Welcome back ...

.. and happy post-Thanksgiving wishes to all. There certainly was enough sports in the media over the long weekend, especially football. While most of the country got the Bears-Patriots as the late FOX game, down south we got the Giants-Titans. I came in from yard work and picked it up at 21-0 Giants in the fourth quarter. F0r some reason I stayed with it and saw one of the all-time NFL meltdowns, as the Titans scored 24 points in only 10 minutes to win the game. Much maligned quarterback Eli Manning (pictured) threw two terrible interceptions to help seal the loss.

There were several comments after the game that Eli is too soft-spoken and fragile to handle the New York media (I must admit, he didn't get any criticism here at Ole Miss, where he is still highly admired). Whether or not that's true, it does raise some interesting issues. Can we blame the media for poor athletic performance? If Eli had gone to San Diego instead of New York, would he be flourishing in a less media-hostile environment? Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams had a stormy relationship with the Boston media, but it didn't seem to hurt his play. On the other hand, former major league pitcher Ed Whitson was practically run out of New York by the press.

I'm not sure the media outlets in New York are any more vitriolic and vindictive than media in other big cities--there are just more of them. The bigger problem is that too many sports media journalists are fans. They cheer loud when the home team wins, and rip it when it loses (if the Giants had won Sunday's game in overtime, imagine how different the tone would have been). If sports journalists could start practicing some objectivity, a lot of these issues would simply disappear.