Back from Big Ten Media Days

Big Ten media days have value. Absolutely, they do. It’d have more value if the league edited its invite list.

Last week was too much. This event has gone from two-hour sitdowns at a table with players and coaches scheduled for different times. So, when Kirk Ferentz was talking, Bob Sanders was waiting to talk. You could swing from one Iowa convo to another without missing anything.

It’s not like that anymore. There is podium time with players and coaches. They are generally around the same time. There’s overlap within the programs. It’s just hard to get anything meaningful.

There are a million media types now. So, you have the craggy old media smashing into fan media that wants to know how cool it is to be a [fill in the blank]. You can decide what you value. One of the coolest media day “stories” in the last few years was an Eleven Warriors (an Ohio State website) writer going around and asking a player from each Big Ten team to draw his team’s logo. Yeah, that’s not going to make 60 Minutes, but it probably entertained a good amount of people.

And that’s how you have to look at this event. It’s a lark, it’s not PBS NewsHour. I like information. That’s what I value in these types of things. I’m not calling for change. If there is one thing old media better know by now, it’s that 1) no one cares about your problems and 2) you are part of a faceless constellation of “media members.” You can spend 20 years grinding, but the guy from TurtlesComintoGetYa.com is in line with you. Maybe this is a complaint.

Either way, the podcast was a helluva lot more fun. Enjoy.