Point. Counterpoint.
Tom Boswell is a long time respected columnist for the Washington Post. Deservedly so. I like Tom. I read his work but kid MSM journalists some times about “relevance to this next generation of sports enthusiast.” One of the reasons I enjoy publishing my blog is to be able to make observations about other folks’ observations and create a punch/counter punch kind of interactivity.
He is on record about his love of baseball; the lazy hazy days of summer; sepia toned highlights of sports heroes from the 50′s and 60′s dancing in his mind’s eyes in sloooooooooow motion; HBO Documentary like images; black and white videos; and Ike in the White House. Life was better then. Only organ music played here.
Tom also loves football. Football is a made for television sport. In an average 174 minute broadcast, there are only 11 minutes of actual action in a game. See this great Wall Street Journal article on this subject. There are many times more commercials played than plays run in a football game. Basically viewers are simply treated as a “target audience by marketers” with a few plays thrown in to keep you interested until the next commercial runs. Divide your ticket price by the number of minutes of actual in game action. How is that for return on investment?
Hockey? Tom has watched it for 35 years but believes it may move too fast and that there is too much action and too much drama. You can’t catch your breath. The players play HARD and FAST for 45 second shifts. The players have too much physicality. The “welter” of action can’t be seen by the normal eye.
OK. So based on new viewer habits created by the web on TV (MTV anyone?); in video games; with iPods; with iPhones; with Avatar-like next generation films being produced; with third screens everywhere; with Google telling you on every search that they searched the web and found 1 million listings in 1.3 seconds; in a Web 2.0 world - what sports do you think are best positioned for the new generation of consumers? The “fast” ones or the “slow” ones? The ones that reward a viewer’s investment of time with fast paced action or with commercials?
This is my bet: Younger viewers like multimedia, speed and pace and action. I am a zealot for hockey and for the NHL. I believe our fans “get” hockey; can process the speed and can follow the puck; and that there will be a large new generation that falls in love with the game. In a world of interactivity, speed rules. It doesn’t kill. It enhances the experience.
That is my take.
Ted, I think you’re right about today’s younger generations being better able to process fast action, but I don’t think it’s because they can process MORE. It’s because they are better trained by their environment to find and distill the essence out of what they see, even though they don’t absorb all of what is happening. Computer games, for example, are great training for that, because they all seem to have their “tricks” at every advancing level, and that’s what the player has to focus on accomplishing, while ignoring a lot of the fluff activity on the screen.
Admirers of baseball, our most leisurely of team sports, often like it because the more relaxed pace allows them to get their arms around the total complexity of the sport as it happens. Having played and coached baseball, I can tell you that there is an enormous amount of subtlety in the game. But if you know what to look for, you can absorb much of it during the game. Jude’s response above is instructive — if he wants to see more of the subtlety in a hockey game that he admittedly misses onsite he can use Tivo to do it.
I tend to agree with you Ted and also with Jim on this one. The Caps are really the only good sports team out of DC this decade. Many of us kids don’t really pay attention to NBA (usually college basketball with Maryland in town), the Redskins haven’t been good in basically twenty years (basically my whole life, too young to remember ’91), and for baseball, well its baseball. The Nationals are new and fairly bad and the Orioles haven’t done squat for ten years.
I’ve always been a Caps fan because of my father but also because hockey is a action-packed, fast, a great and under-appreciated sport. I also live a mile from one of the regions top hockey rinks (and curling too) so from time to time, it’s nice and easy to catch local high schools and colleges play and even catch an NHL team or two who are in town (doesn’t happen too often).
Anyway, the Caps have definitely benefited from a lack of enthusiasm about both the Bullets and Redskins.
@paul danziger the first comment:
Tarik does a great job covering hockey for the Post. I would not group him into your accurate assessment of the rest of the Post writers. For years, the Post crew was too elitist for hockey and spoke down of the Caps with a disdain for the sport in general. Hockey was a second rate sport in their world.
@Jude:
Exactly! Hockey fans love to see it live at the game then listen to the post-game show on the way home, then watch the game again on the DVR for the commentary, the information, the plays again from all angles. Can we get enough of this team? And all this without the tailgate … who would have thunk it?
The NHL is on the rise … just like their redesigned logo which took the downward angled, orange “NHL” and replaced it with an upward angled, silver “NHL.”
Go Caps!!
The problem with the Washington Post is that they do not have a sports section. They have a Redskin’s section, with occasional coverage of the Wizards, the Nationals, United and the Capitals, in that order. A sports writer writes about sports, the Post has no sports writers (or sports editors either). And, no offense intended, it seems that Tarik is the designated hockey writer. The rest are just shills for their sport. Even Wilbon, who I like, panders. Oh well. My coverage comes thru subscription cable and the internet, can’t count on the Post.
GO CAPS!
There are 2 sports that provide nearly non-stop action, soccer and hockey and DC has 2 of the best teams in the country in each sport (I know the Caps haven’t won anything yet but it’s only a matter of time and yeah, DC United has missed the playoffs two years in a row, but they have more trophies than any other MLS team). So, it’s unfortunate that the WaPo is grossly behind the times.
You see, I can understand the coverage of Arenas. Its a scandal, and scandals always ALWAYS sell. But that doesn’t excuse all the oher times this year where there as been no coverage of the Caps except by their beat writer Tarik El-Bashir.
