View From the Phlipside - Tiger's Tale

These are the scripts from my weekly media commentary program on WRFA-LP Jamestown


My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the movies and more. I love 'em and I hate em' and I always have an opinion. Call this the view from the Phlipside

So here's the question of the day: Is the Tiger Woods marital problem the biggest media story of the year? Is it the biggest story of the decade/century so far? I'm amazed at how often this question is getting asked these days. I'm amazed at the folks who are willing to lay claim that this is not only the biggest SPORTS story of the year but it might even be the biggest sports story of all time. I seriously heard someone make that claim on the air in the last couple weeks. So let's take a moment to look at this.

Is this a sport story? Well it does involve a sports figure, arguably the most high profile and influential sports figure of the last ten years. On the other hand it actually has NOTHING to do with sports. So I would classify this as a non-sports story that happens to have a sports angle to it. So that pretty much eliminates it from the biggest sports story of the year or the decade or whatever in my opinion. Next subject:

Is it the biggest news story of the year? So far this year we've had a major political battle brewing over the quality and accessibility of health care for the citizens of our country. We're fighting two wars, we are struggling with the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, and we have unemployment running somewhere between 10 and 20 percent nationwide on average and depending on how you choose to count the numbers. That's just off the top of my head. You could add in that we swore in the first person of color to the highest office in the land this year too I think.

On the other side we have a man who has made enough money to allow him to live at a level of which you and I can only dream even if he never works another day in his life . Plus his children and grandchildren could maintain the same lifestyle without ever working a day in their lives either. He has a gorgeous wife, a wonderful family and a successful career. Oh yeah and like many other stupid men before him he decided to, how shall I say this, dally with another woman. OK, it appears he decided to dally with enough other women to form a baseball team, possibly a football team. His wife found out, she got mad, there was a scene and they may get divorced. Or they may not. That still appears to be up in the air.

No my friends it is NOT the biggest story of the year. It's a sad and pitiful little story that needs to be ignored. The only thing more sad and pitiful is that we still insist on having this discussion. Playing peeping tom on other people's troubles through the media is something we should give up as a new year's resolution.

Call that the view from the Phlipside

View From the Phlipside - Pepsi and the Super Bowl

These are the scripts from my weekly media commentary program on WRFA-LP Jamestown


My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the movies and more. I love 'em and I hate em' and I always have an opinion. Call this the view from the Phlipside

Next year's Super Bowl is going to have one rather historic moment. Or more precisely it's going to have an historic absence. No, not the Bills failure to return to the big game but rather Pepsi's decision not to return to the big game. For the first time in 23 years the Super Bowl will not have a single Pepsi ad anywhere during the game. That's a big change for the number two soft drink company in the world. It may also herald a big change in the whole media advertising world too.

You see the Super Bowl isn't like any other advertising medium or event. At least not in this country. The Super Bowl is THE media event of every year. Every football fan in the country will be watching the fame or mourning the fact that they can't watch it. People who only care a little about football will be watching. And people who don't know or care about football at all will likely be watching it simply because that's where most of their friends will be that night. In the advertising industry it's all about the number of "eyes" you can access. That means the number of people you can push your message to at one time and in one place. And in the United States of America there is no better place to get seen than the Super Bowl. I mean let's face it, the game too often is boring so what do we wait for? THE COMMERCIALS! Because you know you're going to see the some of the very best of the year.

And Pepsi, perennially one of the bigger advertisers on the game, is taking a pass. It's not just the price, although a thirty second ad, just one mind you, is still running between two and a half and three million dollars. This is where you may feel the ground of the media world shifting beneath your feet a bit. They are going to put that money into something new, with a strong world wide web basis, called the Pepsi Refresh Project. It's a grant program designed to make the world a better place. Consumer will be able to go on line and vote on the projects that will be funded. The Pepsi Refresh Project is scheduled to be funded to the tune of twenty million dollars. That will be the flagship media vehicle for the cola.

Whether or not this new campaign will actually get people to buy Pepsi Cola remains to be seen. There is no doubt that this is a major shift for Pepsi and maybe in the advertising world too. It takes a lot of guts to walk away from the biggest advertising event of the year without a backward glance. We'll have to see if this idea makes the world want to sing in harmony with Pepsi.

Call that the view from the Phlipside

Some people just suck

This week was a bit better than last at volleyball. The result was the same 0-3, 0-3 but it felt very different.

