Column - Media Watch
Rage
Dec 26, 2003, 3:54:00 AMDecember 26, 2002 (morning)--There is a telling moment in the movie Seabiscuit, the film based on the best-selling book by Laura Hillebrand. The young jockey, played by Toby Maguire, has had a tough life as he made his bones in the horse racing business as a jockey, sleeping in barns and prize fighting to earn a few extra bucks. An angry young man, to say the least, Maguire reacts to every reversal of fortune as a personal affront.
Befriended by wealthy automobile salesman Charles Howard (played by Jeff Bridges), Maguire comes face-to-face with his anger moments after he has blown a race when a fellow jockey attempted to cut him off on a turn. Bridges later confronts Maguire, saying in calm voice, “What are you so mad about?”
Indeed. What are all these local media so mad about? Read some of the columns following the Chiefs pasting by the Vikings or listen to the perpetually angry hosts on WHB-AM and you’ll hear more invective and scorn than you’ll ever hear coming from Toby Maguire’s mouth, or for that matter hear coming from an angry Arab street demonstration. What are these media so angry about?
Well, for the most part it’s the defense. They – and for the talk show types the callers they attract – are perpetually angry, outraged at times, and believe the defense has brought the team to ruin. This anger has even spilled over to the usually supportive KCFX-FM programming which attracts a flock of callers that, at times, seem infected with a love for the Chiefs and head coach Dick Vermeil that, more often than not, borders on worship.
Uniformity of opinion is neither an imperative nor an ideal to be sought in any newspaper. But good sense is. Readers expect the opinion they sift through over their morning coffee to be infected with reason. Yet, how can we find reason in editorializing that in a period of three weeks is so contradictory or in some cases just plain silly?
If the team that just a short time ago was, in the Kansas City Star’s Joe Posnanski’s words, worthy of applause for being “good” and so worthy of admiration for making it back to the playoffs, (Kansas City Star, December 10) how has it fallen to a condition where it is now composed, as the columnist suggested on December 21st, of a bunch of quitters – “oh, the Chiefs quit. There was no doubt about that,” he wrote?”
It was just a month ago that Posnanski referred to himself as the “official conductor” of the Chiefs bandwagon and that the Chiefs were “beginning to build something of a mythical standing among other players” around the league. “ (Kansas City Star, November 19, 10, 2003). What he knew about the Chiefs was “mostly that they were very good,” I mean, “you don’t win nine in a row in the NFL unless you’re very good.” (Kansas City Star, November, 23, 2003). The Chiefs were so good, in fact, wrote Posnanski, that at 8-0, “nobody, ever, in the history of the world, has been better. That’s what being perfect is all about” (Kansas City Star, October 26, 2003) and even with an “inexperienced team” it was still “favored to go to the Super Bowl and win it.” (November 23, 2003).
Such hysterical pronouncements emerge out of a media culture that can just as often be as ridiculously foolish with their praise as they can with their stinging criticism.
How does Dick Vermeil, the ultimate “character guy,” as Posnanski has called him almost from his first days here, suddenly have a team that is so devoid of character? (November 23, 2003) What happened to the team that includes players who “quietly do their job – no ego, no whining, no bragging, no jogging through other team’s workout lines”? After making the point that, “in today’s era – with the salary cap and free-agency – you can’t build a super team that dominates all phases of the game “and that “everybody has flaws,” (December 10, 2003), he now seems genuinely surprised that the team he covers actually has one or two.
But no matter how many clowns pour out of the miniature car, it is the arrival of Jason Whitlock that attracts the most attention. After a column or two where he appeared more reasoned than his colleagues – other than a swipe at what facial expressions the “starting offensive linemen were wearing in the locker room after last week’s Vikings game where he claimed they “laughed and giggled,” whatever that’s supposed to mean – he suggested that the return of the deposed Gunther Cunningham was just what the team needed to cure its defensive ills. (Kansas City Star, December 21, 24, 2003)
Critics are never under-represented following a defeat as disappointing as the one the Chiefs suffered at the hands of the Vikings, but creating a bandwagon atmosphere one week, only to kick the wheels off it a few weeks later, doesn’t say much for one’s perception.
Instead of tossing around accusations that team members have no “heart” and no “character,” why not confront the man who is charged with running this suddenly character-deficient bunch. However did they get to 12-3? Instead of “looking in his eyes,” which Mr. Posnanski said he had done after the Vikings loss, why not query Dick Vermeil? Read any of the Q&A’s on this site that you want and you’ll find precious little of the questioning that has our local columnist so up in arms now.
But even Posnanski can’t work himself into the rage that’s been building in the shrill and accusatory rhetoric coming from the radio talk types. Maybe Greg Robinson, the man charged with running the defense and the man usually at the center of their attention, deserves some of their rage, and maybe do some or perhaps – at times – all of the defensive players. But having said that – and said it over and over again – what do they have to offer beyond it? Smirking is no substitute for wisdom.
Lay into Robinson all you want, but I have never heard him or the radio hosts who assail him explain his defensive philosophy in any depth and maybe he has declined to give interviews. Nevertheless, how many of these hosts really discuss during their programs anything that applies to why the defense has failed or how it may be improved – that is, beyond firing someone Dick Vermeil has said repeatedly that he is not going to fire?
