SI and ESPN racing to the bottom: let's talk about the current state of sports 'journalism'.

Hey guys, sorry if this seems weird or misplaced, but I really had to say something after reading this.

Back in 2007, some guy founded Fansided. Billed as being "for intelligent sports fans by intelligent sportsfans", what this actually meant was that it was basically clickbait for people who actually click on clickbait. Fair enough - for whatever reason, people do click on this ****. That's their problem, not mine.

Of course, this begets the question: what, exactly, are fans going to write about, assuming that they don't have any actual insight into much of anything? Sure, there are occasional writers who either write exceptionally well or have a nuanced understanding of the game and the ability to communicate that understanding to an audience. But... what about all of those would-be writers who don't have any of these actual talents?

Not to fear, they can just write about the fact that other people are also writing things. Nobody cares, but with a misleading title, even complete non-events can be dressed up as something that actually matters. And up to this point, I'm fine with all of that. Sounds like a great way to trash your credibility, but clearly they're not going for the types of people who care about credibility. And hey, it's better than just making up rumors like PFT does.

Which brings us to this: http://fansided.com/2015/02/09/seahawks-draft-todd-gurley-replace-marshawn-lynch/

For starters, the piece is titled "Seahawks could draft Todd Gurley to replace Marshawn Lynch?" This title stands out for two reasons:

1. Why include could and then also make it a question? "Will the Seahawks draft Todd Gurley?" Is an actual question. "The Seahawks could draft Todd Gurley" is just a statement of fact because... sure, it's possible. It could happen. But this is some weird bastardization that takes extra care to double down on making no real statement of any kind.
2. It reminds me of a general rule of thumb that I learned a long time ago: anytime a headline is posed as a question, the answer is no. If there was any compelling evidence that the answer was yes, then the existence of that evidence would be the headline instead.

So... yeah, that's not such a good sign. If you actually attempt to read the article, two more things may jump out at you:

1. This is how the second paragraph starts: "Albert Breer of the NFL Network believes that the Seattle Seahawks would be an ideal spot for Gurley to be drafted." Well ****, don't I feel duped. Here I was thinking that this article might be making an actual claim based on an actual source. **** me, right? As it turns out, some guy named Evan Massey decided that it was really important that he write an article based on the idle musings of Albert Breer, of all ****ing people, who is just another guy who writes random crap to fill out pages and get clicks. In short, this article has no source. It's pure idle speculation from some guy who I had never heard of until 10 minutes ago, and whose opinions I have absolutely no reason to care about.
2. It contains this sentence: "Knee injuries are not as serious as they once were with all of the medical advancements." Seriously, guy? My 7th grade English teacher would've given me **** if I'd turned in a paper that contained that sentence.

But at this point, I think I know what you're thinking. It's probably "What's your point? Does it make you feel like a bigger person to rip on some random guys writing for a random clickbait website that nobody takes seriously?" And that's a fair thing to be wondering, since I've pretty much buried the lead in all of this. The lead, in this case, being how I got to the article in the first place. See, the article is currently linked on the front page of SI.com, a once-reputable source of sports news and journalism. And naturally, it's linked under the following headline:




I guess this is a really handy time to remember rule 2 that I mentioned above: the headline is a question because there is no evidence that the answer is anything other than no. But still, I clicked over to si.com earlier today, and I went there rather than Bleacher Report or Fansided specifically because it isn't a ****hole full of un-sourced garbage... or at least I didn't think it was. Truth be told, it's been years since I regularly visited SI, but after how badly ESPN blew DeflateGate, I just really don't see any reason to give them my traffic anymore.

So I gave SI a shot. And when I clicked through and found an un-sourced, poorly written, misleading piece of garbage from Fansided where an SI article was supposed to be, I did some digging (in the form of a 2-second Google search). It turns out that SI and Fansided entered into an agreement in 2013, through which Fansided content would be pushed through SI.

That makes a ton of sense for Fansided: who wouldn't want that kind of exposure? But what about SI? Sure, it's cheap content, but is cheap content worth losing the trust in your brand that's been built up over the past 60 years? Well, these are the same guys who just laid off their entire photography department (apparently illustrations aren't important to Sports Illustrated), so I guess I should have already known the answer to that.

