MLB News: Indians activate RP Matt Albers
April 22, 2013Brett Myers sidelined for at least two weeks with tendonitis and elbow sprain
April 22, 2013I was extremely happy to learn that NFL Network and ESPN have decided that they won’t be tipping draft picks via Twitter this week during the NFL draft. Adam Schefter will still be working to break extraordinary news like trades or bold moves, but if there’s just a team sitting in a slot and selecting a guy, Schefter will not be reporting it a minute ahead of time, for example. They’ve also agreed to avoid showing potential draftees on the phone in New York City in order to try and get the pick to the TV audience before it escapes the lips of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. I don’t know if this will work completely to keep from spoiling picks as ESPN and NFL Network can’t control other guys like Jay Glazer who are as plugged in as anyone in the NFL world, but it’s a good idea, I think.
So am I really just advocating for the death of reporting? I don’t think so. I’ve taken the same stance with the NBA draft too, by the way. I just think that while uncovering potential trades and free agency moves is a valuable bit of reporting there’s something really worthless about scooping a live event a mere minute or less before the thing actually happens. If information is measured in value where the amount of time of relevance is determinant of actual value of the piece of info, then info with mere seconds or minutes of “useful” life is decidedly of low value.
All this comes in the same time period where I discussed the value of information on Twitter against the backdrops of the cable news networks with regard to the Boston bombing and subsequent man-hunt. In that case, I prefer the truth and immediacy of Twitter as the events are unfolding. Even taking into account the sheer difference in gravity of the NFL draft and the hunting of a terror suspect, it would seem that what I’m displaying is a hypocritical stance. I guess I’m alright with that in this case. Yes, it takes some work to report on a draft pick before it actually happens, but clearly the entertainment angle is of importance on draft night and shouldn’t be ignored.
Before you even start, don’t tell me to just stay off of twitter and that I’m creating my own issue here. This year, I’ll be at a draft party with plenty of other people who will be glued to their smartphones and I can practically guarantee that some of the picks will be tipped ahead of time just as they were a year ago. I understand the complexities and yes, I understand that I can take full responsibility for my own entertainment and stay home and not allow anyone to spoil anything for me if I take a bunker mentality. The problem is that I don’t want to watch the NFL draft in a bunker and I don’t think I should have to. This is an entertainment venture that is supposed to be fun, after all.
Ultimately, I just find this type of reporting akin to reporting masturbation. It’s like a show-off guitarist playing a guitar solo that shows some sincere skill and ability while not turning out to be a song worth listening to. Having well-placed sources and information is a great thing for reporters and commentators who are trying to help make sense of what’s happening from game-to-game and season-to-season in the NFL. But I’ll pass on having to know that the Browns are taking a certain guy a mere 15 seconds before it actually happens. The structure of the event is immediate enough.
As I said though, it probably won’t work anyway. The NFL can only embargo the people associated with NFL Network and ESPN, it seems. Someone will fill the “void” left by Adam Schefter and company who have been able to tweet constant spoilers over the last few years. Even as everyone knows what they’re doing is valueless at best and harmful to entertainment at worst, I’m sure it will continue and be defended as a technically justifiable practice. The same people who support it will smugly laugh at someone like me who thinks it just makes too much sense not to do it.
Make no mistake though. It makes sense, and I applaud the efforts.
24 Comments
It’s the end of the world as we know it…and I seem fine!
You may feel fine, but you don’t seem fine at all. 🙂
i think the main point here is that twitter is actually news. And if you are releasing this stuff via twitter there is no reason i need to watch your show. THAT is why they aren’t leaking picks anymore. In the past, the television has had a monopoly on the NFL draft, but now people can get their information without watching the TV show. The way that twitter was one-upping TV was obsoleting it.
Don’t quite understand the strength of your feeling about this, Craig. Yes, it spoils the drama of the league announcement, but if I’m dying to know who the Browns will take (or the team before them takes, maybe tipping me to our selection) why should I care about the quality of the NFL draft show? I just want someone to gimme the scoop, I don’t care whether it’s the Commish.
