Since Greg welcomed me aboard BHB last week, ideas have been racing through my head. What would I write about first?
CRM execution tactics? Too predictable.
Skinned cats? I’ll leave that to my favorite cat skinner.
Then it occurred to me last night: why not dive right in with an example of why BHB and blogs like it are putting the traditional fish rag out of business.
I’m a sports fan(atic). I find it to be the ultimate in reality television.
But whether your remote is hard-coded to ESPN or not, you’re surely aware of the ongoing steroid crisis in professional sports.
This week’s Sports Illustrated features an article about a former football player named Tony Mandarich, commonly known as the biggest bust in NFL history. However, two decades ago, SI ran a story proclaiming Mandarich as “The Greatest Offensive Line Prospect in the History of Football”. This story was written by a journalist named Rick Telander.
Now, twenty years later, Tony Mandarich Book Deal is ready to say he’s sorry for using steroids. So he looks up good old Rick Telander Spineless Jellyfish and lands himself a feature article advertisement.
Here’s the article, please keep a barf bag nearby: “Tony Mandarich is Very, Very Sorry”.
And here’s my favorite paragraph from said article (via Telander):
“… He lied to me. Lied to everybody… I knew he was using steroids… but all I could do was hint at my suspicions…”
Um, Ricky baby… you knew he was taking illegal steroids, cheating and gaming the system but you, a Senior Writer for the most respected publication in sports were POWERLESS to do more than “hint at your suspicions”?
Telander’s article goes on to reveal that
- Mandarich was known at his local gym as the “Doctor”
So what Telander’s telling us here is that he could have easily broken arguably the biggest sports-related story of the decade if he simply noses around the gym a little bit to explain how/why…
- Mandarich magically transforms from a 6′ 3″ HS kid who rode the bench on his JV team into a behemoth that bench presses 585 pounds and “runs like a deer” in college
Wait a second. This blog is supposed Read more