The official power rankings of college football media who hate college football
It’s been a really weird few months in college football. Uncertainty led to canceled seasons, which led to uproar, which led to reversing cancellations. Meanwhile, like everything in this country, many in the media became entrenched in their positions citing a commitment to “reporting the facts.” Even with valid reporting, the bias was often evident in the framing of said facts and the choosing of which facts to emphasize and which to omit.
Oh, and let’s not forget the context here. A context of a pandemic in which unknowns reign supreme and medical professionals rarely agree. Yet, somehow, many in the media continue to express certainty over what course of action is best.
Is it absurd for media members to express skepticism and caution regarding a return to collegiate sports? Absolutely not. But it’s absurd to express that skepticism with such certainty that leads to condescension and mockery toward those who reasonably disagree. It’s absurd to repeatedly reference a reliance on “science” when the science is all over the map and the actual medical experts frequently disagree.
Differing opinions and thoughtful skepticism are good and contributing elements in important discussions. But that’s not what we have in 2020. In 2020, we have hot takes and tribalism. In 2020, we have college football writers who seemingly are all-in on the position of college football should not return while staying silent on colleges opening for tens of thousands of students to attend class. In 2020, we have writers screaming about outbreaks and myocarditis without knowing much about either.
It’s been revealing. Why does it seem like so many college football writers despise the sport they cover?
It’s not just the pandemic-related content. Once the COVID-related columns run their course, the writers will turn to bashing the overpaid coaches, demanding players get paid, complaining about the unfair postseason, calling for the hiring of a commissioner of the sport and ridiculing southern football fans who take the sport too seriously. If college football sucks so much, why not cover something else?
It’s hard not to consider the political undercurrent that undergirds most opinions these days. We’re all aware that the electoral college map often resembles the map of the college football conferences. Writers will push back when accused of being political, but is it really so outlandish for normal fans to view things this way?
Writers tend to fall into clear partisan camps even with opinions on college football’s return. Rather than praise those in the sport doing their best to work through a difficult situation, columnists would rather point fingers at politicians (on the wrong side of the aisle) who are politicizing college football while failing to acknowledge that their side is doing the same thing.
Let’s be clear, there’s no easy path. It could end up that the SEC and Greg Sankey reverse course and cancel the football season at some point. But much of the criticism seems to be either politically-driven or motivated out of a general view of superiority over the dumb rednecks down south.
There are times when criticism toward the sport is important, and the media plays a crucial role. However, many in the media have done themselves a massive disservice in their approach to covering college football during this pandemic. Objectivity has nearly vanished. Columnists too often seek the approval of fellow media members rather than humbly acknowledge that both sides might have valid points to make.
And, strangely, somewhere along the way, it certainly seems like many college football writers decided they really dislike college football. They forgot that college football is fun. They forgot that for tens of thousands of kids, it’s an incredible opportunity with fond memories that will last a lifetime. They forgot the pageantry and tradition. They forgot that Saturday afternoons in the sunshine are a much bigger deal than getting likes on Twitter from fellow columnists.
The disconnect between the media who cover college football and the fans who enjoy it has never seemed greater. And while that gap widens, the condescension toward such fans seems to grow.
Our team here at Saturday Down South enjoys the sport that you all enjoy so much. We’re no different from you. It just so happens that our job is to cover this great sport. We’re thankful for it, and we have fun with it. So let’s have some more fun, shall we?
Rankings are synonymous with college football, so let’s do some rankings. It’s time to present our power rankings of college football media who hate college football.
1. USA Today’s Christine Brennan
While Dan Wolken led the power rankings for a good part of 2020, Christine Brennan made a late surge with her recent “darkest day” column. Brennan labeled the Big Ten’s announcement of football returning as the darkest day in Big Ten sports history. Critics were quick to point out some previous tragedies such as Jerry Sundusky and Larry Nassar, but hey, playing football is obviously worse.
Note the date: 9/16/20, the day the vaunted Big Ten became the SEC. It choked. It got scared. It sold its soul for football. My @usatodaysports column on the darkest day in Big Ten history: https://t.co/uaWfgpgSqO
— Christine Brennan (@cbrennansports) September 16, 2020
The darkest day column is Brennan’s follow-up to her column just days earlier in which she noted that while she loves college football, she just can’t watch this year.
