The Bay Area Sports Press: Where Ethics Go to Die

[TheShadow]

bleacherreport.com/articles/40356-the-bay-area-sports-press-where-ethics-go-to-die


The Bay Area Sports Press: Where Ethics Go to Die

By Jeff McMaster


First and foremost, I'm not an Al Davis apologist. I respect the man for the
positives he's brought to the NFL. The late Bill Walsh counted Al Davis
among his closest friends. They rank as two great football minds that would
have you wishing you were a fly on the wall when they discussed the game.
While the press painted one as a god in the NFL, the other has been
villified as a pariah.


It's been widely reported in the local press in Northern California's Bay
Area that Al Davis is teetering on the brink of insanity. Of course, if
they were talking about the ownership of the Forty Niners or Walsh, the
press would be more inclined to print that they were what I like to call,
"synaptically disengaged."


But this is the Bay Area press were talking about today, kiddies. A group
that, when Al Davis and the Raiders are their target, shoot straight from
the hip and aren't too concerned with collateral damage. They're akin to the
modern day version of the Keystone Cops.

First, let me offer my sincerest apologies to those writers whose ethics
continue to be beyond reproach. Lumping them together with anti-Raiders
crowd does them a deep disservice. So to Jerry McDonald, Jason Jones, Phil
Barber, and the rest, I offer my condolences for the quagmire of muddy
reporting that you wade through on a daily basis to get yourselves heard.

I grew up reading Jim Murray in Los Angeles. Mr. Murray was the
Michaelangelo of American sports writers. He created masterpieces with his
words, and above all else, he did so with dignity and journalistic ethics.

These days the best you could say about Ostler, Gay, Dickey, Cohen, et al,
is that they are the Monets of sports writers; they look good from afar, but
up close they're a mess. Their adolescent glee in writing their tall tales
is comparable to painting with crayons.


They've been entrusted by the public to inform, entertain, and opine. The
catch is the word "trust," which indicates that they do so with at least a
modicum of integrity. But where Al Davis and the Raiders are concerned, they've
willfully bypassed the key ingredient necessary to bake this particular
cake. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there who are so busy
washing down their slice with Kool Aid that they don't taste the bitterness.

To quote Scott "Scooter" Oslter, "What I hear from a lot of fans sounds
like disgust and outrage. They can't believe the way Davis is jacking around
his kid coach, courting catastrophe."

Um, Scooter, the 'disgust and outrage' was a direct result of the reckless
reporting by you and your mediots. Some people are willing to believe
anything they hear. Hey, Bush got elected twice didn't he?

Kiffin said, "Where there's smoke, there's fire," and there is no doubt that
there was some dissension in Oakland at the end of the season. The fact that
the Raiders aren't a team to air their dirty laundry in public has
apparently given the hacks out there the green light to embellish things to
their little hearts' content, forever citing the unnamed source.

Scooter likes to begin his column with the line, "Deep thoughts and cheap
shots..." that way he's always sure to get it half right. Like the others,
he reported the imminent firing of Kiffin, then wrote that Kiffin had no
idea that the Raiders had hired receivers coach James Lofton, despite it
being publicly reported that Kiffin interviewed Lofton.

Then again Scooter, with your infinite football knowledge you predicted the
Raiders would win two, possibly three, games next year. Scooter, the Raiders
have a weaker schedule, additions of Gabril Wilson, DeAngelo Hall, Michael
Bush, Darren McFadden, etc, and the increased experience of last year's
rookies, and you came up with two wins?

Either you're drinking more than Kool Aid, or you're just a tad unwilling to
admit that the "synaptically disengaged" fella the in the jump suit just has
had a helluva off-season. Despite your recent article, he doesn't actually
appear to be "daffy as the Mad Hatter."


As for Nancy Gay, she is to the Raiders what Alanis Morrisette is to men.
Let us not forget that Nancy scooped the entire world and reported last year
that Kiffin was going to cut Warren Sapp because they were too close to the
same age. Dear Nancy, don't you know that Kiffin can't cut anyone? Only Al
makes those decisions. Well, at least that's what you reported.

Nancy opined that Al was furious in hindsight over Kiffn's moving of Randy
Moss on draft day. Perhaps Nancy should have read what the real reporters
were writing. Moss had already regressed into his team-destroying 'me first'
attitude when Kiffin first spoke to him after being named head coach.
McDonald reported that "Moss told him (Kiffin) in pointed, profane terms he
wasn't interested in talking."


