So are we Spoiled?
Let me set up where I am going here...
At this past weekends 1st annual Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas there was a panel on bloggers gaining acceptance. While the question was broken down in a few different catagories the majority of the focus was in regards to the mainstream media. Jamie Mottram from Yahoo, Rob Neyer from ESPN and Chris Ballard from SI.com offered a lot of helpful tips both to all in attendance but privately as well in my conversations with them. I hope to write more on the whole experience later.
One thing that did come out was that as bloggers struggle for acceptance one of the first rules to live by was to essentially play nice with others. That includes members of the MSM. I haven't had too much interaction with the MSM except for Matthew Kredell of the LA Daily News when he was beat writer for USC Basketball. I am not one to take gratuitous shots at the MSM. They serve a purpose in what I do and I get most of my information from them so it would be hypocritical to say MSM sucks but use their information. I know that others take issue with how the MSM may or may not cover certain situations or teams but I think it is hard to understand that until you walk a day in their shoes, so for me it is simply a case of not burning a bridge for future use.
That being said I wont deny that there are times when they try my patience. I have, at times, questioned some in the MSM- Wolf, Simers, Dwyer and Adande for stories or coverage that I felt was not fair or that I simply disagreed with and in the future I will continue to do so.
LAT columnist Kurt Streeter is testing my patience and I will respectfully call him out on it. His thoughts on Saturday nights game and how some USC fans will react to it, even though it's a win, reveals something in Streeter that is common among the press in their ability to pick and choose when to be objective or subjective.
Yes, USC won this game, 24-17. The Trojans showed they could stride into a stadium packed shoulder-to-shoulder with Bears fans and walk away with their thumbs up and grins wide.
Still, it won't calm some of the frayed, angry nerves of Troy. USC fans had dreamed of an undefeated season, 12 games of glory topped off with a bowl game victory, a national title. Instead: eight victories and two losses so far, including an unimaginable upset by Stanford.
Now there's Bear blood, but Tommy Trojans who live astride white horses still aren't likely to be satisfied.
Come on. Get real. Gin up courage. Gain some perspective. Sure, USC is not what anyone thought it would be. The greatest college football team ever? A whisper from another lifetime. But this is still a good team. It is still a team that has a chance at the Rose Bowl.
John David Booty's fault? Patrick Turner's fault?
These are college kids who give heart and soul, and they don't deserve the backbiting.
What Streeter seems to miss is obvious, while it is the players who perform it is the coach's who must develop the players. At some point the more experienced players can't continue to make costly mistakes that put the program in tough spot in trying to position themselves to play in a significant post season bowl game.
I can see where USC fans can be labeled as spoiled but SC fans have always been fair weathered so I am not sure why this is an issue or a surprise for Streeter. The MSM is also much to blame in how they have characterized USC, with all of the attention they received this season before a game was even played it shouldn't surprise Streeter that our expectations so are high. More important this is USC we are talking about, not the mid-level program from across town who are delusional to think that they should be in the top tier when it comes to football. They can feel that way about basketball but not football.
The amount of talent that USC has is the reason that we expect so much from this team. So our frustration is because we feel that this team is underperforming. Streeter thinks we're spoiled and acting silly and that our expectations are out of whack. I would say they are in line with what the MSM threw out there before the season started. It might be unfair but I didn't read where Streeter wrote where he thought SC wasn't as good as others wrote so it really shouldn't surprise him that SC fans expect so much.