Last week we played against a team that wanted to play SERIOUS volleyball. Now you should know that this is a YMCA Adult Co-Ed Recreational league. It used to puzzle me why SERIOUS players would play in a Rec league. It took me a couple years to figure it out. Simply put they're not good enough for the Power league. They know if they played with the "Big Boys" they'd get their butts handed to them. So rather than be the lower echelons of a league that plays the sport SERIOUSLY they settle for being the champs of a Rec league.

I find that attitude both pathetic and disgusting.

In a Rec league most of us are there to have some fun and get some exercise. It's RECREATIONAL which means it's supposed to be fun. Well maybe they're having fun wiping the floor with lesser teams. Pardon me if I find the concept less than inspiring. It's the action of a bully.

So last week's team was there to WIN. One player in particular clearly had played at a highly competitive level. He had the height and skills needed to play the game well. Sadly he chose to play the SERIOUSLY. Here's the prime example of what set my whole team off. Playing at the net he jumped and spiked the ball. Directly into the sternum of one of my female team mates. Now I'm old fashioned enough to admit that the fact it was a FEMALE team mate makes a difference. So sue me. What really set us off was his reaction after hitting her. Didn't check to see if she was OK, didn't apologize for hitting her. Just turned and walked away from the net. Hey, he won the point and that's the idea right? They crushed us in three straight games. We weren't within 10 points in any of them.

Before anyone drops something along the lines of "Winning is everything, it's the only thing" on me let me note. Lombardi always felt that quote was taken out of context. He was talking about professional athletes. Not weekend warriors. Not folks playing in a Rec league. If you want go all out do it in a league set up for that. There's no trophy in our league for being the champion. We do have an end of season playoff for reasons I don't understand.

Perhaps the most disturbing final touch on this all was that the team is made up from the local school district's teachers. Makes me wonder what we are teaching our kids.

This week was different. Another team that was higher skilled than ours. (Let's be honest we are probably the lowest skill team in the league. Middle aged, short, inexperienced. We play to have fun). Whether it was us playing better (which we did) or them having an off night (which I'd bet on) the play was much closer. We nearly won all three, finished within 5 points or less in all three and generally had a good time. The other team played hard but also played to have a good time. We laughed and applauded and played recreational volleyball. They brought out the best in us. Which was cool.

One set of three losses was life giving. The other one sucked the life out of us. Hope the other team was proud of their win.

Am I bitter? Nope, they're not worth the time and energy. Just sad and irritating to have deal with people like that in this context. Be nice if they could deal with their issues on someone else's time.

Peace

The View From the Phlipside

These are the scripts from my weekly media commentary program on WRFA-LP Jamestown

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the movies and more. I love 'em and I hate em' and I always have an opinion. Call this the view from the Phlipside
I've talked a lot over the last year or so about the changes in the media, especially for the print media. As a life long reader of books, newspapers and magazines the future for those media are of great interest to me. Not just because I like reading but because each of them provide a unique and I believe important service to society. We've seen lots of ideas that haven't worked and some big names crash and burn. The latest in that line is Gourmet magazine. Last week the publisher Conde Nast announced that November's issue would be the last for the magazine. Even in an age when more and more of us are interested in good food and cooking for ourselves Gourmet couldn't keep the doors open.

So I guess the question is this - is there a successful formula out there? Is there a way that you can move to the digital world and be a success? The honest answer to that has to be we still don't know. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal may point us toward an interesting example however. The newspaper interviewed Sports Illustrated's Peter King about his transition from being one of the most respected print sports writers to being one of the digital world's most successful sports writers. King's online column "Monday Morning Quarterback" is reportedly generating 2 million visits a week. That, in the language of the advertising world, is a lot of eyes. Meaning a lot of chances to see a product, a message, a sales pitch. The question is what makes the difference? Take nothing away from Peter King, he's a bright, articulate writer who has serious connections in the NFL. He's well known and well respected. So quality content needs to be on the list of reasons why his transition has worked. In the article however King notes one other thing that has really seemed to make a difference. Peter King is just...well, Peter King. He talks about himself and his real life. The majority of his readers really like it because it helps them connect with him. Stories about the death of a pet and his daughter's field hockey results hit a chord in his readership.

And that may be the key ingredient we need to be looking at. Old line media tended to be impersonal. Especially print media. Electronic media, like TV and Radio, have always had the ability to bring "real people", or the illusion of real people, into the audience's home. Digital communication tends to be a very personal medium. That kind of personal connection may just be the winning ticket in the media lottery.

