Fun With Double Standards

DISCLAIMER: If you want to just skip to the main point of this, just scroll down to the bullet points. All these other words you may not care about. Well, to be fair, you might not care about the words in the bullets either, but I’m assuming you clicked on this for a reason so I’ll try and help save you some time.

I really dislike hypocrites.

I realize of course this isn’t a particularly controversial stance to take on the subject, but hypocrisy has always just been something that really, really bothered me. In particular, doing what I do both here for the site and what I try to do on Twitter, it really bothers me when it comes to the local Oklahoma media. If you’ve sent any time following me on Twitter, you already know I’m not shy about speaking my mind on this particular subject. I’ve just never understood why simply being in the media gives them the superiority to pretty routinely ridicule and/or talk down to us as fans.

Frankly, it really pisses me off. Having a press pass doesn’t make you any more or less qualified than I am to talk about OU football. If you right for the paper or have a sports talk radio show does it provide you a much bigger platform with which to do so? Obviously. But that doesn’t automatically equate to you knowing any more what you’re talking about than I do.

You may or may not know (and probably don’t care, not that I blame you) that I no longer live in Oklahoma. But I do listen to OKC sports talk radio pretty much every day at my office job. I’ve never found any of the three options (there may be more, but I’m only aware of the main three: KREF, Sports Animal, The Franchise) to be all that good of radio, but I’m listening because I want to hear them talk about Oklahoma sports. Now depending on when you’re listening, one could easily question just how much they’re actually doing that as all three stations certainly have their own respective…shall we say…shortcomings.

I’m quite sure I could bore you all to death about what I feel those ‘shortcomings’ are for each respective station, but that probably wouldn’t be very productive. Other than for the one or two of you out there that might get a chuckle or be able to relate to what I’m saying. Maybe in the comments section if anyone actually winds up reading this. So we’ll just move on for now.

Just for the sake of full disclosure, I’m that guy that bitches (usually to my father, who I’m quite sure has grown incredibly tiresome of me talking about the same thing all the time) about how they’re not talking enough about OU (the only thing I really care to hear them talk about) or how they’re talking about some other stupid s#$% I could care less about (Ok. State, the Thunder, their kids, Seinfeld reruns, etc.). And yet most days there I am tuning back in. So in this respect I really have no one to blame but myself. But that’s also not what this is about.

What it’s about is hypocrites. And this was personified in the conversations I heard this morning on the Sports Animal, but can really apply to any of the three stations any given time/day.

As I suspect many of you are aware, the Thunder are now two games into the 2014-15 season. I do not like the Thunder. I do not like them for a variety of reasons, but I will not bore you with what those are. Outside of when I was growing up and the heydays of Michael Jordan, I’ve really never been that big of an NBA guy. That said, I understand why they’re a big deal in OKC and why all three stations feel the need to discuss the Thunder…constantly. Well, that’s not entirely true. I don’t understand the need to spend the better part of an entire two hour (or however long) radio show talking about what couldn’t be a more meaningless preseason game when OU has an important football game the following day. But I digress.

I’ve come to find there are, in my opinion, wildly different standards for acceptable behavior and coverage when it comes to the Thunder and OU Football. Here are my beefs with those I feel are being hypocritical.

* Local media Twitter follows during Thunder games – I can’t be alone here, right? For any of you who are on Twitter, given our similar interests in things OU-related, I assume we probably follow a lot of the same people. Some of these people I’m referring to write about OU and/or the Thunder for a local paper, while others have sports talk radio shows. And without fail during Thunder games, I routinely see any number of them ranting and raving like the irrational fans of OU football they just as routinely like to ridicule and/or talk down to be it in the paper or on the radio.

So I’m just curious about something. You’re allowed to “act like a fan” when it comes to the Thunder then we’re expected to take you seriously because even in spite of all the stupid things you may have said in the heat of the moment during a Thunder game the previous night on Twitter? How is that any different than what many an OU fan, myself included, may do before/during/or after a football game only to then be told how stupid they are.

