There are a lot of sports media personalities who receive a lot (and I mean A LOT) of hatred on Twitter. A lot of them I understand. I don't understand hatred of Darren Rovell.
Now for anybody who isn't familiar with Darren Rovell yet for some reason decided to read a blog post about him, Mr. Rovell is, for all intents and purposes, the only person in the United States worth mentioning at his job--sports business reporter. He's equal parts Mike Lupica and Dylan Ratigan.
The problem it seems that a lot (I refuse to say most--I assume most sports fans are relatively apathetic about Rovell, which is reasonable since most reporters are treated with apathy) of people have with Darren Rovell is that Darren Rovell talks about the elephant in the room--that sports is a business, and that as with any business, money drives everything.
People want to believe that sports is a unique industry and that success is measured not by your balance sheet, but by on-field success. This is certainly true with regards to how fans perceive owners, but I would say that for every single owner in professional sports (including the Packers fan-owners), money absolutely matters. Even in Green Bay, owners aren't going to want the cost of their shares to plummet. It's not being utilized to increase dividends but it is still, by definition, a financial instrument. By the same token, pro sports owners are almost uniformly billionaires and they aren't owning teams to substantially increase their portfolio, but they also aren't going to allow their bank accounts to be siphoned in the name of victories. There are various degrees of passion but everybody has some sort of balance. George Steinbrenner cared about making money. Bill Bidwell cares about winning championships.
A lot of sports fans, however, want to live in a bubble where winning, loyalty, and fan favorites are everything. Darren Rovell isn't perfect but he also is, by and large, just doing his job--being pragmatic and analyzing things from a perspective of cold capitalism. You may not like the reality of the situation, but it IS the reality of it. Last night on Twitter, Deadspin's Drew Magary joked about how Darren Rovell was probably commiserating about how Florida Gulf Coast University was going to be a financial disaster for the NCAA. The implication is that Darren Rovell is being a corporate tool and that he cares more about the rich getting richer than what the people want. But Rovell didn't say personally that he rooted against FGCU for the purposes of the NCAA lining their pockets further. And if he had made this observation (I didn't see him do it, though I wouldn't exactly call it a stretch to say that he would), would he be wrong? Do long tournament runs by obscure underdogs not kill TV ratings (they do)? Should Rovell not tell the truth in order to make people further content to their bubbles?
I recall after Stan Musial's death when Darren Rovell posted various pictures of Stan Musial's endorsements, including some that he did for Chesterfield cigarettes. Immediately, St. Louis Cardinals fans were up in arms and offended that Darren Rovell would post such things. First of all, Darren Rovell wasn't chastising the guy. He didn't say that hawking for cigarettes somehow made up for Stan Musial's military service or general kindness--he merely posted pictures. Pictures of advertisements. Pictures of sports advertisers during their infancy. That's, um, kind of what he's supposed to do.
During the NHL lockout, Rovell also wrote an article in which he wrote that fans were essentially being dicked around because the NHL knew they would come back. Oh, how the vitriol followed. Fans didn't appear to be upset that he was wrong--anybody who has even the slightest knowledge of how work stoppages have affected league popularity knows that hardcore fans come back right away, and it's pretty well established that NHL fans are fiercely loyal. Fans were upset because he was RIGHT. And because he was telling the harsh truth, as though he was giving NHL owners some kind of ideas. Darren Rovell can't be compared to the unpopular likes of Skip Bayless. Skip Bayless is a pure troll, saying completely absurd things for the sake of getting attention. Claims like "Tim Tebow is the best fourth quarter quarterback in the NFL" and "Lebron James can't be the go-to guy on a champion" are insane because they can be very easily diffused with statistics. Darren Rovell makes claims that are true but that people don't want to BELIEVE are true.
I'm personally quite glad that somebody like Darren Rovell exists in sports media. We don't need twenty thousand Darren Rovells because sports, while a business, are also about drama, on-field results, and fun. But to have Darren Rovell (and we could use another couple, for what it's worth) means that sports fans can't live in complete denial of the reality that is twenty-first century American sports.
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