I love college football — always have, always will, grew up with it, covered it for decades — but can’t watch it right now. This is the riskiest roll of the dice in college sports history. Schools can’t know what they are unleashing in their communities. https://t.co/v9ydr8wskA
— Christine Brennan (@cbrennansports) September 11, 2020
Maybe she can stop writing about it too?
2. USA Today’s Dan Wolken
The obvious leader in the clubhouse if you were to poll college football fans on Twitter, Wolken has been entrenched in his “do not play sports this year” take for months. I like Wolken. He’s a legitimate reporter who I believe takes his job very seriously. But for some reason, boy, has he doubled and tripled down on his position over and over.
After months of observation, we've outlined what we believe is @DanWolken's Twitter process. pic.twitter.com/pZJSQK5un4
— Saturday Down South (@SDS) September 15, 2020
Months ago, Wolken remarked that the NBA bubble would be a disaster. It’s been a resounding success. Since then, he uses his Twitter feed to highlight what seems like every positive COVID case on a college campus (asymptomatic or not), praise the Big Ten’s thoughtfulness as it panic-decided to cancel its season and of course write columns about how SEC coaches love when their players get COVID-19.
COLUMN: While the college football world browbeat the Big Ten for being cautious, outbreaks are being celebrated as herd immunity. How screwed up is that? https://t.co/0pfXrawfRH via @usatoday
— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) September 15, 2020
3. CBS’s Dennis Dodd
Dodd is a well-respected college football reporter who usually does a great job writing about the sport. Dodd lands at No. 3 on the list, however, because he seemingly can’t put his political leanings aside and would probably prefer to cover the Ivy League rather than be associated with the dumb football fans in the southeast.
Remember two days ago, the @ivyleague? One P5 AD told me the Ivy's move would have "no influence" on the big boys. Guess what? At least the Ivy can look itself in the mirror amid this madness. https://t.co/bfN9MZgGqG
— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) July 10, 2020
Dodd’s tweet about how only the Ivy League could look itself in the mirror is a big contributor, but he closed this summer by carrying the Big Ten’s water with his latest column in which he rationalizes the Big Ten’s dysfunction using that keyword that these writers just can’t get enough of: science.
Big Ten football is back with football red meat for the masses but science beat out the noisy mass of loud voices and talking points – https://t.co/Do0GY2YbwU https://t.co/0E0lVl8odp
— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) September 16, 2020
Science prevailed! Or … the Big Ten leadership is just a disaster.
Honorable mention: Darren Rovell
I wouldn’t call Rovell a college football writer necessarily, but he gets an honorable mention. While most of the media pushed back on the idea of college football writers “rooting against college football,” Rovell maybe rooted against the return of the sport the hardest. His tweet mocking southern states, the spread of COVID and the desire for football is one of the best examples I can recall in recent memory of why so many people can’t stand the media.
Many SEC fans wanted their states and their economy open and their right to not wear a mask. How’s your football season looking, guys? pic.twitter.com/DKmGf2AQQ4
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) July 11, 2020
Of course with new cases now declining in many of these same states, Rovell has not followed up to ask the south how football might be looking now.
Thankfully, despite the angst communicated by many in the media, college football is back. In the words of Jim Harbaugh, “Stay positive. Test negative. Let’s play football.”
I am an old man, and I can’t remember the environment being this divided. Sports reporters used to report on sports, and political reporters used to report on politics. Now politics are factored in everything. I stopped watching the NFL because of the politics and disrespect for the flag. I am sure they are not missing me, but I refuse to watch and get lectured to on politics. I watch for entertainment, not civics lessons.
These reporters are no longer reporters, but political hacks who cannot separate their opinion from the reporting they do. Everything in personal now – what used to be referred to as an azz chewing is now labeled a personal attack.
Please keep the politics out of sports. We can watch politics on the new channels. We don’t need it in the sports events.
I remember having severe colds and flu during the years I played ball. Never once did I say to myself, “I want to stay home and be safer”.