Call that the view from the Phlipside

The View From the Phlipside

These are the scripts from my weekly media commentary program on WRFA-LP Jamestown

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the movies and more. I love 'em and I hate em' and I always have an opinion. Call this the view from the Phlipside

Came across something this past week that thrilled me because it is, as the saying goes, right in my wheelhouse. It's a book...about movies...about sports. If anyone is looking for gift ideas for your humble radio host this one would be great. It's called the Ultimate Book of Sports Movies written by Ray Didinger and Glen Macnow. The authors noted that when they were on the radio and brought up the subject of the ultimate sports movie the phones would blow off the wall with calls. So they wrote the book. Now the book is brand new and I haven't seen it yet so I'm not going to review it here.

But the concept really grabbed me. So I jumped online to see what other lists existed of the all time great sports movies. The results are interesting. Needless to say all kinds of movies make the different lists. Even very bad ones like "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh" which was awarded the #100 slot in the book. As I scanned the lists I realized that there were a very small number of films that show up over and over again at the top of the lists. Using top 10 finishes among the half dozen lists I found there were four movies that seem to be the undisputed champs. "Bull Durham", "Raging Bull", "Hoosiers" and the original "Rocky". There is a clear gap down to the next batch which includes movies like "Rudy", "Field of Dreams", "Chariots of Fire", "Slapshot" and "The Natural".

Looking at these top four I'm interested to note some things. First of all, no football movies. Two boxing, one baseball and one high school basketball. The top football movies were "Rudy", "Brian's Song" and "Remember the Titans". Two of which are soppy, sentimental beasts. Hockey actually does a little better with "Slapshot" finishing just outside this top group. Of course there is really only one other hockey movie worth even mentioning and that's "Miracle on Ice". It's interesting to note that boxing MOVIES do so well when the sweet science is pretty much a dead letter in this country today. All four of the movies share a common theme - the underdog clinging to a belief in themselves to overcome the odds. Three of films end up with the hero not getting what they thought they wanted in the beginning (the exception being Hoosiers) but all discover something more important along the way.

The reality is that America loves the underdog. Yes, the Yankees are the greatest sports franchise of all time. But we all know that there's a special sweetness when the little guy rises up to beat the big boys every once in a while. Especially at the movies.


Call that the view from the Phlipside

Thoughts on 100-0

(I've edited the original post, correcting the number of students at the school and adding a comment from the Dallas Academy coach at the end. He sounds like exactly the kind of coach I want working with my kids)

First things first. I'm well aware that I'm likely to get some grief in some circles for this post. It will be seen as "criticizing fellow Christians" which for some folks is an absolute taboo. I've never understood that since there's Biblical foundation for correcting one another. It seems to me that proponents of this "don't criticize" idea fear that it will make the church universal look weak. In fact fair and open correction of one another makes us strong.

Given my love of sports and young people this story just leapt out at me. You may have heard about the girls high school basketball game between Dallas Academy and The Covenant School (also from Dallas). Covenant School is a Christian academy that has built up its basketball program over the last four years to be an area powerhouse. Dallas Academy is a school that works with youth with learning disabilities and hasn't won a game in four years. It was a mismatch from the start and both sides surely knew who was going to win AND that the score would be lopsided. Why would Dallas Academy schedule such a team? I can only guess but I assume that Dallas Academy (which is small, about 140 students, only 20 of them girls and 8 of them on the basketball team) has limited options and plays teams in the vicinity. Plus you can learn by playing more skilled teams.

My problem is with the conduct of the other (Christian) team. According to some reports they maintained a press defense (if you're not into basketball that's an aggressive defense designed to cause mistakes and turnovers. It can be very effective against a good team. It is devastating against a bad one)until they had scored 100 points. The Covenant coach maintains that they dropped the full court press for a simpler defense once the score reached 29-0. Other reports claim that Covenant continued shooting 3 point shots well into the fourth quarter as well. Dallas Academy estimates they took a grand total of seven shots total in the entire game. The Covenant coach (now ex-coach. He was fired after publicly disagreeing with the school board on the game)says his team scoring by quarter was 35, 29, 24, 12. This would seem to support the idea that his team didn't back off till they hit the magic number.

Let's be fair. Games like these are excruciating for everyone involved. The winning team hates them, the losing team hates, all true fans of the sport hate them. There are ways to gracefully play the game without dishonoring the game or your opponent. 5 touch rules - no one on the better team can take a shot till everyone on the team has been passed the ball. This gives the other team more chances to steal the ball and get in play. Defense begins at mid court. Let the other team get that far before you defend. These are rules to be used only in the most extreme cases but they at least offer the other team a chance to play the game and learn.