(Okay, I lied in that I can’t help myself here and have to mention one radio specific point. One of my favorite — and by favorite I mean so wildly hypocritical I can’t help but laugh at it because it makes me feel so vindicated — things is the Sports Animal postgame following OU games, especially those in which OU does not play well, where Jim & Al will spend 10 minutes rip a coach or a play-call or a player by name (always a classy move), then they’ll take a call, an OU fan will do the same thing, and they scream and yell at this person for what an idiot they are even though all this person has done is make the exact same point/s they were just yelling about. Oh, but this is only after they’ve already hung up on the person so they can insult them and call them all kind of names while they have no way to defend themselves. Good stuff.)

* Losses – Again, I’m not an NBA guy so anyone feel free to correct me. But if memory serves the Thunder play an 82 game schedule, correct? And OU has a 12 game regular season, right? So why is freaking out about AND ridiculously over-analyzing one (or in the case of this morning on the radio two) loss in an 82 game schedule perfectly acceptable, but the minute OU fans get pissy about a loss (or the two losses OU currently has) we’re just a bunch of irrational a-holes with ridiculously unrealistic expectations?

There are times in which during an 82 game schedule an individual loss could be quite important, but that time is almost exclusively towards the end of the regular season when the playoffs, assuming you’ve played well enough over the course of that 82 game schedule (are you sensing a theme here yet?) to be in contention for the playoffs, and your potential seeding come into play. So until that time, you can probably chill the f out with a mid-week loss in game number 37 of the season.

And it sure as hell isn’t two games into an 82 game schedule. I mean I heard one of these radio talking heads that’s also a local tv sports guy (because that’s the type of position that offers all kinds of credibility) — and one who has no problem ripping OU fans for their irrational takes on OU Football — literally say that on a 1-out of-10 scale right now their level of ‘freaking out’ was probably a 10. Right, but OU fans are the idiots.

Meanwhile, as well all know the minute you get upset about another season in which OU has failed to make it out of October without a blemish on their record the “irrational fanbase” articles/condescending radio lectures start to make the rounds.

* Second-guessing – I don’t even really follow the Thunder, but through listening to the radio every day and the unfortunate (for me) coincidence that so many of my followers I rely on OU information for also cover the are Thunder fans I can’t help but be aware of this next one.

It’s apparently perfectly fine to second guess any (every?) decision Scotty Brooks makes and even openly call for his firing. But god forbid you say anything negative about Bob Stoops’ time in Norman or dare to question he or any of his staff’s decisions.

You couldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about if you’re questioning Stoops, but because the Thunder have been here for six (or so) years now everyone is an expert on the NBA and have clearly earned the right to question Brooks? Last I checked, or at least those I’m aware of, nobody covering the Thunder at the local papers or on the radio playing in the NBA. So why are they allowed to question Brooks again, but OU fans can’t question Stoops?

My point being this presumption that some people have that you can’t possibly have a clue what you’re talking about unless you either (1) formerly played and/or coached the game or (2) have the privilege of a media credential is even more idiotic than they believe most OU fans to be. As though there couldn’t possibly be anything to glean from having watched 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years worth of OU games.

How did you pass those classes to get your journalism degree? You studied, right? Well that’s what a lot of us fans do every Saturday and in the days/weeks that follow.

Are there idiotic OU fans that say ridiculous things whether after a win or loss? Of course. But every single fanbase on the planet has those. My problem is you (and by you I mean the local media) representing this very minor percentage of the OU fanbase as the vocal majority. They aren’t. And your misrepresentation that fringe of the fanbase as being the majority only hurts your credibility with the much larger percentage of rationale OU fans. The fans you should actually be catering to with your coverage.

Sports talk radio has always catered to the lowest common denominator, so that’s unlikely to ever change. And the newspaper business is struggling to continue its existence, so they’ll probably be gone before anything changes there either. Which is all to say this was probably one big nearly 1,800 word waste of time, other than to help one guy get some stuff of his chest.

Ahhhhhhh, I feel better. How ’bout you?