ON THE DL

Drew Rosenhaus Duped Us, Football in the Courts and We’re All Just Lazy Writing Hacks

Wednesday. The first day of July. And still, there’s stuff we can’t get to. So let’s get to getting to what we can get to.

Drew Rosenhaus wins. He duped me. I totally fell for this brilliant marketing stunt he and the Florida Panthers have pulled to lower ticket prices. For those who may have seen Rosenhaus’ tweet that he has signed on to represent the Florida Panthers fans in an effort to get lower ticket prices and thought it was serious, welcome to the club.

I was all ready to talk about the conflict of interest of an agent whose job it is to get higher salaries for his players, thus raising ticket prices to pay for those salaries, taking a client of the fans who want lower ticket prices. Talk about playing both sides.

No, it turns out the Super Agent is a shill for the Panthers, just like he’s done for ESPN and Burger King in the past. And it’s brilliant.

But how much of Drew Rosenhaus’ career is being a name and a face and how much of his career is serving his clients? Is he really a good agent? Or is he one of those agents who makes a lot of money for a few guys, and then gets himself famous and spends more time promoting his interests over his clients?

And how, exactly, will this benefit the Panthers, other than the fact that everyone is talking about it for a few days? Lowering ticket prices is awesome, but outside of the 15,000 people it affects, who really cares? I guess the publicity alone has been worth it, and getting Drew involved can’t hurt that.

Kudos go out to both Puck Daddy and PFT for nailing the hoax straight away. It’s kind of a shame, if you think about it. This could have so much heat if the Panthers and Rosenhaus kept it under wraps that it was a hoax for longer. Now the Miami Herald has that it’s a marketing gimmick, so we wonder how much heat it will sustain. (Note, word on Twitter is that Mike and Mike still think this is real. They should read blogs.)

Court Report:

We follow up on our tease yesterday regarding the NFL’s appearance in front of the US Supreme Court. An apparel company is suing the NFL

because the league’s exclusive deal with Reebok violates anti trust laws. The NFL has already won this case, but the Supreme Court is looking at it for, what seems, a different reason. Should the NFL be anti-trust exempt, like baseball is? Should the NFL be viewed as a single-entity business? And what does that mean if the Supreme Court rules that way? How will that change the power the NFL has over everything from licensing to TV rights to what cities teams play in?

PFT has an interesting take on the matter as well. If the court rules that the NFL is NOT a single-entity business, at least with regard to trust laws, it will become the Wild Wild West. Owners will be able to negotiate their own licensing deals with Nike or Reebok or Under Armor or whatever companies they want, for whatever price they can get. All of the sudden, the Star of Dallas is far more valuable than the Lion of Detroit. And more money for the big market teams could completely screw up the balance of power in the NFL.

It’s a fascinating argument they bring up. Either way, there are a handful of owners who will be making out like bandits once this case is ruled upon. It only seems to matter if all the teams will be along for the ride, and if the outside venders can grab a few table scraps (if they are the highest bidder, of course).

We also talk about the news that players are suing EA Sports for using their likeness in the video game producer’s NCAA Football offering. Claims are that while EA cannot use the likeness of a college player because of NCAA rules, the company constructs players that identically resemble their real-life counterparts. And with a few keystrokes, gamers can change the names of players to actually be the exact person in digital form, along with their names being pre-recorded into the game in case the user wants an added step of realism.

Look, the players are in the game. It’s obviously them. But does anyone buy the game because of one player? Did anyone buy NCAA Football because of Rutgers quarterback Ryan Hart (one of the players suing EA

Sports)? No. This is a money grab. It’s a chance to try and cash in on a career that went nowhere after college. And it’s a shame.

Sure players in the NCAA don’t make any money (the conversation about their free college education, room, board, food, clothes and much more will be had another time). And yes, the NCAA and the schools make money off the game for allowing the rights to logo usage and mascots and stadiums. Everyone but the players makes money. But so what? Shouldn’t it be cool that you’re in the game? Man, my logo is in that game and it’s the coolest thing I could think of. Players like Hart have a legacy, in digital form. Rather than embrace that, he’s tarnishing it for a chance at a few bucks.

So what should they do? Maybe take the money EA Sports gives the NCAA and each school and set it aside for a scholarship each year. In essence, EA Sports would be paying for a kid from each team to be ‘in the game.’

Print’s Not Dead:

Writing something interesting and compelling all day, every day, is not easy. Writing once or twice a week, trying to both inform and entertain an

audience isn’t easy either. The fact of the matter is, while everyone thinks they can write, good writing is hard to come by.

But being lazy is stupid. And too many writers are lazy. It’s good that we have people to call those lazy writers out. (Yes, I know how meta this can get, and yes I know how someone can take my words here or at the Post or at The Sporting Blog and crush them too. That’s what this is really about, anyway.)

Two things came out yesterday that got some people talking. First was Jay Mariotti’s too late take on steroids and speculation. Mariotti’s column, which was a thinly-veiled shot at his old employer in Chicago and his old nemesis Rick Telander, was so hacky and self-righteous it really isn’t even worth discussion. But, as Mariotti spent time ripping Will Leitch for something he wrote three years ago, it was

interesting that Leitch’s Ten Humans column at Deadspin caught the ire of some around the internet as well on the same day.

Totally different posts. Both lazy.

John Gonzalez in the Philly Inq today had a fun story about how terrible the Sixers mascot is. And it would have been a good story if it wasn’t done 10x over by bloggers before. It was completely unoriginal and, yes, lazy. We’re all lazy. People thought what I wrote last week about Tiger Woods hurting golf was cheap and lazy. So how do we avoid that? Is it lazy because the information is out there to do more research (in the

case of Mariotti or Leitch) or find the stories others have done on the same topic (or, as the case is with Gonzo, the JSF podcast that did the exact same thing he wrote about).

There are many issues at hand. With regard to Gonzalez, who I love and think is a good writer and a better guy, is it worse if he didn’t know the idea he used was already out there, or that he didn’t care? I struggle with this all the time. What if I write something that another write did a few hours before? Or a few weeks before. Does that make me a thief, even if I never read the original that preceded mine? Or does that just make me lazy?

Can we be expected to read and consume everything?

With Leitch, it’s a bit different. Did he realize when compiling his list of ten humans in sports whose death might affect us the same way Michael Jackson’s passing did that he had no popular foreign players, no soccer players and no women? And that putting Steve Bartman on there might, while omitting someone like Tiger Woods, might anger people for a reason he didn’t expect and invalidate any other arguments he put in the entire piece?

Or should we just be taking things a little lighter? Should we just be allowed to have a little fun? It’s hard to know, from one blog to the next and from one blog post to the next. We used to have to be right. Then we had to be first. Now, with so much out there, it seems we just need to be linked. The rest doesn’t really matter anymore. Just look at Mariotti.