The advantage of such sour opposition and accompanying anger is that whatever happens there’s always something to sneer about. Chances for a division title, heck, even a playoff berth were no guarantees if you read or listened to some of the pre-season rhetoric dating back to training camp, but go 12-3 and have problems exposed that were as apparent way back when but more so now and it’s, hey, you’re suddenly frauds or you let the people down, or, this new charge, you’ve got no character.
All this gets old, of course, the ridiculous pronouncements, the anger, the yelling, the continued complaining. Too many media are defined by their protests. This is where their obsolescence begins. It ends when readers and listeners don’t take them seriously anymore.
From the Mailbag
“I can understand fans writing off the Chiefs in the playoffs. I have been a devout Chiefs fan for 25 years. I live in Kansas approx. 300 miles from Arrowhead, and have only got to attend 3 games in my lifetime, but I catch every game on TV and check the Chiefs web site daily. It’s just that all of us Chiefs fans felt like this was the year, ever since the preseason. And now when teams are supposed to get better (such as Denver is) the Chiefs defense is letting them down and we all fear an early exit from the playoffs, like what happened in the mid 90s. Nevertheless, I still hold out hope.”
From the Mailbag
“While that debacle/farce/joke against Minnesota made me tempted to put a Louisville Slugger to my girlfriend’s TV, I couldn’t agree more with your take on the Chiefs. What would have been my reaction during the preseason if someone had told me the Chiefs would be 12-3, winners of the division and had earned a first-round bye? One: You’ve got to lay off that crack.” Two: “I’ll take it.” Second, I’ve been an over-the-top fan of this club for 33 years, so I knew better than to get on the Super Bowl bandwagon. I didn’t give a you-know-what about the possibility of going undefeated. Just give me a first-round playoff win, and I’ll worry about the rest later. Given the way things have been the last few years, how else could a right thinking person look at it?”
RUFUS DAWES: The point of the Misery Has Company column was to clarify a situation in Kansas City that is not that much different than what you would find in any other NFL city. While this doesn’t do much to slake your thirst for a Super Bowl or to assuage your disappointment of past failures, it does give you some perspective.
What has happened in Kansas City relative to the playoffs is not an isolated incident. In Indy, they’ve had a franchise quarterback, dominant running back and dominant wide receiver, and they’ve had less success in playoff games than Kansas City has had while they’ve been there. In other cities unrestricted free agents haven’t produced the immediate success in the playoffs that some media had believed would instantly happen. In Miami, Dave Wannstedt won his 41st game with the Dolphins this year – an average of 10 wins a year – and he’s fighting to keep his job. And in Kansas City one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL hasn’t given the team any better chance of success in the playoffs than the great Chiefs defenses did in the 90s.
You say, you “still hold out hope” and indeed you should. But when all the evidence is gathered, what you should hope for is your team being in the playoffs three out of every four years. That’s the reality of it. New England wins the Super Bowl and doesn’t go to the playoffs the following year. Four of the teams that made the playoffs last year have 10 losses this year and are out of the post-season picture.
When all is said and done, we know that whatever the Chiefs have done in the regular season is unimportant right now. Kansas City finished the regular season in 1995 and 1997 on impressive runs – in the case of the latter smoking the opposition in the final six games of the season only to go out in the playoffs two weeks later. What we know now is if the defense can play well for eight quarters after Sunday, the team may have a reasonable chance of making the Super Bowl.
What you’re left with then is to soar or suffer with your team one year only to do it again the year. To vex about it or to let it play too large a role in your life is to take sport out of the context in which it was intended. Only one team is going to win it all, does that mean the rest of us have to be miserable?
From the Mailbag:
“I’ve read and heard repeatedly that the problem is the Chiefs defense, but what specifically is the problem? No one seems to be able to put their finger on it except that it’s defensive coordinator Greg Robinson’s fault. Why can’t someone tell us specifically what that means?
RUFUS DAWES: So many people have over-invested in Greg Robinson-hating that they continue to persist in jamming every square peg of reality into the round hole of prejudice.
Maybe Greg Robinson’s scheme doesn’t work. Maybe the players don’t understand it; maybe the players don’t follow it; maybe the players aren’t good enough to play it or just aren’t good enough, period. Maybe it’s a combination of factors, like Vermeil says, a combination of all these things. Maybe the defense is an unfinished product. A year ago it was horrible, this year it is not although it has been dreadful at times.
But the fact of the matter is, at this point anyway, Greg Robinson isn’t going anywhere. Greg Robinson is the defensive coordinator; the coach doesn’t want him to go anywhere. He’s here. You’ve got to get over it; you’ve got to move on or turn your wrath on the head coach who makes “Greg Robinson: defensive coordinator” possible.
From the Mailbag:
“I won’t give up on the Chiefs. The rain was coming down and now the sun is out. My seeds were in the ground, the flowers will surely sprout. The flowers are all blooming now in colors of red, yellow and white. Colors of the Kansas City Chiefs much to my delight. Roses and red sedum are making up the red Coreopsis and marigolds. Blooms of yellow in their beds. White is more roses Candy Tuft and daisies. A plan I carefully thought up some people think I’m crazy. My garden planted with care. It took a lot of thought. This is my favorite football team. Those colors were the ones I brought. A little green is added in…I think it’s a wonderful theme to make the Kansas City Chiefs the basis of my garden scheme.
RUFUS DAWES: Your poetic gifts far outshine any of my efforts. Glad the Chiefs invoke in you such joy.
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The opinions offered in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the Kansas City Chiefs.
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