In our lifetimes many thousands of people who left home and attended events have died of flu, pneumonia, and more. Statistically this pneumonia is NOT significantly different, in fact the more we learn about antibody tests and health complications, the more normal this year’s viruses look.
If your college degree and experience were on the line, you wouldn’t be so fast to support canceling the 2020 year of your life.
Football isn’t just showing other football teams how to crawl out of their holes live a brave life,… it’s showing the whole world to get out and function as normally as we can. Thank you college football coaches and athletes.
You should check out some of National Geographic’s articles on Covid if you think it’s not different than the flu, unless you think that’s too political too.
PS, I know you said pneumonia not the flu, but pneumonia is a condition caused by a disease, not a disease itself, so I thought I’d help you out.
Yes, National Geographic is saturated with political bias too. The fact that you can’t see that unveils your own bias.
You are right… I remember my senior year in high school having the flu and being home sick, Mon-Thurs – but Friday morning, I was back at school so I could play in the game on Friday night… didn’t sit out a single play (we were a small school so we had to play offense, defense, and special teams.)
1) Politics have been in sports since before I was born. I’m not sure why you never noticed before.
2) Equal rights isn’t politics. It’s human rights.
He said he was old, not wise.
What do you call “equal rights?” See, I would have thought that after 50 years of subsidized housing, food stamps, free healthcare and Obama phones, I would have been paid up by now, yet it turns out that’s not the case. Is equality letting criminals walk as long as they have a dark complexion, because that seems to be what you’re advocating for when you talk about “equality.” I love when LeBron and the rest of the woke athletes want to talk about “equality,” making millions of dollars and living in predominantly white neighborhoods while lecturing us all on “privilege.”
Bet you miss the good old days in the South where you could just break out your Klan gear and burn a few crosses when people got “uppity.”
Some pretty disgusting people around this site: seems to be a trend.
You guys love watching these predominantly Black athletes and refer to them as “your players” but can’t relate to anything in their lives.
How very two-faced.
Do you think that all minorities are poor? Or that most poor people are minorities? There are more white people in poverty in America than any other race or ethnicity.
Also, your housing (assuming you have a mortgage) is subsidized too. So is your food if it comes from farms in America.
You’re a moron. That’s why you stupidly defend an alleged sexual assailant who attacked the cops trying to arrest him because his skin was black, which frankly sounds pretty racist to me, given that you’re effectively arguing that anyone who is black should get off scot free when it comes to their crimes. What does watching black athletes have to do with anything? Somehow I owe them something? Ironically, it’s my time, money and energy that affords them the opportunity to make millions playing a game. Let’s assume your ridiculous assertion of “systemic racism” is real. What, exactly is it that you want to happen? Ironically, the answer always seems to revolve around taking away from one group to pay another for no reason other than their race, which is pretty much the definition of privilege.
Easy, how is my mortgage “subsidized”, you idiot? You do realize that not everyone in America has a HUD-backed mortgage, right? What a retarded statistics comparison. Yes, there are more white people in America. Thank you for that, captain obvious. Now let’s talk about a statistic that actually matters, like the percentage of each group on government assistance or statistics comparing generational welfare and the effectiveness of these programs which were supposedly designed to redress these past wrongs.
And you’re right about my ability to relate. I don’t have the benefit of being able to blame all of my shortcomings in life on my race, despite the overwhelming heap of evidence suggesting no such mistreatment exists.
I know you’re allergic to personal responsibility, Volman, but as far as relating, I’ll give you this: nobody in my family ever owned slaves. Despite all the kneeling, as it turns out, none of those athletes ever picked any cotton, either. My parents great grandparents were immigrants who came to America for a better life. Rather than sitting around and expecting a handout, they got off their @sses and taught their children to work hard and value education. Instead of sitting around and whining about what you don’t have and how much whitey puts you down, why don’t you give that a try?
Well said, dvhill100!
I have to say that I loved this article. So much truth here. It seems like so many sports writers are political writer wannabes. Major props to Kevin and the staff for putting this out.
I agree 100%. This was refreshing stuff to hear from a reporter, right?