And that's where we are now. I bring this up because I think it's played a pivotal role in how this whole DeflateGate circus has gone down. Imagine if, instead of Chris Mortensen, it had been someone at Bleacher Report claiming that 11 of 12 balls were 2psi under. Would anyone have cared? Probably, but people would have been a lot more wary. The rest of the media may have even waited for some kind of confirmation of facts by a 'real' source before going into a full-on feeding frenzy.

So that really begs the question: why didn't they wait for corroboration? The answer, of course, is that Chris Mortensen is a trusted source™. He works for ESPN, and ESPN isn't Bleacher Report. It's a bunch of reporters with actual sources. At least in theory. In reality, as this SI example clearly demonstrates, ESPN and SI are no more credible than any other garbage outlet. They traded in their credibility for quick and easy content a long time ago.

And whoever in the NFL was persistently leaking **** to people like Mort and Glazer relied on that exact weird dynamic. That they could hand-deliver a story to ESPN or Fox Sports, and that story would a) be taken as gospel by ESPN/Fox Sports, with no fact checking or corroboration, and b) that, since it came from ESPN/Fox Sports, the general public would assume that these outfits had their **** together, and therefore they would take it as gospel too.

Pretty sad, really. As much as I don't like FanSided and Bleacher Report, at least they don't pretend to be something they're not. They're bottom-of-the-barrel clickbait ********, but we all know that. What really sucks is that SI and ESPN are exactly the same, but they're still trading on credibility that they build up in the previous century. I dunno what these guys' end game is, but I hope people realize them for what they are sooner rather than later.

Cliff Notes version
about the current state of sports 'journalism'.

BradyFTW! said:

Hey guys, sorry if this seems weird or misplaced, but I really had to say something after reading this.

Back in 2007, some guy founded Fansided. Billed as being "for intelligent sports fans by intelligent sportsfans", what this actually meant was that it was basically clickbait for people who actually click on clickbait. Fair enough - for whatever reason, people do click on this ****. That's their problem, not mine.

Of course, this begets the question: what, exactly, are fans going to write about, assuming that they don't have any actual insight into much of anything? Sure, there are occasional writers who either write exceptionally well or have a nuanced understanding of the game and the ability to communicate that understanding to an audience. But... what about all of those would-be writers who don't have any of these actual talents?

Not to fear, they can just write about the fact that other people are also writing things. Nobody cares, but with a misleading title, even complete non-events can be dressed up as something that actually matters. And up to this point, I'm fine with all of that. Sounds like a great way to trash your credibility, but clearly they're not going for the types of people who care about credibility. And hey, it's better than just making up rumors like PFT does.

Which brings us to this: http://fansided.com/2015/02/09/seahawks-draft-todd-gurley-replace-marshawn-lynch/

For starters, the piece is titled "Seahawks could draft Todd Gurley to replace Marshawn Lynch?" This title stands out for two reasons:

1. Why include could and then also make it a question? "Will the Seahawks draft Todd Gurley?" Is an actual question. "The Seahawks could draft Todd Gurley" is just a statement of fact because... sure, it's possible. It could happen. But this is some weird bastardization that takes extra care to double down on making no real statement of any kind.
2. It reminds me of a general rule of thumb that I learned a long time ago: anytime a headline is posed as a question, the answer is no. If there was any compelling evidence that the answer was yes, then the existence of that evidence would be the headline instead.

So... yeah, that's not such a good sign. If you actually attempt to read the article, two more things may jump out at you:

1. This is how the second paragraph starts: "Albert Breer of the NFL Network believes that the Seattle Seahawks would be an ideal spot for Gurley to be drafted." Well ****, don't I feel duped. Here I was thinking that this article might be making an actual claim based on an actual source. **** me, right? As it turns out, some guy named Evan Massey decided that it was really important that he write an article based on the idle musings of Albert Breer, of all ****ing people, who is just another guy who writes random crap to fill out pages and get clicks. In short, this article has no source. It's pure idle speculation from some guy who I had never heard of until 10 minutes ago, and whose opinions I have absolutely no reason to care about.
2. It contains this sentence: "Knee injuries are not as serious as they once were with all of the medical advancements." Seriously, guy? My 7th grade English teacher would've given me **** if I'd turned in a paper that contained that sentence.

