North American sportswriting is apparently all about the deadlines, specifically meeting them as quickly and painlessly as possible. For busy journos, the less “stuff” there is to cover on one particular area, the easier it is to make copy, and vice versa. Hence, the widespread preference for match reports and tactical analysis over complex narrative.
While UK papers like the Independent and the Guardian regularly feature in-depth, behind-scenes-financial stories on all tiers of football finance and governance (perhaps to supplement the fact they can’t park reporters in Premier League dressing rooms), often sticking with unfolding issues over a long period of time (see David Conn’s excellent coverage of the Portsmouth FC financial meltdown a few years ago), there really is no culture for that sort of thing in Canada. Some big names at the major Canadian dailies may take a look once in while at the financial workings at the Leafs or the Jays, but beyond franchise ownership issues, well, there just isn’t the space or the perceived interest.
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It used to be of course that the story was supposed to drive the reader and not the other way around. If you had to file a series of reports and stick with an unfolding story, you did so because that’s what the journalism game demanded of you. A lot of newspaper sports sections have since abandoned that approach, assuming that readers only want sports news of the point form variety, interspersed with varying degrees of human interest. And so we get banal manager or player quotes interspersed with descriptive paragraphs recreating what the viewer has already witnessed with her own eyes the day before.
So it goes with the recent goings on with the Alberta Soccer Association, or ASA-gate, if you will. While Ben Knight’s coverage of the on-going mess with court proceedings, palace coups and threats (real or imagined) from shifty FIFA “officials” in the form of cc’d letters has been excellent, it is, by nature of its audience and intense subject matter, “inside baseball.” But take away the acronyms, the legal jargon, and the he-said/she-said back-and-forth, and I’m convinced you’ve got a great rip-roaring story fit for the front page.
On the one hand, there are some scared bureaucrats and conservative-minded ASA board members and a handful of CSA personalities sympathetic to the old guard. On the other, pro-reform soccer administrators wanting to move the development side of the game forward by limiting the provincial associations’ influence at the top level (okay, stay with me here). They tussle in the form of a dubious presidential suspension by a sitting board member. Appearances suggest the CSA may have been involved in a less-than-objective way. Eventually the matter ends up in an appeals court, and suddenly (it appears, at least) FIFA gets involved, because for them soccer and domestic legal proceedings don’t mix.
The sheer ridiculous of it all, the trumped up threats, the back-door shenanigans, the brinksmanship and the awkward courtroom drama is the story here. This incident is Canadian soccer administration in a nutshell, and a talented journalist at a major Canadian paper, especially one that now prides itself on investigative (aka muck-raking) news—*cough* Toronto Star *cough*—could really make this into something interesting for the non-soccer reader. They might headline it: The Weird, Murky Underworld of Canadian Soccer Administration, A Series. Obviously the potential global embarrassment ahead of the Womens World Cup would underlie the whole story, and give it national context.
The other added benefit of getting at least one reputable daily on board would be forcing some of the parties involved to mind what they say to reporters, and to consider their image and the image of the organizations they represent when giving quotes, attributed or no. Giving non-soccer following Canadians a peak into what those of us in the game take for granted would help put this sideshow into proper relief, and hopefully force the CSA to work with the ASA in properly resolving this matter to mutual benefit prior to 2015.
'Tis another Media Takedown pipe dream, of course. In the meantime, CSN is doing its part in lieu of any national attention, while full-time MSM reporters fight the good fight to preserve dressing room access. Who else will file our match reports no later than deadline?