A Desultory Philippic

The toughest job a sports editor must tackle is the blank page staring him in the face after two of the stories supposed to fill that space have crumped.

That, in essence, leads to train-of-thought columns like these.

But in this, the last column of the fall term, it is VERY tempting to try and slip something by The Crimson's self-censoring process and into the daily paper...

If you think about it, columns are essentially 20 inches of free space given to any yahoo that walks in off the street and writes 16 articles for the sports page.

I'm not a member of the "media elite." I wasn't specially selected by a blue-ribbon panel. I'm not Grade A anything. I was never inspected by Number 12. I've done this for two years and now I can say things like.

BOMB FRANCE BACK TO THE STONE AGE

and be taken somewhat seriously. Doesn't this bother anybody? It's mob rule, just like our hypothetical post-nuclear-winter France. It's also a power trip for the columnist, just to write blather and occasionally slip in things like

BILLY CLEARY '56 HAS A BIG NOSE

with no offense to the Athletic Director, who has a fine schnozz and should brook no gruff on this subject. (Besides, he's won a national championship both on the ice and behind the bench--which is much more than almost any team at this school can boast of.)

But the point is this: I can essentially write any damn thing I want. That's the point of a column. That's why we can make the boys in Legal sweat. The complete and total unpredictability. I can talk about personal problems, like how I want to

ROAST THE EXECUTIVE STAFF OF THE HARVARD STUDENT TELEPHONE OFFICE ON A SPIT UNTIL THEY BEG FOR MERCY

for apparently random disconnections of my PAC code.

But columns can land their authors in trouble, as this one probably will with the folks at AT&T. Fortunately, no one at Harvard has done this to the Crimson in a while, but there are always L-I-B-E-L suits (a dirty word `round these parts), which columnists can attract a lot of.

My favorite such story concerned a very successful wrestling coach in a public high school in Ohio. At the state semifinals, his team got in a huge brawl with its opponent and was ejected from the tournament. Although everybody in the community "knew" the coach had encouraged his wrestlers to get involved in the fisticuffs, the coach was so well-loved that a hearing acquitted the coach of any blame.

A fed-up sports columnist--sarcasm dripping from his pen like water--wrote the next day that Sure, the ENTIRE wrestling team got involved in a HUGE BRAWL against the coach's wishes. Riiiight. What-ever. Come on, he told the readers. We all know the coach was in on it, and we can't set this example for our kids.

The coach brought a suit for $70 million. Thankfully, he lost.

Now I know I've written stuff worse than that. I've said some crappy things about the men's basketball team in its 1-11 days (I once called one of its members the "Human Foul"). I've called the football team boring and bad. I've bashed strange substitutions on the women's soccer team. I've criticized people individually and collectively and I've stretched the truth.

It's all in the name of entertainment, which is a large part of sports journalism. Sports are entertainment, and the media surrounding it should be accordingly entertaining. So we point fingers and name names. On television, CBS color commentator Terry Bradshaw rambles on like he's lost his medication. The Boston Globe's Bob Ryan trashes soccer with gusto.

The average member of the sports media will do just about anything to make the guy on the street corner nod his head and growl "Yeah!" in support.

Nothing, however, boggles my mind like the occasional

SAVORY BEEF BRISKET: WHY ARE WE PAYING MONEY TO EAT THIS

excuse for nutrition? (Whoops, how did that slip out? Sorry, MICHAEL "THE WEASEL" BERRY. What is this, backstage at a KFC?)

There are not many people at this school who can address such a large number of people concerning just about any random thought that enters their head. We write columns here about football, hockey, the weather, Kansas, soccer, Minnesota, the Red Sox, sportswriting, Cal Ripken, Jr., Nancy Kerrigan, Boston University and Canadian baseball. Anything goes.

It's a special honor, but here we pretty much throw it out the window. (This column, for instance, will only be read by one pair of eyes besides mine before it gets to you.) We write to fill space, like I'm doing right now. We toss in irreverent, shocking and provacative statements like

THE BILLS WILL WIN THE SUPER BOWL

in the name of The Page and consider it a done deal. It can be done much better, and I hope it will be. There's some new blood in here now--a kinder, gentler staff for the '90s, as the bitter, cutthroat staff of the late '80s moves on.

We'll go, and we may go quietly. But the "sports-as-entertainment" mentality, I think, is disappearing with us. Gone is "the spectacle," to be replaced by "personality." You'll hear an awful lot about Sean Wissman's Kansas upbringing in the next year and dot pictures on the editorial page, perhaps. People don't want the razor-sharp dissections as much as general appreciation. I call the new style the "ex-jock" trend.

Ah well. I'll stop. Exams are hell.

John B. Trainer is the outgoing sports editor. Please send questions and complaints to John B. Trainer, c/o The Crimson--Dharhan, Saudi Arabia. And please, call collect.