But at this point, I think I know what you're thinking. It's probably "What's your point? Does it make you feel like a bigger person to rip on some random guys writing for a random clickbait website that nobody takes seriously?" And that's a fair thing to be wondering, since I've pretty much buried the lead in all of this. The lead, in this case, being how I got to the article in the first place. See, the article is currently linked on the front page of SI.com, a once-reputable source of sports news and journalism. And naturally, it's linked under the following headline:

I guess this is a really handy time to remember rule 2 that I mentioned above: the headline is a question because there is no evidence that the answer is anything other than no. But still, I clicked over to si.com earlier today, and I went there rather than Bleacher Report or Fansided specifically because it isn't a ****hole full of un-sourced garbage... or at least I didn't think it was. Truth be told, it's been years since I regularly visited SI, but after how badly ESPN blew DeflateGate, I just really don't see any reason to give them my traffic anymore.

So I gave SI a shot. And when I clicked through and found an un-sourced, poorly written, misleading piece of garbage from Fansided where an SI article was supposed to be, I did some digging (in the form of a 2-second Google search). It turns out that SI and Fansided entered into an agreement in 2013, through which Fansided content would be pushed through SI.

That makes a ton of sense for Fansided: who wouldn't want that kind of exposure? But what about SI? Sure, it's cheap content, but is cheap content worth losing the trust in your brand that's been built up over the past 60 years? Well, these are the same guys who just laid off their entire photography department (apparently illustrations aren't important to Sports Illustrated), so I guess I should have already known the answer to that.

And that's where we are now. I bring this up because I think it's played a pivotal role in how this whole DeflateGate circus has gone down. Imagine if, instead of Chris Mortensen, it had been someone at Bleacher Report claiming that 11 of 12 balls were 2psi under. Would anyone have cared? Probably, but people would have been a lot more wary. The rest of the media may have even waited for some kind of confirmation of facts by a 'real' source before going into a full-on feeding frenzy.

So that really begs the question: why didn't they wait for corroboration? The answer, of course, is that Chris Mortensen is a trusted source™. He works for ESPN, and ESPN isn't Bleacher Report. It's a bunch of reporters with actual sources. At least in theory. In reality, as this SI example clearly demonstrates, ESPN and SI are no more credible than any other garbage outlet. They traded in their credibility for quick and easy content a long time ago.

And whoever in the NFL was persistently leaking **** to people like Mort and Glazer relied on that exact weird dynamic. That they could hand-deliver a story to ESPN or Fox Sports, and that story would a) be taken as gospel by ESPN/Fox Sports, with no fact checking or corroboration, and b) that, since it came from ESPN/Fox Sports, the general public would assume that these outfits had their **** together, and therefore they would take it as gospel too.

Pretty sad, really. As much as I don't like FanSided and Bleacher Report, at least they don't pretend to be something they're not. They're bottom-of-the-barrel clickbait ********, but we all know that. What really sucks is that SI and ESPN are exactly the same, but they're still trading on credibility that they build up in the previous century. I dunno what these guys' end game is, but I hope people realize them for what they are sooner rather than later.

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Excellent post. The end game is clicks, ratings, and revenue. Being first and offering the juiciest take has long ago replaced being accurate as the vehicle to strong revenue.

Ice_Ice_Brady said:

Excellent post. The end game is clicks, ratings, and revenue. Being first and offering the juiciest take has long ago replaced being accurate as the vehicle to strong revenue.

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Ice, so you disagree that the current state of Sports Journalism (which has been sooooo fair to the pats this year) is not dog poop?

Bruins29 said:

Ice, so you disagree that the current state of Sports Journalism (which has been sooooo fair to the pats this year) is not dog poop?

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Oh sorry, thought you were summarizing the post.

The rush for getting information as quickly as possible means that none of them fact check

Did I just insult dog poop? I insulted dog poop.

@BradyFTW! - I would not expect change anytime soon. The speed at which information is relayed & consumed only increases with time, and that speed comes at a great cost to the accuracy and integrity of that information. But, it's not the conveyors of that information that are paying the price. ESPN/SI might - undeservedly - have a better reputation than BleacherReport, but as you show, they are no better and haven't been for some time, yet, that reputation stands. In short, people have gotten used to being fed junk.