Very unusual, but very honest.
Nah, they’re just too quick to take up the contrarian position to drum up clicks and liked. It’s not about journalism now. It’s about mentions and trolling to elicit responses.
It’s not just a contrarian position. They are choosing a side and they stay committed to that side. They should just write about sports.
Kevin Duffey, what an excellent article. You hit your point very well and I believe you mirrored,incredibly,how not only fans but players and coaches feel as well. I have read articles from this site but I only registered today, to let you know that I appreciated this article and I will continue to follow. Thank you for real, American sports journalism.
This is the best article by far. You forgot Nicole Auberbach but Wolken/Rovell are spot on. Coronabros are in the fetal position right now eating their words with the false nonsense they are spreading. Covid nonsense needs to stop. If we were going with irrational reporters, Jemele Hill would be the top of the list.
She’s another that I don’t consider as a “reporter.” She’s too busy trying to get her own name in the headlines. Perfect fit for “The View.”
Well done SDS! Superb article.
Pat Forde has to #1. Nicole Auberbach. Stewart Mandel.
Conservatives are such thin-skinned pussies.
Thin skinned is cancelling everything, staying home and being controlled over a virus with a 99% survival rate.
You loved and agreed with the article too. That is why you had to respond with that vulgar, childish comment. Sorry that facts hurt your feelings.
He gets his news from Twitter. Poor guy can’t figure out why St. Louis is a war zone.
Nah, they’re just too quick to take up the contrarian position to drum up clicks and liked. It’s not about journalism now. It’s about mentions and trolling to elicit responses.
By canceling you mean calling for people to not buy certain tires, or people burning their sports apparel because it is made by a certain company?
Yeah, because those examples are the same. Moron.
How is choosing not to buy tires and asking like-minded people to do the same anywhere close to the logical equivalent of tearing down statues and preventing people, who are not you, from watching Gone with the Wind?
Nobody prevents you from watching Gone With the Wind.
Bull. That’s exactly what streaming services like Amazon have done. And did I suddenly miss the news about UGA no longer playing the song at games?
Your political ignorance is disgraceful. You are a microcosm of the Democratic Party.
This article speaks truthfully to the demise of sports reporters. Kudos SDS.
He’s not ignorant, but he can’t face the truth either. This article serious hurt his feelings. That’s just funny.
Yes, yes it is.
You just gave kudos to a sports reporter, so reports of the profession’s demise might be greatly exaggerated.
I guess we can consult the ratings from last week, can’t we?
There’s no ratings for sports reporters. Good try though.
Clearly not greatly exaggerated, but it’s not dead yet. There are still sports writers that write about sports. Too many of them are getting out of their lane, and that is an issue for many. This site appears to be left leaning overall, but most articles are still mainly about sports. The key is not to take your biases too far. Both sides do that.
Really? Pretty sure it’s your side that wants to constantly whine about “fairness.”
That’s funny coming from a HungerstrikeU fan..
Oh, how things have changed in 50 years! When I played in the Ivy League, actually Ivy Group, I bet half the athletes were middle class nad lower-middle class kids that supported Richard Nixon as President and hated Lyndon Johnson.
Having also done my time in broadcast journalism, I can say with confidence that the media was always far left of center, as far back as worshipping FDR. People I worked with at radio and TV stations went to work for liberal democrats as spokesmen and spokeswomen, including one that made Al Gore sound as normal as he could be made to sound, later hired to work for Slick Willie himself. There were very few GOP-supporting newscasters/reporters, and being one basically killed your chances of being promoted at the local level or ever getting employed at the national level.
But dv said he’s old and sports were never intertwined with politics. How can this be?
This is very well written.
I give y’all a hard time, but I love this website.
Nice one, Kevin Duffey! Way to bring those receipts!
To quote: “Even with valid reporting, the bias was often evident in the framing of said facts and the choosing of which facts to emphasize and which to omit. . . . Objectivity has nearly vanished. Columnists too often seek the approval of fellow media members rather than humbly acknowledge that both sides might have valid points to make.”
The problem you laid out here applies to oh-so-much more than college football.
