Bad timing for your fantasy?
As one might suspect, I'm not a big fan of those who champion the demise of print media.
Usually when people trash newspapers and champion the speed and beauty of the Internet, they fail to take into account the fact that 90 percent of the blogs out there steal most of their information from newspapers, link it, then make snarky comments about how the story has a liberal, conservative, or anti-Billick bias.
But my favorite nerdy sports fan Keith Olbermann, formerly of SportsCenter fame and now obsessing over politics at MSNBC, used the Fantasy Baseball edition of USA Today's Sports Weekly to make a point this week about how foolish newspapers can look when they try to compete with the digital world without much forethought.
Sports Weekly's Fantasy Extra edition came out on Tuesday. Which, because the Red Sox and Athletics were playing in Japan, also happened to be Opening Day. Any fool who competes in a fantasy league had his (or her) draft at least a week ago, something Olbermann pointed out as he shook a copy of the issue, naming the folks at Sports Weekly his runner-up for Worst Person in the World. (Feel free to watch just the first 40 seconds of this clip.)
Even if you wanted to wait for Sports Weekly to help you draft your fantasy team, you couldn't. Most of those loyal readers probably jumped to the Web to get their info. Hopefully they'll be able to catch up by reading -- in our newspaper -- the fantasy column written by my man Childs Walker, fantasy baseball guru.
In the meantime, take this quiz to find out which major league baseball player you would be if you could, you know, throw, hit and run. I'm Matt Holliday, minus the weird facial hair. If you turn out to be Jay Gibbons, then we here at "O, By The Way" offer our sincere condolences.
-- Kevin Van Valkenburg
Comments
Bill, I am glad that Olbermann ripped USA Today for their late "preview" issue. I have to say though, MLB should be blamed for this. The schedule to start the season has the Red Sox and A's playing each other in "regular season" games in the midst of Spring Training. I like the idea of having teams play over seas, but it's ridiculous to interrupt the entire purpose of Spring Training to have 2 games be played a week before everyone else. If this is the case, why not pimp out the entrity of MLB teams across the world to play two games and have a week off afterwards. At least then there is some sort of unity for fantasy baseball purposes. Oh, and if anyone wants a last minute preview that talks about Rich Harden's amazing game in Japan, check out The Life of Brian.
Posted by: Brian McFadden | March 27, 2008 5:27 PM