Local Accolades

[Eric Knopsnyder]

I know how things work in the Johnstown area so I am glad to see you guys are on the up and up in Altoona.

I tried to help explain how the process works and stay out of the arguments about who or who should not be on the all-state teams, but I do have to stick up for my colleagues for a moment. Psycho, I'm not sure what you think you know about how Johnstown works, but I was the sports editor of The Tribune-Democrat for seven years and never once saw any kind of the activity that you described.

The discussions about the All-Area and all-state teams were always taken very seriously and centered only on a student-athlete's merits, not any of the other factors that you assume determine such things. No politics. No cronyism. No favors for coaches.

And it wasn't simply the sports writers' opinions that were taken into account. At the end of every season, each head coach from our coverage area - nearly 30 schools - was contacted and asked for nominees not only from his team but for every squad that his school faced. That was the starting point. Considering that we cover three different conferences, even if each coach said "Player A was the best quarterback in the conference," we still had three quarterbacks to choose from for the first team. Throw in the fact that the level of play in each of the conferences isn't the same and there's plenty of room for discussion. That's where the opinions of staff members came into play. Is a 1,200-yard runner in the WestPAC better than a 1,000-yard runner in the LHAC? Is the linebacker with 12 tackles per game better than the one with 8 per game on a team that doesn't list 100 tackles per game?

There are always difficult decisions to be made and someone is always unhappy with a few of those. That's part of the allure of such teams. If everyone agreed with them, there would be little interest in them and no reason for forums like this. That's fine. We can live with that. But to portray sports writers as simply cheerleaders for certain players, teams or conferences is not only flat-out wrong, it's also unfair.

I know it didn't happen as you describe it in Johnstown and I'd be willing to bet that nearly every newspaper takes it just as seriously as The Tribune-Democrat does.

[say_oww]

Doesn't All-State mean the best in the state? All 67 counties, and 500 odd schools, correct?


Maybe if those kids would have played som real comp... ...ahem, <cough> sorry, I almost started to say something foolish, I don't know what came over me.

[psycho]

You make a great point say oww. The competition a kid plays should be taken into account when selecting these teams but almost never is in the Johnstown area. You see, when your entire sports department is from the westpac -- an indescribably uncompetitive conference -- well...stuff happens that defies any interpretation or application of logic or reason. It just happens. Let's just say they look out for their own.

And speaking of infantile small town small mind political games I can still see the look on my neighbor's face several years back when he told me the Tribune refused to print anything about his daughter receiving a full D2 basketball scholarship because they "don't print stuff about D2 or D3 kids cause there are so many of them"....only to have an full article appear a month or so later about a westpac school kid who walked on to Juniata or some small D3 school for softball. Seems my neighbor had had some "disagreements" with his daughters HS coach over the years and the HS coach was a friend of a Tribune sports reporter. She showed him.

I am glad to see that the Tribune now has a handle on this sort of stuff.

[El-Moldo]

....You guys know my position on the naming of over 264 Pennsylvania all-state high school football players each and every year. Fifteen years from now, there's going to be about 4,000 new guys walking around telling everyone that they were all-state players. My question is, are we about to see the same kind of thing with the all-area team.
....Right now, you got players on 26 area teams that are in consideration for the Tribune all-area team. Each year, when you take in 1st and 2nd teams AND honorable mentions, it's getting to be like the all-state selections. Consider this year's QB's and RB's for example. For 2011, 17 kids got their names in the paper as quarterbacks. There were 33 runningbacks mentioned. Isn't this a bit overdoing it? AND there were even MORE players mentioned for WR, O-Line, D-Line, LB, and DB. And when you consider that many of these players play both ways, just about EVERYONE playing is mentioned anymore.
....So what the Tribune has to do is, instead of racking their brains about who should be on these teams, they should just call all of the 26 coaches, find out all the players who lettered and what position they played, and put their names in the paper. And for those who only lettered as members of the kick-off team, kick receiving team, punt team and punt receiving team, just add them to the all important list of "specialists".

[say_oww]

And speaking of infantile small town small mind political games I can still see the look on my neighbor's face several years back when he told me the Tribune refused to print anything about his daughter receiving a full D2 basketball scholarship because they "don't print stuff about D2 or D3 kids cause there are so many of them"....I am glad to see that the Tribune now has a handle on this sort of stuff.

Sadly, this is so true. I don't believe it, psycho. Its only January 3rd, but we already agree on two things. I will never understand why a newspaper will print the name of every kid who graduates just for showing up for 12 years, yet purposefully chooses to ignore those who have worked hard to EARN scholarships and roster spots at the next level. Even if a kid is a preferred walk-on, he has still achieved something more than an average high schooler.

Once again, if you would include more of that type of coverage you would most likely sell more papers. Face it, the old geezers who buy the paper are going to buy it unless you scrap the obituaries. Those who are not subsrcibing are primarlily younger and they won't buy/read unless it has something they want.