One Fandom Under a Digital Sky

To be completely honest with you, I don't know exactly when it started. As a child I remember there being a distinct social divide between nerds and sport. Jocks were stupid, but athletically talented and popular. Nerds were smart but physically meek and socially awkward. Of course this wasn't a rivalry so much as a one-sided thrashing; everyone secretly wanted to be the star athlete but nobody was lining up to be the socially awkward math genius with asthma. It was a war of brains versus brawn and in my youth it would have been virtually impossible for me to imagine "nerdy" sports fans or "brainy" football players. Frankly, I remember watching the movie Lucas in my parent's living room and becoming incredibly angry at the "unrealistic" ending. My mind recoiled at the idea that the football jocks would buy Lucas a Varsity jacket but had no problem accepting that they had tortured him daily earlier in the movie. It's easy to blame Hollywood but the truth is that our movies are simply an exaggerated reflection of the society that made them and nothing I'd experienced in my own short life really disagreed with these ideas. Jocks and nerds were mortal enemies; "it was known".

Sometime in my late-teens however, things started to change for the better and on multiple fronts. Part of it was definitely the explosion of both sports video games and cable sports programming. Games like Madden and NHL Hockey brought the world of sport to a traditionally "nerdy" market while 24 hour sports networks exposed the average jock to detailed technical analysis of the games themselves. Since you couldn't rightly post 24 hours worth of stale interviews when there were no actual games to show it became necessary to hire talking heads to fill the space in between matches. Studio executives are pretty smart people and it didn't take them long to figure out that nerdy guys in glasses talking about "advanced statistical metrics"  chewed through a lot of airtime. While the idea seems comical today the very first time I saw Mel Kiper Jr on television I actually burst out laughing because "ESPN hired a random stockbroker to narrate the draft".  This was only just the beginning. I had no idea that what I was really watching at that moment was the marriage of two powerful social forces that would change virtually everything about how we played, watched, broadcast and talked about sports; forever.

While putting nerds on TV to talk about sports was an important first step, it was by no means the most important change in our culture. No ladies and gentlemen, that would be the rise of the Internet as our primary source of both information and entertainment. Make no mistake folks, once you could look up Barry Sanders' yardage in week 2 of his 2000 yard season (it was 20 btw) the game changed. Now everyone was armed with both the knowledge to form an opinion and a convenient, inexpensive outlet to discuss that opinion in a public forum. Fans were no longer required to hang on the every word of stuffy old men repeating the information of dubious "insider sources" at preset times on our televisions. Sport media had gone global, grassroots and insatiable all at once; fans didn't experienced a sporting event so much as totally immersed themselves in the game. In 1985 the idea that you could get a better experience by staying home and watching the game on TV would have been ridiculous and yet today that's probably true; at least for most sports and most regular season games. When you move that broadcast to the internet it's really no contest; better angles, expert analysis, the ability to track statistical trends in real time and to even the ability talk about the game with random strangers as events unfold. Better still, hotdogs in your living room go for about 50 cents each and you never have to worry about some drunken lout challenging you to a fight in the parking lot to defend his team's honor.

Fast forward to 2013 and we find ourselves in a halcyon day for the sports information junkie. Stats are sexy, bloggers have become our sporting conscience and even our athletes are starting to realize that "it's hip to be square". The internet has blurred the lines between reporter and fan so much that the distinction is no longer necessary. Naturally sports media types who's salaries depend on an outdated model would disagree with me but one only has to visit a website like Grantland, Yardbarker or With Leather (my personal favorites) to realize the sea change coming over our collective obsession. We are all witnesses. We can't all be like Mike, but you don't need to be a retired ballplayer with 10 grand worth of dental work to have an opinion on sports. The union between nerd and jock is complete; we have all become simply fans.

In light of the above please allow me to welcome you to Sportsball Chic; a blog about sports written by a nerdy fangirl who just can't get enough sportsball action. As I am not a reporter the primary focus of this blog will be my reactions as a fan to the games I watch, the teams I follow and breaking sports news stories in general. In the wide world of internet sports entertainment there is always something interesting happening so something tells me I'm unlikely to run out of material. Over time I hope to make you laugh, cry, think and respond when I sit down to write here; unfortunately I need to learn how to write before any of that can happen. This is a tough gig folks and I'm not above begging for your pity to avoid being showered with digital rotten tomatoes. I have no writing schedule, no editor, no formal training and a deep-seated belief that the writings of Mark Twain and Hunter S Thompson border on divine. What more does a girl need?

- The Sportsball Chic