SI also published an article where the writer trotted out every negative rumor he could think of about the Patriots. It was something you'd expect to see from an angry fan on a rival team's message board, but there it was, under the SI banner.I'm not going to link to the original, but Michael Hurley took it apart point by point here:

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/01/...ck-cheating-accusations-to-new-absurd-levels/

BradyManny said:

@BradyFTW! - I would not expect change anytime soon. The speed at which information is relayed & consumed only increases with time, and that speed comes at a great cost to the accuracy and integrity of that information. But, it's not the conveyors of that information that are paying the price. ESPN/SI might - undeservedly - have a better reputation than BleacherReport, but as you show, they are no better and haven't been for some time, yet, that reputation stands. In short, people have gotten used to being fed junk.

Click to expand...

Just to clarify, I don't expect the behavior of any of these outlets to change. For better or worse (mostly for worse), they just want cheap, fast content, because that's what drives clicks.

What I do expect/hope will change is the perception of pre-internet outlets like SI and ESPN as being better or more accurate than any random clickbait blog. They're all the same, at this point, and I think we'll all be better off once everyone realizes that. ESPN or SI probably shouldn't be treated as inherently more credible than Bleacher Report, at this point. It's not like their fact-checking is any better.

While the overall conclusions of the Head Smart Labs is correct, there are a couple of specific weaknesses of their methods.

1. Using new footballs. The footballs used for testing MUST NOT be new. This is a flaw in both the testing shown in Head Smart's &, I now realize, in my testing. They must be pressurized (to around 13 psi), then they should be played with. They should have giant guys jump on them repeatedly on a grassy surface. Each time this happens, the pressure inside the ball spikes to a very high level. Probably in the 20 - 50 psig range.

In order to account for this, I overpressurized the balls that I used to 15 psig for about 5 minutes. I figured that this would take out any initial creep offsets. It likely did. But I didn't abuse the balls like they are in practice or in games. At $100 a pop, I wanted to return all but one.

My tests were "screening tests", just to get a rough feel for the numbers. In any REAL quantitative testing, using broken-in, used balls will be essential. The good news is that, in the testing that the Pats organization did, they likely used broken-in balls.

2. The Official NFL game ball ("The Duke", by Wilson) is shipped with an internal pressure of ~6 psi. This is so that the leather doesn't stretch while it is on the shelf. The act of having to add 6.5 psi additional (to get to 12.5 psi) will result in the internal air being hotter than room temp. Whenever air is compressed by any pump, it heats up. Significantly. The air going into the pump is room temp. The air coming out of the pump is significantly hotter. Likely over 100°F. The amount it heats up depends on the starting pressure (0 psig) and the final pressure (6 psig for the first pumps, 12.5 psig for the last pumps). If you're just bringing a ball from 12.4 psig to 12.5 psig, then you're adding little extra heat to the air inside. If you're bring a ball from 6 psig to 12.5 psig, then you're adding a lot of heat to the air inside the balls.

3. Bringing them up to pressure in a 75°F room isn't sufficient to say that the balls mimic the balls used in the game. We know for sure that the game balls were used prior to being chosen. They would have been inflated to around 13 ± 0.5 psig, and used a lot in practice. Then they would have sat & equilibrated over night & for the day of the game (I believe that it was a 6 pm game, giving them lots of time to equilibrate). When it came time to be set for the game, if below 12.5 psig, they would have had just a little air added, bringing the internal air temp up just slightly. If they were above 12.5 psig, they would have had a little air removed, bringing the internal air temp down not at all.

The Head Smart people SHOULD HAVE raised the pressure to 12.5 psig, and left them over night to equilibrate in temperature.

They also should have overpressurized them to remove any initial creep that might result from "first pressurization". (See below)

4. Lots of collagen-based biomaterials (like leather) will take an initial "set" the first time that they are loaded to capacity. (I am loathe to mention the words "abdomen" & "pregnancy", although it does apply. Ohhhh, I am in deep **** now.!!)

They also tend to be non-linear in their stress-strain behavior. (Usually a sigmoid "S-shaped" curve.)

The collagen in the leather is undoubtably "denatured" (changed from the normal crystalline tri-helix structure to the amorphous, random fiber structure) due to heating during the tanning process. Think "bacon", which is 90% collagen. When heated to a transition temp (around 58°C), it denatures & shrinks over 50%. Denatured collagen is also much weaker than crystalline collagen, a fact that doomed a medical device product I once worked on.

