Sporting Madness

Continuing the quest to make this the top corner of the Internet for Tim Tebow song parodies , here's the latest one that popped into my mind: a rewrite of the first part of West Side Story's "Jet Song", set last week before Rex Ryan reportedly asked Tebow to play Wildcat QB and Tebow reportedly turned him down ... REX RYAN: Against the Chargers, we need every man we got. GREG MCELROY: Tim don't belong any more. REX: Cut it, Alabama boy! Even if I won't let Tim start for the Jets. MCELROY: Well, he acts like he don't wanna belong. JEREMY KERLEY: Who wouldn't wanna belong to the Jets?! MCELROY: Tim ain't been with us for over a season. DUSTIN KELLER: What about the day we clobbered the Colts? JOE MCKNIGHT: Which we couldn't have done without Tim. KERLEY: He saved my ever-lovin' quarterback rating! RYAN: Right! He's always come through for us and he will now.

In an effort to corner the market on Tim Tebow-themed musical compositions , here's another one! This isn't even written by me, but was brilliantly put together in a Christmas Eve series of tweets by Global's Justin McElroy (a former CIS Blog colleague). Here they are, preserved in a Storify for posterity and ease of reading:

I normally don't advocate reading comments, but the brilliance of a few of the best ones on my 55-Yard Line piece about Tim Tebow should be preserved for posterity: What the hell do you know about football to say that about T-Bow. He took Denver to the playoffs you idiot!! His record isnt' any good because he is NOT used!!! Remember .... Gators ..... DUH!!! Get a job Bucholtz.. you obviously know nothing about foot ball!!! tebow was what?7&1 with a playoff win last year?bucholtz your daddies little reporter not a sports analyst.Now 7&1 doesn t mean he is the greatest but the nfl is tough ask sanchez,or does he suck too?football is a team game not some #$%$ with a tache writing alone in his wackoff lair.would he be good in cfl??i think Jacksonville would give him a shot before that happened. I love when these little twerp sports reporters, who never played a single down of football, make fun of Tebow as if he is some sort of clown. The truth is, the typist who wr...

One of the stupidest things I've ever seen on television.

Here's the third and final companion interview to this piece , with John Chidley-Hill of The Canadian Press, who helped put the Fast Break conference together. This is the one that particularly motivated me to run these separately, as John had a lot of great things to say about the conference that I wasn't able to squeeze into the story. To me, it's very important to see these kinds of conferences, and they're a terrific idea, so I wanted to make sure John's comments on them in somewhere. I got on-the-record responses from John to four questions: What was your role in putting this together?  How do you think it went?  Are these sorts of events useful for young journalists?How'd Jones' comments sound in person? Here's what he had to say. What was your role in putting this together? Nadine [Liverpool] and I are both graduates of Centennial's sports journalism program and we sit on the Program Advisory Council as alum. She brought up the idea of do...

Continuing the companion interviews to this piece , here's what Steph Rogers , author of the J-Source recap that got me interested in this story, had to say. I quoted the part of her recap that stood out to me, then quoted Jones' response, then asked for her side of the story. Here's what she had to say: (I'm a little surprised that there was any issue that arose out of Chris' advice, but I nevertheless, I'll hope that the purpose of your piece isn't to crucify me.) As a journalism student, a lot of the advice that I often hear given by people in the industry is very helpful, but also a lot of the same. I thought Fast Break provided an extremely honest perspective from all four of the panelists as moderated by Nadine, and particularly Augustine and Jones on likability. I'm amazed at the things I see said on Twitter, Facebook, and in the comment section of articles. Rude and malicious remarks are common practice because people feel the internet ...

I wrote a pretty in-depth look at context and criticism over at Awful Announcing that was published today. Doing interviews is rewarding, but you often wind up with more material than you can use, and it would seem a particular shame to take anyone out of context in a piece about context. It's also a good chance to show those interested just how the sausage gets made. (Hilariously, the origin of that quote itself is in dispute .) Thus, continuing the On The Ground interview series , I'm using this space to post my questions and the full on-the-record responses I received. First up, my interview with Chris Jones of ESPN The Magazine/Esquire, whose comments as relayed in this piece started this whole thing. I first just asked him if there's additional context I should consider. Here's what he had to say. Glad you're writing a piece about that night. It was fun. I'd say, first off, make sure you read the rest of the quotes from me in that story. I think I...