Sports media: Too negative, or just too focused on the home team?

Ziggy Hood of the Steelers wonders "Where are the Jets?" in last year's AFC Championship Game.

Matthew Cerrone, who founded MetsBlog.com and works for SNY, the New York Mets’ TV network, has posted a video asking the musical question “Is Sports Media Too Negative?”

Here’s a spoiler: His answer is yes, often. I mildly disagree with the premise of his two-minute monologue, but I think he makes an important point that anybody whose coverage focuses on a particular team should note.

Cerrone begins by talking about the 2010 AFC Championship Game, in which the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the New York Jets 13-6.

“The Steelers played a really good game but the focus after the game, and really till this day, the talk I always hear is how the Jets didn’t show up,” Cerrone says. “They weren’t prepared properly. They didn’t try hard enough.”

Here’s where I part from Cerrone. He lives in the New York area. I don’t think he would only be hearing about how the Jets played poorly if he lived in Pittsburgh—or even in San Francisco, where I live. I wouldn’t say the agreed-upon history of last year’s AFC title game as I’ve heard it has been “The Jets didn’t show up.”

Matthew Cerrone

“There was no credit given to the Steelers, who played a really good football game that day,” Cerrone continues. “And I think that really speaks to this idea that sports media tends to be so focused on negative performance. There’s rarely credit given to the team that wins. Sometimes the other team is just better.”

I think what Cerrone is responding to is not the sports media focusing on the negative, on the losing team, but the sports media focusing on the local team—and remember that much of the national media lives in New York, which often turns the New York teams into quasi-home teams in national coverage.

What Cerrone says next supports my view, I think, but remember: I don’t think he’s wrong, exactly. He’s saying something important.

“I watch a lot of these regional sports networks and see how they cover their teams,” he says, “and when the games are over, there’s always a discussion about what the home team did poorly, what they could do better, that sort of thing, and it gives this idea that they’re to blame. And sometimes the other team just is better. They outperformed you.”

That’s right, and I think that’s the issue to pay attention to when you’re focusing your coverage on a home team: There’s always another team on the field.

It makes sense for regional sports networks to focus on the home team, win or lose. The media is rarely “too negative” when the home team wins, although the New York chatter can get pretty rough if the home team wins but doesn’t do so convincingly enough.

But Cerrone is right that those covering the losing team too often dwell on what that team did wrong, or didn’t do right, rather than stepping back and assessing the whole picture.

“Sometimes the other team is just better.” When you’re analyzing a loss, that thought should never be far from your mind.