Good News/Bad News?

There is a truism in journalism that 'Bad news sells.' And it is often used as an excuse in sports reporting to focus on the more salacious and 'newsworthy' stories of players who have gone off the rails, done something outrageous or otherwise fouled the pool of genuine sporting endeavour.

We hear it all the time. 'Oh, Plaxico Burress makes a better story because he shot himself in a nightclub. That's what people want to hear.'

But that is such a horrible, feeble, inexcusable cop-out in modern journalism. No , it isn't what people want to hear. They HATE to hear stories of self-obsessed stars trying to prove they don't have to follow society's values and laws. They ABHOR reports of the privileged few flouting their tendencies of excess and disdain in our faces. And they positive RECOIL against notions that the utterly irresponsible somehow deserve greater news coverage than the many (the majority) who do things the right way, and don't seek publicity to stroke their own egos.

Case in point - a story buried in the depths of the totally compelling Sports Illustrated this week featuring Pittsburgh Steelers star Troy Polamalu and his (largely unreported) work to help kids with life-threatening illnesses in hospital. It's worth highlighting (and reading) in full just to counter-balance the sleazy side of sport (Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Donte Stallworth, Michael Vick and others).

Here is the full story by Sachin Shenolikar. My only complaint? It should have been given headline billing, not slipped among the 'sports shorts' of the magazine. We need MORE of this kind of story, not more of Burress and Co:

Heather Miller was being driven to the hospital for surgery on Jan. 26, but her thoughts were on a voice mail her mom, Wendy, had received three days earlier. Steelers safety Troy Polamalu said he had left something special at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh for his 10-year-old fan from Bedford, Pa. "The whole 2½-hour ride, instead of Heather dreading what was to come," Wendy says, "she was anxious about Troy's surprise."

When the family arrived, they found the jersey Polamalu had worn in the AFC Championship Game, autographed.

Polamalu met Heather—who is the guest editor of the July issue of SI Kids—last October, shortly after she was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer of the bone. He stays in touch by texting, including one the day after the Steelers' Super Bowl win. "How about that, Heather? Hope we made you happy," it read.

Polamalu has developed similar relationships with half a dozen Children's Hospital patients and their families. He plays Rock Band or draws pictures with the kids and chats with their parents. "He spends hours here," says Mike Shulock, the child life specialist at the hospital. "I can't say enough about the impact he has."

You just KNOW there are plenty more stories like this. We just need - we WANT - to hear them.

Hindsight? Gotta love it

How I wish I could have a few columns back after writing them. This was my View from America piece for SkySports.com last week BEFORE the Suntrust Indy Challenge at Richmond turned into the greatest borefest in the recent history of motor-sport, a 160mph circular procession of such high tedium that even second-placed Dario Franchitti was forced to apologize to fans for the "awful, awful racing." Here's the awful, awful lack of foresight (made only slightly more palatable - or less so, you could argue - by the 'average roundabout' reference). "Greatest dogfight potential?" I hardly think so:

View from America

US-based British sports-writer Simon Veness highlights the renewed focus on Dario Franchitti in the increasingly dramatic IndyCar series

Jenson Button may be motorsport’s flavour of the month in Europe, but there’s no doubting who is enjoying the lion’s share of the high-octane spotlight here in the US.

Dario Franchitti may have been an afterthought in 2008 following his disastrous dabble with the closed-cockpit world of NASCAR racing, but he has forced his way back into the media’s attention in no uncertain terms in recent weeks.

And, ahead of the weekend’s big showdown in the Suntrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International Raceway (live on SS1 at 12.30am on Sunday), the Flying Scot is front and center for this unique race, which takes place on a circuit only marginally bigger than the average roundabout.

First off, viewers will have to get used to the tight, constricting confines of the shortest course used by any of the big racing leagues. RIR is dubbed ‘America’s Premier Short Track’ and fully deserves that soubriquet. Short? How about three-quarters of a mile (1.2km) from start to finish. The 20 cars will lap at around 166mph, meaning they will cover the full circuit in roughly 20 seconds. At three laps per minute, they could cover the 300-lap distance in just an hour and 40 minutes. And get very, very dizzy in the process.

Indeed, one of Franchitti’s first comments last week after winning the Iowa Corn Indy 250 (on the Iowa Speedway, which is all of seven-eighths of a mile!) was: “I am completely dizzy right now.”

So he had better be ready for an even more extreme experience Saturday night, especially as all races at Richmond are run under lights (and draw huge crowds as a result). It makes for an amazing spectacle, even if all the drivers do need to lie down in a dark room for a while afterwards while the world stops spinning around them.

But it is not the unusual nature of the racing that is uppermost in the media’s minds ahead of round eight of 17 in this year’s IndyCar series so much as Franchitti’s big comeback from the rubble and ruin of his 2008 campaign.

This time last year, the Bathgate racer was still hobbling from the effects of an inadvertent high-speed encounter with Larry Gunselman in a Nationwide Series event at Talladega (Franchitti was T-boned on the driver’s side by Gunselman’s Chevy at roughly 150mph and was fortunate to escape with ‘only’ a broken ankle).

He was preparing for the NASCAR event at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, having endured the kind of season normally suffered only by the most distant also-rans of motorsport (in F1, think Force India, only worse). He had started just 10 races, failed to qualify in two and missed five with his ankle injury. His best finish was a meager 22nd, while his average placing was a miserable 34th.

