Beat Journal #4

Beat Journal #4

The Beavers had a tough time of it last weekend. They lost two home games – to each of the Arizona schools. They were tough games, but the first one (the loss to Arizona) was marred by some bad referee calls.
The article recounting the game in the DailyWildcat.com (Arizona’s student paper) showed a sigh of relief that Arizona had finally won a road game – it was their first road win of the year. But, the referees and their calls (or miscalls) made up almost the entire story.
It didn’t take but three paragraphs for Lance Madden (the author) to delve into what the referees did and didn’t do. I think that is interesting because they won the game. The articles about the game in the Barometer should certainly mention that, but Madden almost seemed to be apologizing for the win. He was right, the refs were horrible. I was just surprised to see the paper from the winning side spend so much time on it.
The asuwebdevil.com – Arizona State’s student paper – was much harder to navigate. The game took place on Saturday, after the Arizona game, yet finding the story about the game was nearly impossible to find.
Once I found it, the majority of the story is written as a “lovefest” for Nate McMillan’s kid, Jamelle McMillan. The guy had a nice game but the article, written by Alex Espinoza, made the guy sound like the second coming of Magic Johnson. Also, he referred to each half as “periods.” This drives me crazy. In college basketball they play “halves” not periods. The majority of the story, I thought, was going to be written about how great the Sun Devils’ defense was (they only gave up 38 points), but it was mostly about McMillan. Disappointing.
Cliff Kirkpatrick of the Gazette-Times here in Corvallis does a much better job – albeit he has much more experience than the student authors I mentioned above. He basically compared the Beavers season to a road of recovery. The Beavers fell off the wagon on Saturday night, according to him. It’s a good analogy and I think that he is right on the button. This is improving, but there are still a lot of growing pains to be had before we have a really good team at OSU. They seem to be on the right path, though.