Remember there are 2 additional layers of material, one linen & one vinyl, IIRC) that are sewn to the inside of the leather (see YT video: "How it's made, footballs"). These layers contribute to the elastic & plastic strength of the ball's outer layer. The elastomer bladder contributes nothing.

5. Being jumped on by Vince Wilfork, or landed on after a catch by a WR, will definitely spike the stress in the ball, and could EASILY result in a ball with an aneurism. All of these effects tend to enlarge the balls, and reduce pressure in direct proportion to the change in volume.

6. It is impossible to say, from any info given in the Head Smart Lab video, whether wetting the balls contributes to the lower pressure. They didn't separate out that variable.

7. They didn't tell us the temp of the water used to wet the balls. Hopefully, it was down around 46 - 50°F. The bath by the water is FAR more efficient at reducing the temp of the internal air than merely sitting at 50°F in air. One can sit outdoors in 50°F air all day long, perfectly comfortably. Jump into 50° water for a great example of the difference in heat conductivity between air & water.

8. I truly wish that they'd published all their data on the change in temperature. I am a bit skeptical about a drop of 1.8 to 1.9 psig.

I got a consistent 1.4 - 1.5 psig pressure drop in 4 balls. My cold temp exposure was more severe than theirs (as much as I can tell from the videos). They merely wet the balls, while I dunked mine in 48° water for 1 minute, dried the outside with a towel & then 9 minutes in a 50°F refrigerator. Repeated this cycle 7 times for a total of 70 minutes.

But this might be variability in the hand-made footballs.
But I think that it's more likely initial creep.

tom.kordis said:

I got a consistent 1.4 - 1.5 psig in 4 balls. My cold temp exposure was more severe than theirs

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Umm, I think when Belichick said to go do the test yourself, it mighta been a rhetorical device! j/k Good job.

buile said:

Umm, I think when Belichick said to go do the test yourself, it mighta been a rhetorical device!

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Actually, I don't think that it was.

I had written the Patriots organization, telling them about my calculations & tests. I reassured them that "it will NOT be possible for anyone, including the league, to bury the fact that this is what ALL BALLS do in cold weather", specifically because "anybody can do the test themselves."

And I described to them how trivially easy the testing is.

I have no idea whether or not my emails encouraged them to do their own tests. I'd be tickled pink with either answer, for different reasons.

I actually believe that Belichick's message was from the Pats organization (including their lawyers) to the NFL: "ANYBODY can do these tests and confirm the results. So DO NOT attempt to produce some 'middle of the road' answer, such as 'we were not able to replicate the effects, we are not certain whether the balls were manipulated or not, but we going to implement some new procedures to make sure that this sort of thing never happens again."

Which would leave all Pats-haters with the conviction that the Pats cheated & got away with it.

I believe that it is a thinly-veiled threat to the league's lawyers, and a demand for rigor, honesty & a complete & PUBLIC exoneration.

tom.kordis said:

Actually, I don't think that it was.

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I was joking

Regardless, your point ("it will NOT be possible for anyone, including the league, to bury the fact that this is what ALL BALLS do in cold weather") is a good one. The only way folks could hold onto the misinformation brokered by biased (or just plain stupid) media is for the *least* amount of accurate discussion to occur, allowing said misconceptions to remain unchallenged and in-place.

Here's how to get your news: follow beat writers and analysts on twitter directly. I'm talking Mike Reiss, Mike Loyko, Matt Chatham (his website footballbyfootball is great), Chris price, jeff howe, ben volin, mije giardi, etc. Follow the people they retweet often - Evan Silva, Schefter, etc.

They tend to stick to the facts since there's a character limit and their opinions on twitter a little more measured since they are held accountable with rewteets, responses, etc.

I rarely read articles unless its on one of the smaller blogs like pats pulpit, pats propaganda, etc.

Do this and you'll avoid a lot of the daily bull crap and will be better informed

A winner of a comment from Deadspin today:

tom.kordis said:

6. It is impossible to say, from any info given in the Head Smart Lab video, whether wetting the balls contributes to the lower pressure. They didn't separate out that variable.

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It is not shown on the video, but a pdf file on the head smart labs site says that they repeated the whole experiment without wetting the footballs and saw an average 1.1 psi drop.

Extending the news cycle and converting their own mass.