Just a few days after his forgettable 38th-place at Loudon, his Chip Ganassi Racing team folded through lack of sponsorship, an early victim of the recession that continues to take large bites out of both the NASCAR and IndyCar circuits. And there Dario sat for the rest of the season, a frustrated spectator as – irony of ironies – Chip Ganassi Racing dominated the 2008 Indy series, with Kiwi Scott Dixon claiming the crown he had vacated at the end of the previous year.

Now, however, it is a completely different story as Franchitti basks on the afterglow of his second win of the season (his 10th on the Indy circuit) and sits just three points behind current series leader Ryan Briscoe. In the seven events so far, he has been out of the top 10 only once and he and Dixon have four wins between them for the Target Chip Ganassi team.

The smaller oval circuits haven’t been the happiest of hunting grounds for the Scotsman in the past (his NASCAR experience was definitely the nadir for the left-turn, left-turn, left-turn mentality), but he proved without doubt at Iowa last week there are absolutely no hang-ups from last year, hence most of the pundits make him the favourite for win No.3 this term.

He is certainly a distinctly happier and more easy-going driver than the one who looked a haunted figure at times with the good ol’ boys of the stock car series last season, and it would be another supreme irony if he was to finish in Victory Lane in such a bastion of the NASCAR world.

Of course, the REAL story of this year’s IndyCar series to date is the fact just 57 points separate the top six in the standings, meaning the championship is boiling up nicely (each race winner earns 50 points, while there are 2 bonus points for the driver who leads most laps and an additional point for the pole-sitter, hence every race has a potential 53-point turnaround).

Briscoe and Franchitti (241 and 239 points respectively), sit just ahead of Dixon (226) and Brazilian Indy 500 star Helio Castroneves (212), while swimsuit pin-up Danica Patrick is still a healthy fifth (189) and 2005 champion Dan Wheldon, the other Brit in the championship shake-up is sixth (184).

The next four in the standings – Brazilian Tony Kanaan, American duo Marco Andretti and Graham Rahal, and Japan’s Hideki Mutoh – have also shown themselves to be pretty competitive in recent races, so there are no foregone conclusions for a race that often throws up more than its fair share of surprises.

Seasoned Richmond watchers are quick to point out this ‘bull-ring’ style of racing is not for the faint-hearted, and, of the past seven winners, only one of those, Sam Hornish Jr, is not in the current top seven (mainly because he is trying to ‘do a Dario’ and crack the NASCAR world).

Franchitti himself won here in his championship year of 2007, Castroneves in 2005, Wheldon in ’04 and Dixon the year before that, while Kanaan is the reigning Suntrust title-holder (Hornish Jr won in both 2002 and ’06).

It therefore has arguably the greatest dogfight potential of the season so far. Throw in Patrick, who is increasingly desperate to chalk up a second career win and advance her end-of-year contract potential when her current deal with Andretti Green Racing is up, and you have the formula for some riveting TV.

With the Formula 1 world on a two-week hiatus (if that’s the right word when threats and counter-threats of a breakaway circuit are being thrown around like confetti at the world’s most profligate wedding), it could be the ideal time to tune in to an IndyCar revolution – and see if Super Dario can truly reign supreme.

Stanley Cup Switch-Off

Here’s a suggestion for all Detroit Red Wings fans ahead of Thursday’s Game Four in the Stanley Cup Finals: Don’t watch. At all.

Turn off the TV, do some housework, take the dog for a walk or chat to the neighbors. But leave the viewing to those in Pennsylvania and the suits of the NHL.

I’m serious. As much as it seems like fan lunacy (as in, real fans support their team, come what may), it makes perfect sense.

First, it will send a message to the blinkered buffoons at league HQ that you can’t put a marquee event on a cable station most people have never heard of and maintain any kind of credibility.

The playoffs on Versus is like putting the Super Bowl on Comedy Central. It’s a joke of the unfunniest kind, pure and simple.

If the (already paltry) viewing figures for Game Three are followed up with a near-zero rating for Game Four, the NHL just might realise its standing with the fans, with the people who truly care about the sport, is dropping like a stone.

Second, it will raise a measurable protest at the way these playoffs have been (mis)handled almost from start to finish. Putting out officials who miss call after call (go back and review the Anaheim and Chicago series if you have any doubts) and then scheduling the first three games of the Finals in four days is the kind of slap-in-the-face arrogance that only the immensely successful or terminally dumb can pull off.

And third and most important, it will prevent Wings fans from the kind of angst and anguish they had to suffer on Tuesday night witnessing yet another display of officiating incompetence that absolutely cost them the game (see also Game Two against the Ducks and Game Three against the Blackhawks).

It certainly raises the question of how desperate the NHL must be to ensure their precious series survives to Saturday night and a second chance to breathe the much-needed air of exposure into the Finals on NBC (even if the network still insist on covering the event as if the only two players involved are called Malkin and Crosby).

It’s hard to suggest there was anything deliberate about a schedule that clearly penalizes the defending champs; about a league disciplinary process that waives its own procedure when it might have to suspend a star player (who just happens to be called either Malkin or Crosby); and about officials who refuse to recognize when one team has an extra man on the ice for half a minute (perhaps they were waiting for a seven, or even eight-man front?).

But fans can certainly be excused for detecting the nasty odour of suspicion about the way events are unfolding, most especially about how the only four people in the Mellon Arena who didn’t notice the Penguins’ six-man assault were the ones with the whistles.

So, the only way for Wings fans to make their feelings known at 8pm on Thursday is to leave the TV set blank, switched off, somnolent. You know it makes sense.