Here is a novel concept. Report the pick when the team makes the pick. They hold on to the pick for so long (esp after first rd) that sometimes I read the pick on the screen 30 sec or so before it is announced…ridiculous.
Cool. Well, then let’s not have a televised draft at all. We’ll just sit at home and read press releases. I know what I’m saying is extreme, but come on! If we’re in it for the entertainment, then let’s work on making it entertaining.
“Obsoleting it”?
Interesting.
I, like Craig, am happy about these changes. To me, the draft is like a movie I’ve been waiting a year to see and I don’t want spoilers about what’s going to happen.
My biggest beef for years was when they’d show the players in the green room answering their phones. That always ruined the suspense for me. Twitter is obviously a more recent draft day annoyance to me. However, I can stay off Twitter if I need to. It’s not the reporting on trades that bother me, that is fine– but I don’t need to have suspense ruined by someone reporting information 30 seconds before it’s going to be widely disseminated either.
If football games were on a 30 second delay, I wouldn’t want to see a tweet about my team scoring a touchdown before I see it happen either.
I could a reason behind this move if tv advertisers were complaining about how the ability to obtain draft news via Twitter is hurting viewership, but last year’s draft was the most watched ever. So I guess I’m not really seeing why there’s a problem here other than it’s annoying
Oh boy, Nerd Club in session. Maybe the meeting was a tad overdue. Or maybe Saggy has forced things.
I think that’s our point of contention. I could not care less about the entertainment aspect of the official tv show. I’m perfectly happy catching it on a local radio show with their interspersed comments, or via some other media form. After about 15 years of Kiper’s pompadour and bombast, came to feel about the show about the same as I feel about fireworks shows: I’ve had my fill, honey you take the kids if they want to go.
I love it… I can always avoid Twitter on draft night, but I can’t ignore seeing a guy on his cell phone with a big smile talking to his new team. I like to watch the NFL draft as a show, as a spectacle. It’s more fun when the announcement is the first we hear about a player going to a certain team… the way they were doing it, the announcement was really pointless.
Theirs no reason he would do that on purpose, is they’re? I think your just reading two much into it.
Welcome. Applications on the table by the house tweeds.
so no more of Berman “scooping” picks 3 seconds before they are announced, while smugly acting like the smartest guy in the room? Winner winner, chicken dinner.
They need cheerleaders!!
As long as I have your attention quick question: has WFNY given any thought to having polls included in various writings? I think it might be an interesting element as far as interactivity to see what people may think. Perfect example: If you were the Cleveland Browns who would you draft #6? a. Shamrock; b.Shamrock; c.Shamrock; d.Shamrock; e.Steve
you don’t remember the reader polls on what will happen in the upcoming Browns game?
That was an entire writing itself I mean like something at the end of a particular writing like whether the Cavaliers hiring Mike Brown was a good idea or something similar.
Btw I’m telling Craig your impersonating him!! ;o)
I agree with not showing the players. It ruins the fun of watching the draft if they just cut to the player. It’s very anticlimactic.
As for Twitter, I couldn’t care less. I don’t use it. My friends don’t use it. And, were I at a party where someone kept shouting things out before they happened, we’d do the same thing we would do if he yelled out spoilers to a movie…
So, basically, a “news” organization (ESPN) is agreeing not to report news it is aware of and able to report because not reporting it will make the entity it covers (the NFL) more entertaining?
I mean, to the extent that I care I agree that this will make the TV show — which I don’t plan on watching this year — more enjoyable, and I don’t are about journalistic “scoops” in general when the “scoop” consists of being the first to report what everyone else will know in 30 seconds, but I still think there’s something, well, odd about this decision from a journalistic-ethics point of view.
Yore a bunch of goofballs.
Good job, NFL.
I couldn’t agree less. Sports is not news. It is entertainment and so if the draft show.
Watching those idiots at ESPN spoil the pomp and circumstance of the show is like someone repeatedly revealing the next dramatic scene in a blockbuster movie.
I’m not at the movie to become informed. Same goes for the draft show. I’m there to be entertained and the buildup is far more entertaining than Adam Schefter whispering in my ear and spilling popcorn in my lap, figuratively speaking.