Is Cleveland State Receiving Too Much Coverage?
You would never know how troubled the newspaper industry is by looking at the Cleveland PD Sports Section these days. While dailies around the country have been forced to scale back coverage of their major professional teams and colleges, the CPD has ratcheted up its efforts towards comprehensive team coverage for of all teams, the CSU Vikings.
Cleveland State has certainly improved of late under Gary Waters (to the point where we’ll be surprised if he’s there much longer). They are 24-10 and as of this posting, they are battling for a Horizon League title. But is their recent success worthy of the daily drumbeat of stories we’ve been subjected to?
Consider that the Horizon League ranks a rather pedestrian 13th in attendance among all Division 1 College Basketball conferences (according to the most recent data). Consider that Cleveland State has routinely ranked dead last in the conference in attendance, despite having arguably one of the best venues. Consider that their last home game of the season against Detroit drew an embarrassing 1,988 fans (they had five games with even worse attendance). As a point of reference, D-3′s John Carroll University brought in 1,285 for a random Wednesday night conference game against Capital.
So despite the obvious lack of interest in the post-Kevin Mackey Vikings, why has the PD practically embedded Joe Maxse with a team that hasn’t made the NCAA tournament since 1985-86? Is there some book deal about a middling college basketball team we should know about? It would certainly seem like eight total stories in the last two 48 hours would qualify as “disproportionate” coverage. And all this hullabaloo around a team with a coach that doesn’t hang out in crack houses (or apparently even an orthodontist’s office).
*** EDITOR’S NOTE: Yeah, I know. CSU is tournament bound, thus allegedly worth the all-out reporting blitz they’ve received. I still don’t buy it. Clevelanders aren’t into this team, they don’t support the team, they don’t know players on the team. One run to an inevitable one and done in the tournament doesn’t magically justify the barrage of stories the PD has provided for us this week. We wish them the best of luck though!
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Please take that video down
HAHAHA
Tim, if I could have found the video of Mackey actually smoking crack, you know it would on there.
What a pointless rant. Why does this bother you? Do you want more coverage of the most boring team in the most boring sports league on the planet, the Cleveland Browns? Do you want more LeBron stories? Do you want them to use the space to post pictures of abandoned houses in Slavic Village?
Face it, this is a big story. More coverage might lead to more interest/more opinions/more fans at the games.
Cincinnati Fingers, so now it’s the media’s responsibility to drum up support? The PD is not a PR wing of CSU. Face it, if Viking fans or Clevelanders cared about CSU, they’d go to the games. Should the PD start covering the Fusion (women’s football team) and let it have its own beat just to produce support?
I’m all for CSU making a run and doing well, but let’s face it, our only paper is extending it’s limited resource disproportionately.
Responsibility is irrelevant. There’s been one successful trend in newspapers in the last 10 years, and that’s localism; finding a local niche that isn’t covered by other sources and covering it. Smalltown newspapers, county weeklies, etc. Its totally reasonable for the PD to take a shot at creating some interest in CSU, and they picked the perfect time to do it. If the PD suceeds in drumming up support for and interest in the Vikings, the PD will benefit (unless the second depression eliminates all advertisers, but that would hurt the PD whether they were covering CSU or stalking around boring Berea, asking boring questions about boring offseason moves for completely interchangable players).
As for the Fusion, I’d say that the potential for future interest in a mens’ NCAA tournament team is greater than the potential for interest in the Fusion. Just a guess.
Cincinnati Fingers, we’ll disagree to agree. I’d like to see similar coverage for the John Carroll Fighting Morans at this point! They might get to the elite eight! Go Streaks!