Basically Moss had tied the Raiders' hands. Knowing that Moss was most
likely going to undermine Kiffin and poison the locker room, it made sense
to move him and free up the enormous cap space he would have eaten up. Not
to mention the detrimental effect he may have had on impressionable rookie
QB JaMarcus Russell.

Then there's the venerable Mr. Glenn Dickey. You'd think as long as he's
been around he would have bonded with Al over Geritol shots with Ensure
chasers. Not Glenn, apparently he's not happy sharing the Bay Area geriatric
sports stage.


In a January 28, 2008 article, Dickey actually called for the NFL commission
to remove Al Davis from decision making power. Dickey wrote, "Goodell should
step in and put Davis' son, Mark, in control, and then give him the name of
a competent football man who could help him make decisions."

Please Glenn, this is football, not international politics. Leave the coup
d'etat for the real ruthless dicatators. Ironically, Ostler did compare Al
Davis to Fidel Castro. Not that Ostler in prone to hyperbole....


If the writers mentioned above are truevillage idiots, then Lowell Cohen is
their king. Cohen actually makes the others look competent. Although he
whips out his crayons for the Santa Rosa Press-Demcrat, a small local paper,
in the age of the internet his words are heard loud and clear, as if he's
actually on the main stage.


Here are some of Cohen's finest examples of "jounalistic ethics." I don't
have to render an opinion about King Cohen, his words speak for themselves.

" I have a preconception about the Raiders - and I admit it. I expect them
to fail. I expect them to embarrass themselves, and then I expect them to
invent wacko excuses. I expect to write negative things about them. I expect
Raiders executives to give me the cold eye as if I made the team bad."

"Then you think of the Raiders. A smile crosses your lips. The Raiders give
you the giggle you require because they are the NFL's joke franchise. They
are the team that keeps on giving. What do the Raiders give? Comic relief."

"We know Al Davis tried to dump Lane Kiffin. There was that letter of
resignation Al tried to jam down the kid coach's throat. Kiffin regurgitated
the letter. We assume Al is working on a buyout. In the weird funny world of
the Raiders, where no normal logic applies, this would be logical."

Wow Lowell, do you get paid to write this stuff? If so, I've got to hand it
to you buddy, you are a definite overachiever.

The Raiders rarely speak to the press about the inner goings-on in Oakland,
but in the case of the Kiffin rumors they did speak out. "The whole story is
a flat-out lie and a total fabrication," said Raiders senior executive John
Herrera. "We deny the entire story. No authority has been stripped. That's
unabashedly false."

Then from Raiders CEO Amy Trask, "His authority remains unchanged," and,
"That's simply not true. He has all the authority he had when he was hired.
The authority he has or had under his original contract remains unchanged."

But why believe actual living breathing Raiders executives? For all we now
know, the mystery "source close to the Raiders" was the cleaning lady, but
more likely it was the bitter ex-Raiders personnel guy Mike Lombardi.

The Raiders fired Lombardi, the one time heir apparent to Al Davis himself,
after he feuded with Art Shell and reportedly undermined Shell and the
organization by leaking information (GASP!) to the press. Lombardi hasn't
been all that covert in his Raider bashing since being granted a microphone
and camera on the set of the NFL network, after a short stint in Denver as a
personnel assistant.

The Raiders are panned almost daily on a national scale, in addition to
being smeared by the local prognosticators. Chris Mortensen was duped into
taking the Kiffin story national in January, reporting that Kiffin's firing
was "imminent within the week." That dreaded "source close to the Raiders"
failed him once again.

Fine by me, let them squawk. While the poison pens are furiously scribbling
out the latest unfounded rumors, the Raiders have, not so quietly, been
building quite an impressive roster. Lane Kiffin and HIS staff have worked
hard through the spring to build on the successes of last season, and
hopefully the entire football world will underestimate what the Raiders have
done. Let them mock the man whose bust is permanantly affixed in the NFL
Hall of Fame in Canton. Al Davis simply wants to win.

In the end, the Raiders have only one place to prove themselves, and that's
on the football field. As a Raiders fan that stays close to the goings on in
Oakland, I see a bright future ahead. As for the haters? Let them eat cake.