by John Scanlan<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There\u2019s one thing I have learned since joining the Mid-Valley staff: Football coaches and athletes are a very sensitive bunch.<\/p>\n
Now this isn\u2019t meant to be a blanket statement. There are some coaches who \u201cget it\u201d and take it for what it is. They just appreciate the coverage and attention and have fun with it.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, that\u2019s not the case with many coaches and athletes. If you don\u2019t mention them, somehow you\u2019re slighting them. If you don\u2019t pick them to win despite their 1-7 record, you\u2019re disrespecting them. If you don\u2019t talk about how the 4th<\/sup> receiver at a school has \u201cstepped up\u201d by going from one catch a game to two, you\u2019re playing favorites.<\/p>\n For a sport that prides itself on toughness, it\u2019s amazing how much damage some written or unwritten words can seemingly do. I\u2019m not going to mention names or anything. I don\u2019t want to do any more psychological damage and get a flood of emails.<\/p>\n Just because your QB isn\u2019t ranked #1 doesn\u2019t mean we think he sucks. Somebody has to be #1 and somebody has to be #2. Just like someone needs to be #10, #20, etc.<\/p>\n When predictions are made in regards to an upcoming game, the basic premise is one team must be picked to win and one team must be picked to lose. Seems pretty easy to understand, but there have actually been reporters verbally berated because of something as trivial as a prediction. Ironically, these are the same people that preach mental toughness to their players.<\/p>\n Look, I understand that there\u2019s a lot of time and preparation put into a football season and emotions run high, but why give a flip what some guy writing for a newspaper thinks?<\/p>\n I think, in a sense, there\u2019s a rush to feel as important as a college or professional athlete or coach. So when the \u201cmedia\u201d doesn\u2019t give the proper \u201crespect\u201d (i.e. kiss their fundament and tell them how great they are), they feel like they\u2019ve arrived. They don\u2019t want that to end, so they get into a verbal sparring match with the local writers.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never seen a writer drop a pass, miss a tackle or fumble. I\u2019ve never seen a writer call the wrong coverage or call a running play in a situation that clearly calls for a pass. I have also never seen a writer pretend to be 100% accurate when it came to making assessments or making predictions.<\/p>\n If the only opinion of your team or yourself that you want is your own, then stick to your school newspapers. Don\u2019t beg for attention and then get sour when you don\u2019t read what you want to read. Otherwise, settle down and take our opinions and analysis for what it is: opinions and analysis.<\/p>\n Quick Scans inflicts mental damage every Monday-Thursday at midvalleysports.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by John Scanlan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[444],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fanview","tag-high-school-football"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1976,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}