^^^^ 100%
When you really think about it, aren’t we all guilty of this from time to time? I know I am. As much as I try to be open to other opinions, I definitely get caught up in trying to be right and dismiss any other viewpoints sometimes. But the truth is that as long as you can rationally explain why you hold a certain opinion, then that opinion is worth hearing.
Agree, Kevin. It is refreshing to see that someone else sees it and is willing to say it. Thank you.
I’m not sure I’ve seen SDS ever publish a piece quite THIS obviously intended as pure red meat for the extreme right wing commenting base here. Need some clicks? Yell at the media! I’m surprised you didn’t refer to them as “the enemy of the people” but you got close enough.
Guess what, you’re eating your own. I read articles on this very site detailing extreme doubt and concern over playing. But it became clear that didn’t play well and you got some people yelling in the comments. So let’s just yell at Dan Wolken instead and get a Trump Rally going in the comments.
This article is an embarrassment to SDS. Do better.
They did great. You don’t like it because everything he wrote is true. Being cautious about playing is not at all what the writers that made the list wrote. Brennan is pathetic and what she wrote proves it. You need to do better.
Anything not the extreme far left is “extreme right wing” to you. You need to stop believing everything you see on social media and in the news, which is tailored to spark emotion.
I’m a liberal who was made politically homeless when the media and Democrats decided to embrace the Postmodern Leftist wing of the party and go completely insane, moving the Overton Window so far to the Left that they now call me, A LIBERAL, a “right wing nut job.”
I believe in public unions.
I believe in gay marriage and gay rights.
I have no problem calling someone by their preferred pronouns, though find it pretentious when non-trans people post pronouns in their social media bios.
I believe in providing certain social safety nets.
I AM A LIBERAL.
But because I also believe in individual rights as spelled out in the Constitution, because I believe in biological science regarding sex and gender, and because I reject the quasi-religious Dogma of identity politics and intersectionalism and the blatant Marxism of BLM and Antifa, I am told I am no longer welcome and am cast out by those currently controlling the Democratic Platform.
The coronabros are all full of crap. They have been since the beginning. The lockdowns had nothing to do with safety and everything to do with tanking the economy to hurt Trump. The riots by Antifa and BLM Marxits are not “mostly peaceful,” they are violent and dangerous. These are all things we can see with our own eyes.
I suggest you open yours.
Word
Excellent post, Corch. Almost precisely my situation, and very well articulated. JFK would be sickened by the party if he could see it now.
It’s a garbage party. I completely understand when someone like Dave Rubin says, “The Left left me,” even if I think he’s become more a conservative instead of a classical liberal this year especially.
When this new Left or Postmodern, authoritarian Left is trying “cancel” some of the biggest lefties out there like Bill Maher, you know they’re certifiably insane.
Who’s the “big umbrella” party now? Never thought I’d live to see the day.
No one is a big umbrella right now. There is a great, dissatisfied middle, center-left and center-right, that are not happy with either party.
What is insane are that these Neo Progressives or whatever we want to call them who’ve taken over the American Political Left, have kicked staunch liberals out of the party and not just the center-left like Joe Lieberman.
Think about it. Bari Weiss is not center-left. She’s not. She’s firmly liberal. She believes in the some of the ridiculous CRT b.s. Not all of it, but she believes in some level of systematic racism. And she’s been kicked out of the club.
I think all these people and the media who support them are in for a shock with what happens on November 3rd. The fringe controls the Democrats now. Regular people don’t like voting with the fringe.
Bari Weiss is a *progressive* is what I meant to say (not a liberal).
I believe in public unions, aka I believe you can vote to steal from others at gunpoint. But you draw the line at being whiny and cancel culture, neither of which is using to force of govt to steal from hard-working folks. Nice logic, Capt America.
In order for capitalism to truly work, both sides of the equation need representation.
Much like our country is not a perfect country, but is the best possible way to govern that we humans have ever devised, no, unions aren’t the perfect way to ensure employees have representation in their company, but it’s currently the best way to ensure they have that representation.
Logic, oskie. I know it frequently escapes your grasp with regards to football matters, so why should I be surprised it does here, as well?
