I am not a sportswriter.
But, you knew that already.
I recently had an DM exchange on Twitter where someone was lamenting the weird national opinion of Jimmy Garoppolo and he said:
So many dumb teams, and so many incompetent sportswriters out there! (present company obviously excluded!)
Now, that person is undoubtedly reading this so - thanks again, you know who you are. And to him, and the rest of you, I say - I’m not a sportswriter. Quite obviously. In another life, I used to write fantasy sports on a regular basis for a site called TalentedMrRoto.com, and some of those articles were syndicated to some fairly cool places. As many might know, the guy who ran that site is Matthew Berry, who now is basically the face of fantasy sports at ESPN. And when that transition happened, we did have some exchanges about what it might take for me to continue to write with him, for the Worldwide Leader. It wasn’t a long discussion, mostly because I was already married, with a kid on the way, and making a fairly good living. I just didn’t want it nearly enough to take that risk.
(I know many of you like to hate on Matthew Berry, but know this - he’s an insanely good person, has been nothing but generous to me both online and in person when we’ve met, and I’m thrilled for all his successes.)
But here’s the thing - look at what most sportswriters are churning out and it’s just noise. People complain about quotas when it comes to things like parking tickets, but the same is true for articles - even when there’s nothing to write about.
In golf, folks like The Shotgun Start are great at pointing out the “catnip” that happens with a given clip (Tiger Woods hitting balls after his injury, Bryson DeChambeau frying bacon shirtless) that get retweeted, converted into story after story and flood any golf fans Instagram feed to a level that makes it almost unbearable. This is what comprises most golf writers days, it seems.
And in football, as the regular season has wrapped up and the Super Bowl is almost behind us, most teams sports writers are … well, I don’t know. But I do know that as a 49er fan, I’ve been subjected to the following:
All season long, national sports writers have been writing about how bad a QB Jimmy Garoppolo is (as has been well documented on this substack). Local writers have been busy pointing out what a good leader he is, how the team worships him, and how aside from his repeated injury history, the team could have easily had the kind of success that would wash away that criticism.
Last week, local sports writers were talking not just about team needs, but getting around Trey Lance hype. He’s the obvious future - the team has invested three first round picks in him, he barely played this season or his final season in college (that due to COVID cancelling all but one game), so it’s his time to shine.
This week? It’s apparently been decided to “wonder” whether Tom Brady - who just retired, but is still under contract to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers - might want to join his hometown team (the 49ers) and have the Niners trade for him by sending the aforementioned Garoppolo to Tampa Bay. Trey Lance? He can sit for another year and learn from the GOAT.
Now. There are a load of things about this story that make no sense. Here’s just a random list:
Tom Brady is retired
The Bucs own his rights, and if he came back, they’d want him to play for them
Bruce Arians loves a big downfield arm, and Jimmy doesn’t fit that profile
The 49ers have spent years setting up for this moment to free up salary cap space by getting Jimmy off the books and transitioning to a rookie QB salary
Trey Lance has barely played since 2019, and that’s hardly a way to develop a QB in a complex system
Tom Brady is 45 and he WILL hit the wall eventually.
He just retired to spend more time with his wife and young family - and now he’s going to move across the country, away from them?
I mean, I could go on - but those are the first things that seem patently obvious. And I’m no genius - those are obvious things. Anyone who is a sports writer has to know this. But my Twitter timeline was suddenly FULL of stuff like this:
All of these are coming out within the same few day period, and are just some of many. And, I included Bayless - and Simmons for a reason. These guys don’t believe, for one second, that Brady is going to the 49ers. They want clicks. They need folks to tune in, download or otherwise engage with them - because it’s the off-season and they don’t want to lose fans. (And the story of what happened to Bill Simmons is a sad one, and I don’t want to get too
It’s all a game. And social media falls for it, gets triggered, and engages just like they want every single time. I’m completely guilty of this.
And man…is that why these guys (and gals) got into sports writing? I hope not. (For Skip Bayless, it might be the case, actually.) What a complete and total drag.
“Hey, I’m just asking questions here!” is the last kind of sports “writing” I would ever, ever want to do. Hot takes are obnoxious, and purposefully throwing out shitty ideas just to see how much traffic it generates is a sad commentary on what so much sports writing is about these days.
There’s still a lot of great writers who don’t do this shit. Find them. Follow them. Support them.