120 Fahrenheit: The Blurring of Lines
April 23rd, 2009 . 12:06 pm . By: Buzz CarrickWe’re at a funny time in American (and world?) media, where newspapers are dieing and blogs/internet news sites are growing in popularity, if not profitability. As part of that movement professional sports teams, and for that matter all other kinds of teams, are letting (making?) their coaches and players blog in cyber space. Some teams, like FCD, do a blog that is by an unnamed person or have players blog in the team’s managed social spaces, like myfcdallas.com. Other teams allow their players and coaches to blog outside of their own team specific mediums. Which brings us to Houston Dynamo goalkeeper coach Tim Hanley. Who, I can tell you having met him through the course of his website, couldn’t be a nicer guy. He happens to have a blog called the Coach’s Corner on a website called CenterLineSoccer.com that is run by some good soccer people like Jeff Carlisle, Jay Hipps, and Joe Santos. Mostly CLS focuses on the bay area and I’m sure Hanley got involved with them when he coached out there. Clearly, CenterLineSoccer is a soccer news and opinion site. Also, clearly, Houston Dynamo knew, and by letting it happen, approved of Hanley writing there. Now Tim Hanley happens to be an opinionated fellow. I like his stuff both on his blog and in person, cause he says what he thinks. Which brings us to last week. Hanley wrote a preview of the Revs game against DC. In it Hanley makes some critical remarks about DC and some of their players as well as calling out the DC ownership for medaling meddling (*sigh*) with their coaching staff at the SuperDraft. It’s all his opinion (some of it I agree with, some of it I don’t) and I think the preview is better for it. How often do you get a professional coach putting his real opinion out there. It’s both refreshing and fascinating. The reaction is perhaps even more interesting. DC fans got all up in arms, perhaps understandably. You can read their posts on the original piece. That’s awesome stuff. It is modern internet at it’s best. Writers opinion with fan/reader interaction and interactivity. I love it. One wonders if the DC fans would have know about it if other media members hadn’t pointed out the article. That’s classic blogsphere interaction, as is this post really. Steven Goff of the Washington Post, if I’m not reading to much into his tone, seemed slightly offended both in a how-dare-a-coach-try-and-be-media kind of way and in a did-the-Dynamo-just-call-out-DC-? kind of way. Craig Stouffer of the Washington Examiner seemed to take it more in stride calling it “bulletin board material” and “dangerous” citing DC beating Houston. Although dangerous seems a bit much. It’s just soccer and the internet after all. So apparently the Houston Dynamo got upset about the piece, although one wonders if DC United complained to them. So Dynamo asked (forced?) Hanley to make a public apology. Both Goff and Stouffer blogged about the apology. Goff reasserts the problem in his mind was the fact Hanley is a team employee. Stouffer just passes on the links. But, and here’s my point, in my opinion Tim Hanley has nothing to apologies for. I don’t believe he did anything wrong. He is, presumably, being paid by CenterLineSoccer.com for his opinion. There is no way Houston Dynamo didn’t know Hanley was writing this blog. By letting Hanley blog, Houston is giving their approval for him to express his opinion. Dyanmo, I think we can conclude, was happy to have the extra publicity that Hanley’s blog was giving them. Just like any other MLS team, they will take what they can get in the media. Therefore the fault here is with Houston Dyanmo. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you allow your coach to express his opinion as a paid media member, then you have to suck it up when said opinion bites you in the ass. If you are going to get offended by this kind of thing you can’t put people in a position where it will happen. Even Hanley knows that.
Now that the cat’s out of the proverbial bag, something will have to give. Hanley could keep writing and just edit himself, which would be both boring and useless. Houston could make him stop blogging, the most likely option, but again a boring option. Or, and here’s what I think they should do, all parties could accept this is the modern media world and embrace this kind of opinion coming from a coach and run with it. MLS as a small player in the larger sports media world needs this kind of outside the box thinking. As Mr. Bueller said, “The meek get pinched, the bold survive.” It sure as heck would it be a lot more fun. 13 Comments Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI Leave a comment |
I think you meant that DC ownership, like Scooby and the Mystery Gang, were accused of meddling. Unless DC ownership received gold for their actions. No worries Buzz; I wish my typos were even slightly amusing.
Strange and interesting at the same time. I actually liked the article a lot, but it was hardly unbiased, and being that he’s with Houston, I really have to wonder why.
On the other hand, Goff really tried to throw Hanley under the bus with his reply. Is there any possibility he didn’t know that Hanley wasn’t with the site previously? If not, Goff should be ashamed, as his response was elitism of the highest order, not to mention pandering to his audience.
When I saw the title I thought you were going to take a shot at the PHP grounds crew.
This is very interesting stuff, and I can’t imagine it’s going to go away anytime soon. It would be a real shame if teams started cracking down on employee blogging. But I can see it happening.
forgetting the optics of this (the politics, so to speak), were Hanley’s comments correct?
People talk about “bias” but perhaps someone like Goff would never report this because he has to preserve his sources… he has to be friendly with DC to avoid burning bridges.
It’s strange that you’d have those 2 pics and take so long to make them.
And not picking Stefan Frei is a travesty. They needed a keeper badly and Frei is starting, and looking excellent, for TFC even though TFC already had a highly paid veteran starter in Greg Sutton.
You’re exactly right. I’ve lost respect for the Dynamo organization as a result of this.
I agree with you, Buzz. I’d much rather have an environment where some people can speak their minds and tell the interesting stories, rather than whitewashed, front-office-approved blandness.
Either way, props to Center Line Soccer for keeping the story & comments online. I’m sure at least one suit involved in this affair wanted the whole thing to go down the memory hole.
I agree with you Buzz and think Hanley is a genius. After all the hype about Zach Wells he was the one that encouraged Houstank to pull the trigger on that trade and look how right he turned out to be. Looks like freedom of speech is not alive in well in the good ole U.S.of A – or at least not in MLS.
Hello Buzz —
Thanks for the kind words. My commentary on the events of the last few days is up on Center Line Soccer — click my name for the link.
By the way, I’m not sure anyone at the Dynamo had much knowledge of Tim’s blogging. He started with us last year and just kept going. In retrospect, he probably should have changed his style a bit.
Regards,
Jay Hipps
Agreed with all you say Buzz. Teams always control employee commentary (players and coaches) in all sports, which is why we get the same bland, pointless, and banal commentary from jocks whenever they are asked to speak their mind.
++++++++++++++
Hey, the ref is just trying to do their job;
we have to take the season one day at a time;
the owners are committed to success, you will have to ask them about how they intervene on draft decisions. I have no opinion because I am a mindless robot;
I have a job to do and look forward to contributing to the team any way I can;
++++++++++++++
BLAH BLAH BLAH.
Perhaps the age of Internet media and blogging will eventually rip everything wide open and tip over the sacred cows of sports journalism in the process. After all, what is to stop Hanley or others like him from writing under a pseudonym? Eventually, the opinions will rise to the surface and be heard.
[...] linked article confirms that DC United ownership didn’t like the last piece Hanley wrote. (I wrote my take on the whole thing earlier this [...]
Good stuff! Good friggin stuff, Buzz!
first of all, great article. i am a san jose fan and i feel that tim hanley’s comments were justified and in no way did they merit this overreaction.
also, to Big B, i’m pretty sure “medaling” was a pun because ownership interjection (meddling) should create a winning team, but in DC’s case has not since the most recent group took over.
[...] other other teams merits discussion. We won’t revisit the issue here, but check out 3rd Degree for a great discussion of the issue and links to some of the more interesting [...]