Can you really critique the logic of others when you’re dodging my fundamental point-that voting to take something from someone doesn’t make it moral to do so? Also-you don’t even address the public sector union critique, but instead skip to private unions which I’m not speaking on. Perhaps you should respond in something apart from a strawman fallacy when attempting to state that others aren’t logical?
You’re 100% correct.
I misspoke, and I apologize.
I was thinking private sector unions, not public sector unions, but I said public unions. Complete slip of the fingers.
I have issues with public sector unions because unlike private sector unions, they’re paid for by tax payer money as opposed to funds from workers paychecks.
And even though we fall on different sides of the political spectrum, I very much respect your ability and willingness to draw your own conclusions rather than just accepting the first thing the media spits out. People like you, from both parties, are the ones that actually get results because of their willingness to converse and compromise with the other party.
I like to think I’m in a similar position, but with the Republican Party. It disgusts me that we’ve reached a point where the most important thing to each party is winning an election rather than doing right by the American people. This is why George Washington warned against political parties in his farewell address.
Corch – BY FAR this is the best post you’ve ever made! Sorry to hear you were homeless – hope that situation has been resolved !
The article is simply about reporters/talking heads getting political and giving sports readers their opinion who don’t want it. One thing we have learned in the last few years is sports and politics don’t mix. ESPN took it in the shorts. The ratings are down in the NFL/NBA. The article is relevant because most really don’t want to hear what Nicole Auerbach, Dennis Dodd or Desmond Howard thinks about playing football this year. It’s so easy to spot the libs because they cannot help but give you their opinion and typically shouting as loud as they can. Kudos to you for not using all CAPS. I know you wanted to.
So you’re mad because of one article not openly pandering to the left? You literally have CNN handing Joe Biden the questions they intend to ask him ahead of time which doesn’t raise any red flags for you in terms of shoddy reporting, but you complain about this?
Easy, guys. Be nice to him. Liberals see it as a microagression when a member of the media does not bow to the donkey.
I don’t read any of these journalists, so I can’t comment on their politics. I do know one person who had covid, and she had to go to an ER because of it. I can understand why people overreact to it. But, politics aside, as someone who thinks lockdowns are overkill, I have no problem with college football being played during this pandemic.
I also give Kudos to SDS for allowing comments on this article.
Single-best article ever written on this site. Ever. Great job!
However, you got your top-3 wrong, and really, you should’ve made a longer list.
Top-10 Coronabros
1. Nicole Auerbach. No one has been more condescending or more wrong in their reporting of “science” than Nicole Auerbach of the formally excellent The Athletic. And she is so unpopular she frequently turns off her twitter replies so she doesn’t have to listen to anyone who disagrees with her. She has a side-gig as Kevin Warren’s private media mouthpiece, who never uses a named source (because her anonymous sources are pretty much Kevin Warren, Kevin Warren, and Kevin Warren), and has written so many puff pieces about Warren as they compromise about half her work at The Athletic.
2. Steward Mandel. The EiC of the formally excellent The Athletic, where every writer except Andy Staples is a coronabro, his Far Leftist politics invaded everything he’s written. His editorial direction of the site has been an abject disaster, starting with their Pro-CCP, anti-Hong Kong Freedom response to Daryl Moray last summer. All their writers recently bragged they hit the One Million Subs mark, but less than a week later, The Athletic began selling itself for $1 a month, an 80% discount. Why? Because their coronabro writers have killed their existing subcription base. More than half their current subscribers have turned off their auto-renew, and if Mandel is kept as the EiC, I don’t see The Athletic sticking around much longer. Also, he pretended to be contrite in a mailbag column, apologizing, and promising to be better, and then literally the next day he retweeted the awful NYT article, “College Football is Not Essential,” and turned off his replies. Stew Mandel ruined The Athletic.
3. Dan Wolken. There’s a reason why he’s called Dan Woken. He’s a virtue signaling joke of a non-man. Everything he does, he does in service of hating Trump. He’s literally made his entire existence about hating Trump. And he doesn’t see the irony of what that actually means.
