybe I’m the wrong person to ask about that.
Finally, as for the Gators background and tweets on her personal Twitter account, that is again a lapse in judgement. But it’s one that’s going to be fairly common among relatively young journalists, who see Twitter as extension of their conversations with friends and not a public forum. Again, suspend her or tell her to take the account down or make it private.
Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.
A suspension would've been appropriate, but she'll find a job regardless.
I probably should’ve stated my opinion on that earlier. When you’re in the business, you keep your biases, loyalties, politics, etc. to yourself, at least until you move over to editorials. There’s no question that she needs some time off to internalize something so fundamental about her chosen profession. It astounds me that someone in media — i.e., someone whose copy appears before hundreds of thousands of eyeballs — would struggle with understanding the implications of social media.
Re: whether Petrino/Arkansas thought it was a joke … I’m quite sure they didn’t. They’ve got to maintain a balance between being open and accessible to the press/public, without opening themselves up to a Clay Travis-style free-for-all. With the lines blurring between professional and citizen journalism, that job is harder than it sounds.
Re: Tweets to fans, Lester Bangs once wrote that “The ultimate sin for any performer is contempt for the audience.” You may bristle at the idea of a journalist as performer, but once you get past literal definitions, the quote is rather apt. Anything beyond a constructive give-and-take with your readership borders on the kind of haughtiness that has created market opportunities for bloggers, Fox News, Drudge and a million other ankle-biters who have quickly eroded the position of mainstream media in the past 15 years.
Ultimately, this stuff isn’t hard. Guys like David Hale, Seth Emerson and plenty of other reporters at or around Gork’s pay grade have masterfully used social media to keep fans informed and engaged, without needlessly provoking them. Gork is the exception, and something needed to be done.
by aproposdenada on Aug 18, 2010 10:16 AM EDT up reply actions
No one thought it was a joke except for Gork.
Petrino was polite and answered her question. He told her if she had another question to take the hat off. She refused. If I am her boss COUNTING on her to be able to ask questions and she defiantly refused, that would be enough for me to fire her.
Did anyone else notice her attire in the video interviews she did the day after her firing? You guessed it…a Razorback red shirt. If she thinks attire is not important, why did she make it a point to wear red? Of course this is a rhetorical question because we all know she couldn’t play the “victim card” in blue/orange.
by Jim Grizzle on Aug 30, 2010 11:56 PM EDT up reply actions
Gork lied about her reason for grabbing the hat. She said it was raining when she left home. She lives in Bentonville and Weather Underground confirms there was 0.00" precipitation that Saturday. And it was certainly not raining INSIDE the football complex where the presser was held. She did it intentionally and her subsequent actions confirm this.
The Gator tweets were on her PERSONAL Twitter account (with the Gator background). No one cared if she was a UF alum or rooted for the Gators, just don’t do it while covering the Razorbacks. She set up a separate Twitter account for her job with a red background. It was on her work Twitter where she was defiant and unapologetic until AFTER her firing (i.e. there was no forthcoming apology as she stated). Ask any Razorback fan about Paul Eells and they will tell you they love him. He called AR football games for nearly 3 decades despite being an Iowa alum and previously calling Iowa and Vandy games. Her alma mater nor her fondness of Gators would have been a problem if she had just shown respect for her job and employer. She clearly lacks common sense which is even more astounding once you find out her husband is a Fayetteville native and radio producer in Arkansas. He went to college in OK, but this has never been a problem for him when it came to covering the Razorbacks.
What did her in was her Facebook wall comments. She COMPLAINED about the job 19 days after she started. I don’t care if you are a reporter, electrician or accountant, you DON’T complain on public social media about your job and expect no repercussions. The article above talks about the economy…ANYONE who complains about a new job after 19 days in this economy DESERVES to lose it. Let someone else who needs the job and will respect their employer have it.
Also, some other damning acts were not mentioned (of course, the point was to diss Arkansas fans, not present the WHOLE story, but I digress). She went up to players, including Mallett, and tried to get an on-the-record comment about what they thought about her hat. Other media members INCLUDING her own co-worker warned her not to wear the hat. She had habitually broken practice rules with cell phone and live Twitter use (other media complained to her personally about this). The hat was never a primary issue. If she had stripped naked to intentionally manufacture attention for herself instead of intentionally wearing the hat even AFTER she was asked to remove it before the presser, her social media would have inevitably come to the attention of her employer resulting in her firing.
As for FOIA and banners…
Florida fans flew banners to get Zook fired. Where’s the outrage there? The AJC FOI’d Damon Evans cell phone records in an attempt to uncover potential salacious details about his passenger not his wife. Are they insane? At least Arkansas fans were just trying to prove Nutt had quit recruiting efforts by not texting 4-5 star recruits (phone/text records confirmed this as suspected). Uncovering his affair was just a byproduct. Arkansas sports media members had the SAME info and never dared question Nutt about his recruiting. All fans did was FOI request “all information you sent __________ reporter since xx/xx/200x”. Once it was obvious the media would never hold Nutt accountable, the fans stepped up. That’s called being resourceful, not insane, especially when your head coach gets his close friends to send threatening emails to his own players.
by Jim Grizzle on Aug 30, 2010 11:50 PM EDT up reply actions
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