Rejection Row

I get that the Iron Bowl is always the pinnacle of sports in this state, and that newspapers have to staff it accordingly. I understand that good writers have to stick around for the Mike Shula death watch.

What I don’t understand is why nobody bothered to send somebody, anybody to cover the No. 10 team in America during their most important stretch of preseason games.

None of the big four papers (Birmingham, Mobile, Montgomery, Huntsville) are staffing the Paradise Jam. Even the hometown Tuscaloosa News has gone the staff reports route. For those not familiar with newspapers, staff reports means writing the story off the box score while sprinkling in a few quotes from a quote sheet. No first-hand account, no expert insight.

Contrast that with the treatment Iowa is getting. It’s a state similar to Alabama in population, with the two big colleges making up for the lack of pro sports, But despite having two football games to cover (Iowa-Minnesota and Iowa State-Missouri), the Des Moines Register saw fit to send a writer to the islands. Newspapers in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Charleston and even Murfreesboro have all seen fit to staff the tournament, despite having more than full plates at a busy time of year.

One of the reasons that Alabama basketball coverage suffers is because the football beat writers are expected to pull double duty. Only the Tuscaloosa News has split the jobs, and even then only somewhat. Cecil Hurt is the lead hoops writer, but football will always be priority one, even when he’s reduced to finding fresh ways of describing red zone constipation each week. Everybody else in the state is pulling full-fledged double duty, and none of them have the luxury of living in T-Town. From Decatur to Dothan, they all have to hop in the car on game day. That hampers good, consistant reporting also.