Its disappointing to here guys like Mike Wise and now Tom Boswell having such a bias agianst hockey. They are professional sports columnists and its their job to cover local sports. Whether it be tennis, the Olympics, hockey, or bowling.
As much as I love hockey I have a hard time beleiving hockey will ever be a dominating marketing force like baseball and football. I think the fast paced action of hockey will always keep it alive, but there are far too many important $$$ people involved in baseball and football to let those slow and highly profitable sports go to waste.
Anyone remember the FoxTrax experiment (the blue comet puck trail) in the late 90s? That didn’t last long. Hockey is a fast sport, take it or leave it. I’ll take it!
There is a reason why so many people who see a hockey game live fall in love with it – and it’s not the nostalgia invoking slow pace!!y. And HD has made watching the game at home much more enjoyable. Let Mr. Boswell have his baseball, I’ll take hockey any day.
Ted: I agree with you, but the best thing you have going for you with the kids today is that the Caps are the only winning team in town and have the biggest superstar. Kids growing up are the same as anyone else. When they pick teams to support and sports to follow, they are attracted by wins, championships and players to idolize. And those decisions follow them for the rest of their lives. Today’s kids have five local pro sports teams to fall in love with. But only one is the hottest ticket in town and has the championship potential of the Caps. Not to mention Ovechkin is a superstar kids can idolize without worrying that he will be carrying guns into Verizon. I have to think that the Caps will continue to reap the rewards of the current environment twenty and thirty and forty years from now as well, as kids who are attracted now continue to follow the team and the sport as they grow older. And they will pass their fandom on to their kids. Winning a Cup would ensure it.
I could agree with Mr. Boswell….up until HD came to town. Hockey in HD is a game changer. Now, you can see the puck. You can see which part of the goal one of Ovie’s blistering wrist shots made it to. You can see the beauty of Brendan Morrison shooting a backwards, between the legs goal (was that sick or what?). Hockey and HD were made for each other.
Great reply Ted!
“[...]it may move too fast and that there is too much action and too much drama. You can’t catch your breath. The players play HARD and FAST for 45 second shifts. The players have too much physicality. The “welter” of action can’t be seen by the normal eye.” You’re being very polite, Ted, but if Tom can’t see what’s wrong with that whole attitude, then there’s no hope for him to ever “get” the new style of hockey in the NHL. He should try being inside the Verizon center when Semin makes a no look pass across the seam to hit a trailing Backstrom’s stick… Or when a ref misses a call against a hated rival’s goon (I’m looking at you, Scott Hartnell). Fast paced? You bet. I think that’s what makes the best sports fun.
An example of the new media effect: After we go see a game at the Phone Booth, we head home and watch the game in HD on our TiVo. We want to see all the plays from different angles, and in slow-motion. Perhaps just as importantly, though, we want to hear what JoeB and Locker have to say about the plays, missed calls, fancy passes, stats, and anything else we may have not noticed while caught up in the excitement rink-side. I also feel it necessary to see Gabby’s presser after every game, if possible. While doing this re-view, I generally read the post-game roundup by Tarik, JoeB’s blog, etc. Then the next day, I read all of the (about a half-dozen) relevant blogs about the game and the upcoming match-ups,etc… which is what brought me here.
That’s okay, if Tom Boswell can’t process hockey, it’s his problem. Those of us who are quick enough to do so enjoy it.
Well Ted,
as a “Younger viewer” and Capitals fan, you sir are correct.
We fans are lucky to have such a cutting edge owner at the helm of this Washington Capitals team. Who takes new technology and runs with it. No matter how “fast” it may be.
well said, ted.
The main problem with all the Wash Post columnists is one of their personal bias. It has become obvious that not one columnist for the Post either really understands the game of hockey, or, equally as important, cares for it a great deal. There is also obviously no directive by the sports editor to require at least a minimum of columns on hockey.
The obsessive coverage of the Gilbert Arenas fiasco is so over the top, fueled simply because of the personal interests of the columnists rather than the desire by the reading public to see an “Arenas column” literally every single day. Michael Wilbon and Mike Wise must believe that in a calendar of NFL playoffs, college basketball, and hockey, that readers care to read only about an immature, selfish, me first player who never made his teammates any better. The one word writers abhor more than any other is “boring” and that is what this never-too-much- Gilbert coverage has become.
It is a sad irony that the ONE winning pro team in our area, the team with the biggest superstar not only in this city but in the entire sport, the team that without a doubt provides a level of entertainment that far exceeds the city’s other professional teams, and the team that is seeing the fruits of its courageous vision is basically ignored by the post columnists.
After 36 years of pro hockey in Washington, one would expect sport writers to have a level of knowledge about hockey close to that of other sports. Unfortunately, not one of the Post’s columnists knows enough about the sport to write any column of succinct analysis. Just turn to the NHL network on TV or listen to an XM hockey station to instantly realize the difference in ability to communicate about hockey. The rare columns that do appear in the Post are more human interest type articles rather than those similar to Boswell’s National type articles that are filled with analysis, statistics, etc.
We all should be allowed personal biasness as long as others are not affected. If the Post columnists simply like other sports more than hockey, that is their right.This, however, does not excuse them from either knowing hockey ( especially Washington hockey) or ignoring it.
The days have passed when one can defend the lack of Capital coverage by weak rebuttals that there is not enough of a widespread interest in the team. This is simply another supposed excuse by a bunch of writers who simply continue to treat the sport section as tho it belongs to them and not to the readers.