stonedonkey

Quote

Mark,

Thanks for the note.
I understand that you are a USF supporter, but you need to realize what it is I do as a columnist and what we do as a newspaper. We're not here to be a cheerleader for any team. We objectively cover the teams.

Now, before you attack us and our USF coverage, you should know that USF is the ONLY team that we assign a full-time writer. Joey Knight covers EVERY USF football game -- home and away. We don't do that for Florida or FSU. And we don't do it even though UF and FSU play in power five conference and USF does not.

Nevertheless, you must also realize that the following for the Gators and Seminoles is much greater than it is for USF. That's just a fact. It's not our fault as a newspaper and maybe it's not the fault of USF because it simply hasn't been around a long time, not like UF or FSU. Still, our obligation as a newspaper is to provide readers with coverage that is equal to the interest.

For example, we don't write as much about the Tampa Bay Storm as we do the Bucs. And we don't write as much about the Rowdies as we do the Lightning. Why? We write about the things that the majority of our readers are interested in.

The argument we get is that more people would be interested in USF football if we wrote more about them. I, personally, disagree. If it's a product that people want to experience then they will regardless of what the Tampa Bay Times says.

Ultimately, it is not up to the Times to see to it that USF gets good crowds. And if you look at it, we DO cover USF well. Quite honestly, I'm not sure USF deserves the coverage it gets based on its attendance. But we do still cover them with a full-time writer -- the only college in which we do that.

Thanks again for the note. Enjoy your week.

Tom Jones

Tampa Bay Times

I disagree with almost everything he responded with (The front page of sports this weekend was the lighting game, which I believe they were down 0-2 to come back from and win late) and early season game at that.  Full time writer or not the consistently throw USF toward the back of the page.  My biggest beef though is the article they chose to run first was piece about attendance instead of actually covering the news of the team... is the real news of USF football attendance, or the conference record, the being bowl eligible in mid oct, the TD record being broken, nope... the news is attendance.    I disagree 100% with his saying that people would express more interest in USF if they covered them like UF... start putting up 3/4 page color write ups about games people might go, wow that looks fun to go watch.. Instead people see, oh so they have ****** attendance, guess it's not that great.

Figured I'd pass it on, and maybe I'm completely off base but it just annoys me to no end.

/rant mode off