Welcome to the iSports era, where nothing stays secret

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/09/2009 (5861 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a new world out there, sports fans. A bold, crazy, cyberworld.

Cellphone cameras. Twitter. Blogs. Message boards. Oh, and apparently some people still write for something called a “newspaper” (ask your parents).

This is not to excuse the zany serial soap opera that has been the 2009 Winnipeg Blue Bombers, but the olden days where information regarding professional athletes was funneled through established media outlets are about as relevant as ancient Rome.

It’s everywhere. Veteran NBA problem child Allen Iverson Twitters that he’s signing with the Memphis Grizzlies. “God Chose Memphis as the place that I will continue my career,” he Tweeted. How did we first know Saskatchewan Roughriders receiver Jason Clermont was going to be a healthy scratch for the Banjo Bowl on Sunday? He Twittered the news to his fans.

This is a phenomenon that has no bounds in a web-based information age where a Chinese peasant who marvelled at the great American swimmer Michael Phelps could see a cellphone photo of the eight-time gold medal winner a few months later inhaling on a bong at a house party in South Carolina.

How about feel-good baseball story? Josh Hamilton, a recovered addict who just this summer was outed drinking and schmoozing with some young lovelies at a bar. Again, a cellphone camera captured the evidence.

Heck, remember those risque photos of Blue Lightning cheerleaders that surfaced on the Internet a couple years ago? Or the naked photos of Toronto Maple Leafs rookie Jiri Tlusty that caused the poor kid no end of embarrassment?

And how could we forget our old pal Chuck Diesel (a.k.a. Charles Roberts) announcing his intentions to retire on a Bombers website. Turned out to be Roberts blowing off steam, but it certainly became a mainstream media scandal that was more humourous than salacious.

You add these cyber-related scandals to the routine dirty laundry created by any professional team in any year, any sport, and the odds of controversy can grow exponentially.

Even the latest sideshow in Bomberville involving the trade demands of veteran linebacker Barrin Simpson did not escape the attention of the folks who populate the team’s blogosphere. It’s an open practice, after all, and if a fan sees Simpson get into a heated debate with a coach or member of management, the next thing you know, instantaneously, there’s a posting on a message board creating no end of buzz and speculation.

Some information can be wildly inaccurate. Some complete fiction. After all, the filter on such boards can be suspect since the actual source of the information is for the most part amateur and anonymous.

But it can also be spot on. So we can fully understand the efforts of Bombers’ rookie head coach Mike Kelly to control the message. But I’ve got a better chance of growing bangs (see accompanying photo).

In fact, one can only ponder how different the images of athletes of yore would be if cellphones and the web were around, say, when Babe Ruth was in his glory. Or Mickey Mantle. Or Wilt Chamberlain, who later claimed to have bedded over 20,000 women. Now there’s a Facebook account I’d like to see.

Just ask Bombers CEO and president Lyle Bauer, who’s been around football almost all his life. He’s hung with some pretty rowdy teammates, too. And in management, Bauer has routinely had to deal with trade demands or investigations into signing players that, in the past, simply never became public.

“These things have happened for years and years,” Bauer said. “What has happened, though, is the instantaneous flow of information. That’s what’s changed.”

So the odds of trying to sniff around Pacman Jones and attempting to keep it quiet are infinitely longer than a decade ago. Not with the blogs, not with the websites, or with the agents looking for some publicity.

In fact, it was the Internet that killed Bomber interest in Pacman after Jones himself posted a bizarre livestream rant talking about, among other things, signing with the United Football League. Yo, yo, yo!! (Pacman could have stopped at two “yos” but whatever.)

“The access to information right now is totally staggering,” Bauer continued. “Take our practices. I honestly do not believe, with open practice, that our football club could put in a new formation or trick play without the competition finding out. I 100 per cent believe that.

“The cellphones, the BlackBerries, the iPhones, the chat, it’s absolutely amazing.”

Again, this is not to absolve the Bombers of some mind-boggling blunders, but we live in a technological age where one cellphone photo of a famous Olympian at a house party can go global with the click of a button. Athletes can speak directly to their fans, no matter where they are in the world.

All those eyes, all that information, all that access.

Welcome to the 21st century. iSports has arrived.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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