Our faith should never take the back seat to winning. The Covenant Academy knew they could win this game at any point. They had the chance to reach out to the other team and offer themselves up as a learning moment. But it turns out the game was more important. And that's sad.

Kudos to The Covenant Academy for recognizing this and apologizing. They've also offered to forfeit that game in the standings. The school has shown itself to be a class act. The coach who defended the score has been fired. Between his coaching behavior and ill advised public disagreement with his bosses he brought that on himself.

Kudos as well to Dallas Academy Athletic Director Jeremy Civello:

"Civello told his girls the life lesson they could take from their loss: "I told them someday they will be on top in a similar situation and they should remember how they felt when some people were cheering for a team to score a hundred points and shut us out. Hopefully, my girls all learned a lesson in sportsmanship that will last them a lifetime." Dallas Morning News, 1/23/09

Time to be gracious

Here's another reason why I'm grumpy. But this only contributes a little bit.

Congratulations to the Red Wings and their fans. It was an amazing Stanley Cup Final with some absolutely incredible hockey. It had pretty much everything that is not only good but great about the sport. Some astounding goaltending, wonderful virtually non-stop action, great hitting, come from behind action and tension literally to the final second of the final game.

I'm very proud of my Penguins. They never quit. They were facing the best hockey team of the last decade, playing at the top of their game. The Red Wings were smothering. At times it looked like they were on a permanent power play with at least one more player on the ice than the Pens. The Penguin's stars were largely shut down and STILL the Pens refused to pack it in. They were in it till the clock ran out (even if that took FOREVER in game 5!!!)

The Penguins were good. Really good.

The Red Wings were great.

Hail the victor!

Post Monday Night Football

I've been a bit slothful with the blog, my apologies. I've been checking out the travel photos from the acolytes trip of my friends Kim and Lee to the National cathedral (here's the crew)


Meanwhile here in western New York we're trying to figure out how we feel about last night's game. We weren't supposed to win, heck we weren't supposed to be CLOSE and we led the Cowboys for most of the game. Only to lose in the final two seconds. You see we've been here before. Just ask any WNY sports fan about the phrases "Wide Right" and "No Goal". Then buy them a drink and help them wipe away their tears.

I'm torn myself. After 20+ years the Bills are my #1A team (Steelers are #1). I root for them, pay attention, know the players the whole deal.

But I was hoping they'd lose last night.

I had the Cowboys in my pool.

I'm doing a football pool with a youth group out in Minnesota (the wonders of the internet). To be honest I've been fairly wretched with a brief moment of merely mediocre. But Sunday! The pool is done by picking winners and then assigning confidence points to each pick. So this week with 14 games the highest point total was 14. (Umm, errr, Dallas over Buffalo). By the time the Sunday afternoon games were over I was 9 correct picks out of 12 with two of the misses being my 1 point and two point games.

YEAH BABY!!!!

Then the Bears re-discover the concept of offense and upset the Packers (my 12 point pick!) Noooooooo!

As I watch the game Monday night I am utterly torn. The Bills are WINNING!!! Yay!. The BILLS are winning! NOOOOOOOO!

In the end I finished 10 of 14 for 84 out of 105 points (or is it 85 out of 104? Can't remember)

If only those darned Packers.......

(Breathe)

It's OK, really.
I'll be fine.
Peace

Busy Weekend!

I got a real workout as a Lutherpalian this weekend. In case you weren't aware the Southwestern Conference of the Upstate NY Synod of ELCA hired me just over a year ago to do basically the same thing that I do for the diocese. It is a "part time-part time job" but it helps fill in the gap while my position is still 80% of full time.

I started with a concert by Captive Free (Captive Free is a music ministry of young people through Youth Encounter. They give up a year of their lives to tour and play and minister. This is the group that I met this weekend, and This is a group that has a young friend of mine - Brice - touring with them. I've met both bands and their great young people!) and then followed that up with an overnight.

Honesty time - overnights are my LEAST favorite part of youth ministry. You can mess with just about any part of my routine and I can deal. Except my sleep routine.

The youth were very cool and I got about 5 hours sleep. On the whole I had a good time.

On Sunday I went back to Bethel to lead a class on Choice with their confirmation class and then worshiped with the congregation. Managed not to embarrass myself this time (don't ask).

Then it was off to Hamburg for the Core Workshop with Mark Ostreicher from Youth Specialties. I've come to be very impressed with Marko from reading his blog He just struck me as my kinda guy. He lived up to that at Core.