4. Pete Thamel. No one did more damage in (briefly) successfully getting the Big Ten to cancel the season than Pete. As the mouthpiece for all Big Ten ANONYMOUS SOURCES, he spread so much bad covid-19 information that he is basically the CFB Writer version of patient zero for almost every single bad faith covid-19 argument.
5. Pat Forde. The man literally went on CNN and said, “If there’s no football this season, it’s Donald Trump’s fault.” He used to be a respected sportswriter. Now he just suffers from TDS like the rest of them, and campaigns against CFB because he thinks it will hurt Trump.
6. Christine Brennan. A johnny-come-lately to the party, that one awful article was not enough to vault her into the top-5, mostly because most people forgot Christine Brennan was a thing before then.
7. Dennis Dodd. How Barrett Sallee, one of the few CFB writers to generally be right about covid-19 and who takes a measured approach, can work with this guy and not slug Dodd every time he sees him is a mastery.
8. Ari Wasserman. Oh look, another writer from The Athletic who frequently touts “science” about his “worries” about covid-19, but of course, it’s always cherry-picked and misrepresented stats and data that ignore the context of the actual stats and data.
9. Darren Rovell. Or as we like to call him, “Karen” Rovell. That pretty much sums it up for Karen.
10. Max Kellerman. No one at ESPN has been more consistently wrong about covid-19. But what should we expect from a man who said on national television that he trusts the New York Times and Washington Post?
Nice work. I don’t read most of that and have never read The Atlantic. I see I’m not missing anything. It’s good to know that you can actually make sense when you’re not posting about Florida.
I registered just to say this is a great article, not just about football but our nation as a whole. Hopefully you will not be adversely affected by this in your career.
Seth Emerson left Dawgnation to work for the Athletic and that was a sore blow. The former hasn’t been the same site since.
Can’t believe Pat Forde didn’t make the list
He’s in my top-5.
Let’s be honest, most sports media outlets these days don’t really like the idea of traditional sports. Have you read Yahoo, ESPN etc. recently? They don’t talk about sports anymore. Even this website from time to time brings in non-sport related material and try’s to spin it in a way where a sport is related. It is quite annoying, especially when they turn off the comment section, because they know there readers are going to hate the article. These outlets are more interested in spewing their political ideologies rather than talking about the one thing the readers want! Sports Content!
I don’t even mind articles about coronavirus numbers from different teams, because it’s just a reality right now that our playing football depends on players not getting the virus. I know some people on social media complain about the media reporting those numbers, but as long as they aren’t making up the numbers then they’re just doing their jobs. I’d rather not have to hear about the virus everyday in sports media too, but playing football right now is directly related to the virus, so I have no problem with sports media discussing how the virus is impacting sports. I do have a problem with them discussing who is protesting what and why and all that nonsense that has nothing to do with whether I get to watch a football game this week.
I’m glad Seth Emerson is gone from Dawgnation. He was pathetic. Like listening to Joe Biden.
Also remember the other SDS article article about over a 1,000 HS football games being played so far with no outbreaks. None of the media talked about that positive news except SDS so kudos to y’all for a job well done.
Hey Kevin. As has been said many times in the comments, a well written summary of what have been my thoughts through all of this. Sankey never once said “we are playing!” but consistently said that we are going to keep trying until the “science” (God I hate that word now)says otherwise. Never once heard that emphasized, only “reckless”.
And Corch, I usually cringe when I see your comments but you nailed it with your ranking. I still enjoy The Athletic but man did it get really bad there for awhile as did XM84. Nueheisel about the only one supporting “trying”.
To all of you in the comments section saying sportswriters should just talk about sports, realize that this very article isn’t “just talking about sports” but offering commentary or politics in the sports world. Those who first say “just talks about sports” then continue with their own opinion in regard to how social issues should be handled in sports…guys that’s just disgustingly hypocritical.
The truth is you don’t LIKE what they’re saying about politics – so you’d rather just say “shut up and play sports” because just saying “shut up with your political opinions because I don’t like them and I think you’re wrong” makes you just another person trying to silence opinions you disagree with…and trying to silence someone is about as unamerican as it gets.
Boy, did you miss the point.