Mandel’s Musings: Sports Journalists do a Better Job if They Played the Games (at a Relatively HIgh Level) They Cover.
Sports reporters do a better job for their readers or viewers if they themselves played the game they cover at a reasonably high level.
by Scott Mandel
Occasionally, I’ve had little debates with colleagues (most of whom disagree with me), when I’ve said a sports journalist has several professional advantages when they cover a sport they themselves played at reasonably advanced levels (high school or college).
I’ve never played hockey. Could barely stay up on ice skates when I tried it at the Wollman Rink in Central Park or at Rockefeller Center all the weekends and years I took my kids to those venues.
So when I watch a team like the New York Rangers losing nine out of their last 11 games, a year after making the Stanley Cup semifinals, I cannot give you one reason it’s happening, from a technical or strategic point of view. Nor could I explain to you what they need to do to fix it, technically or strategically.
I’ve watched hockey for much more than 50 years, since I was a little tyke. But despite all of that fan experience, I cannot offer one viable solution to correct their losing ways.  And without that knowledge, I could never be a hockey journalist, either. 
Of course, I know all the clichés. They need to show more fight, exhibit more grit, and they need to put more biscuits in the basket (score more goals) than the other team to win games. And that’s about the extent of what I know about hockey. Because I never played the game. I would be a crappy hockey journalist, pretty much observing the game from the periphery.

I cannot tell you why a particular defenseman would play better on the left side or the right side. I don’t know why the goaltender let in an easy goal or five goals in a game. I do know when I saw a great player like Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr, they seemed to skate faster and control the puck on their sticks better than most while making slick passes to their hard-working, average talented teammates. To this fan, everyone else on the ice was essentially grinding up and down the rink looking like they were trying hard. The Gretzky’s and the Orr’s seemed to be gliding, even flying, up and down the ice, like it was their personal ballet. It was pretty to watch. Even beautiful.  Nureyev on skates. 
Personally, I can look at a football game or a baseball game and come very close to pinpointing why a team is winning or losing or why a coach/manager is good at what he does. If I was somehow forced into having to coach a high school or college team in football or baseball, I could probably do a decent job. Not so much with basketball or hockey or soccer or skiing or badminton. It’s that same lack of knowledge that would make me a crappy journalist in covering those sports I’ve never played. How many times could I call out to my badminton players, “slam that shuttlecock, boys” only to be corrected by them. “Coach, we don’t slam the shuttlecock, we just hit the shuttlecock.”
I never played hockey but I did play playground basketball, aka The City Game, starting at age 5 and not stopping until I was in my 50s, when the inside of my knee exploded on the basketball courts at Riverside Church, on 120th St. when I was playing 2 on 2 with my 10-year-old son and his good friend back then, Ty Jerome, who is now in the NBA.
Playground basketball is not considered a “reasonably competitive level“ when your experience consists of the streets of New York City, but you do gain knowledge of basketball through a sort of osmosis in this town. Still, without playing the game, with the structure of working with coaches and game plans and practice and teammates, a sports journalist is working at a disadvantage, no matter how ingrained the game is in their bodies and souls .
I hope the coach of the Rangers gets them to play better. Otherwise, his next job will be up in the booth, talking about the game as a broadcast journalist.
The good news for hockey fans? The fired coach will have definite advantages and provide unique insights fans would not otherwise gain access to, even from a non-playing, talented journalist on the periphery of the game.