I will note that I expected him to be taller. Don't ask me why, but that was my thought when I saw him. In fact Marko was virtually the first person to speak to me at Core. He noticed my YS messenger bag as I was signing in. No, I was not trying to suck up. It's my day to day briefcase. The other thing that struck me about Marko (other than his intelligence and wit....OK that was a suck up)was that there's a certain Jerry Garcia quality to him. Sort of 21st Century indie rock kind of Jerry Garcia. Don't know why, just kind of struck me.

Felt sorry for him as the workshop went along. The Sabres playoff game was on TV and they were showing it on the TVs scattered around the youth center we were using. Well as the game headed into overtime there was shall we say a certain reluctance to head back in to the sessions. In the end the workshop worked out better than the game did (we lost 2-1 in double OT). We take our sports very seriously here in WNY.

At least it was fairly warm (yes Marko mid-50's is fairly warm for days in April round here) for his visit. Snow would not have been out of the question.

Kinda glad the weekend is over however.

Peace

And there was much rejoicing!

Penguins to stay for 30 years

I don't often tout my sports allegiances but they're currently the best pro sports team in my home town. It would have been a crime to lose them.

Let's go Pens!

Follow up

I went back this morning and looked at those comments again.

Dungy doesn't say that he and Smith were the "first" but it is said in context with comments about them being African American head coaches. They are the first two black head coaches to reach this level.

(edit : Here's the quote in full for clarity's sake: "I'm proud to be the first African-American coach to win this," Dungy said during the trophy ceremony. "But again, more than anything, Lovie Smith and I are not only African-American but also Christian coaches, showing you can do it the Lord's way. We're more proud of that."

But even without the use of the word first what is Dungy saying when he says that they showed that "...you can do it the Lord's way"? I think the implication is clear that this is something new for the Super Bowl, that no previous coach had done it the "Lord's way".

That smacks of a peculiar kind of arrogance. The arrogance of knowing the hearts of EVERY other head coach, nearly 80 men. The arrogance of saying that the Lord didn't bless any other way of coaching. God made Vince Lombardi. Who are we to say that Vince (a devout Catholic if memory serves) was not coaching as God intended him to coach? Would he not then be doing it the "Lord's way"?

I've never met Coach Dungy. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING I've heard about him speaks to his class, his humbleness and intelligence. So the assumption should probably be that the way I heard it was NOT the way he intended it.

Yet I feel the need to keep writing about it. Why? Because it bothers me that there is growing in our faith a need, it seems nearly to be an imperative, to flag wave our faith in everyone's face. Despite the fact that we are warned specifically AGAINST doing just that in the Gospels. Tony and Lovie's faith is well known. It's effect on their coaching styles (these two are pretty much the anti-Lombardis in coaching style) is also well known. Shouldn't that be enough? Live your life in faith, show the world how a person of faith lives, let them marvel at the peace and justice and mercy and love that characterize your life. Know that your reward is coming from God.

Pointing out your faith, making comparisons of your faith to others smacks of spiritual jersey popping. By your fruits shall they know you. Make sure your actions speak loudly enough that it doesn't require words.

Peace

Now back to real life...

Well it's over for another year.

The Super Bowl that is. Colts win. Peyton Manning can finally tell his critics to shut up.

I didn't really care which team won. So I could be happy either way.

Then the post game show rolled around. And Tony Dungy spoke. Tony, the former Pittsburgh Steeler. The quiet, classy, intelligent head coach of the Indianapolis Colts.

Did I really hear him say that he and Lovie Smith the Bear head coach were the first Christian head coaches at the Super Bowl?

Please tell me I heard him wrong. None of the previous coaches were Christians? Really?

Please tell me I heard him wrong.

This kind of thing always amazes me. Right along with the folks who are positive that God has favorites in sporting events. I believe that God gave as much support to the Bears as the Colts. Same for every other team in the league. He gave all those athletes and coaches talents and then expects them to use them. As long as they do the best they can with their talents I believe God is pleased.

I don't think God gives a hot patootie over who wins. Never has. Never will.

All too often we seem to miss the point of what God wants from us and what he wants to give us.

A theology that says God loves winners, God chooses winners, God blesses winners more than anyone else is one that is in direct contradiction of the Gospels. Jesus turned away the rich and powerful and raised up the poor and powerless. Not that He doesn't love the rich and powerful just that he expects more of them. And very often that doesn't match their plans.

Peace