Author Archives: ktroth21

LeBron Said The Bulls Are Better Than The Cavaliers, Or Did He?

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By Kate Roth

Since the moment that NBA superstar LeBron James announced his decision to come back to his home and join the Cleveland Cavaliers there have been countless news stories and headlines highlighting his name.

With the large amount of these stories popping up on the screen it started to become more likely for me to bypass the headline and move on to a different story. That is until I read the headlines about LeBron’s latest interview today. The headlines all read as different variations of LeBron telling reporters that he believes the Chicago Bulls look to be a better team than the Cleveland Cavaliers at the moment.

After reading these headlines I was a bit shocked to see that LeBron would say something like that about his team just a few weeks before the start of the NBA season. So I decided to watch the full interview and see what LeBron had actually said just to check and see if the media had blown his statements out of proportion.

For the most part the media did a great job reporting on this interview, however they did have one flaw in that they twisted some of the LeBron’s words around to make his statements come off as a little more serious than it seemed LeBron intended them to.

Yes LeBron did say that he believes the Bulls are a better team than the Cavs are right now in terms of chemistry, but we all already knew that. LeBron was just stating something that is obvious to all NBA fans, not trying to cause a panic for those fans predicting the Cavs to win it all this year. The core of the Bulls team have played together for a couple of years compared to the Cavs team who has many new members playing together for the first time, of course they are going to have more chemistry.

What you didn’t see in the headlines is that LeBron went on to say in his interview that the Cavs have spent time over the past month really working on team bonding to build that chemistry so they can be at the same level as the Bulls. He also commented that the team will need to play a few games together and even go through some disagreements before they can reach the same level of chemistry as the Bulls, but he believes that the team is well on their way there.

It seems as though this happens to us frequently while scrolling through sports media. We see a headline making claims about someone in the sports world and we instantly become interested and have to click on the link. Then upon reading the article we are disappointed to find out that the headline doesn’t quite exactly match up with the story.

In the media’s defense, I probably would have shown very little attention, if any, to these articles if they had headlines stating what LeBron actually said in his interview, so I cannot blame them for writing up the stories the way that they do. It’s all just a part of the business.

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Tough Love From Media in Cleveland

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By Kate Roth

The Cleveland Browns improved their record to 3-2 this past Sunday with a dominating 31-10 victory over their rival Pittsburgh Steelers. Through his performance, quarterback Brian Hoyer, showed us once again that he is capable of leading an NFL team and is deserving of the starting spot over fan favorite Johnny Manziel. For once, everything seems to be clicking for the Browns considering they have a quarterback they can trust, their star running back in Ben Tate has just emerged off the injured and is performing well and their schedule over the next few weeks seems to be playing out in their favor. This is something that Browns fans have been looking forward to for years and now that everything seems to be falling into place, I’m not sure the media knows how to handle it.

Following the win on Sunday I was fully expecting this week to be filled with local (Cleveland) sports articles regarding the success of the Browns, and the potential to really make a statement in the up and coming weeks. The last thing I was expecting to see is negative comments about the team and especially not the “Hometown Hero” Brian Hoyer.

Unfortunately the media caught me off guard and this is exactly what I ended up reading. Stories claiming that Hoyer is considering not signing a contract extension with the Browns and instead looking for the next big contract, comments that Hoyer later denied. Other articles discussed how the injuries to center Alex Mack and defensive lineman Armonty Bryant could be very costly to the Browns, preventing them from winning the games coming up on their schedule.

There was even an article that criticized Hoyer for wanting to turn current Dallas Cowboys fan and Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James into a Browns fan, claiming that Hoyer needed to stay focused on his job as the quarterback of the Browns and not worry about who LeBron is cheering for.

It’s almost as if the Cleveland media is so used to watching the Browns lose that they’re not quite sure how to react to the success of the team.

Instead of picking out anything negative they could find about the team they needed to be applauding them for the great performance they put up over the weekend and throughout the season thus far. After a 31-10 smack down on your rival there should be plenty of positive things to talk about.

Even though it is still very early in the season and may be too early to tell how the team will perform throughout the year, things are still looking up in Cleveland and fans are really starting to believe and get behind this team. Now it’s the media’s turn to jump on board and enjoy the ride for as long as it may last and create positive news stories instead of negative.

It’s time to turn this Factory of Sadness around and an easy way to start this is through the media.

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Is Jameis Winston Too Much of a Distraction for Florida State?

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By Kate Roth

It seems as though the media cannot get enough of Florida State star quarterback, Jameis Winston. There is always a story talking about Winston’s talent on the field or more recently his troubles off the field. The question now is not whether or not the spotlight will be on Winston, but rather will that spotlight serve as a distraction for the FSU football program.

There have been more breaking news stories about Winston in the past two months than most players have had in their entire football careers. Just in the past three days there were numerous stories surrounding Winston, involving the alleged sexual assault case and now claims of Winston signing autographs in exchange for money.

It just seems as though this young athlete cannot catch a break. Once one story starts to die down, one or two more pop right back up in the media, putting Winston under fire again.

What most people don’t realize as they read these headlines and watch these stories is that this negative attention is not only effecting Jameis, but his coaches and teammates as well.

As much as players try to turn their heads to media and ignore the stories, it is almost impossible for them to go through their daily lives without hearing all these claims being made against the star of their team. Situations like this make it easy for a team to lose focus, and no matter how hard they try they will always be distracted by the media (positive or negative) that surrounds their team.

This can be seen by watching the highlights of the Florida State versus Syracuse game this past Saturday. Even though FSU came away with a 38-20 away victory, it was clear that this was not the team’s sharpest performance, Jameis included. Passes that usually come naturally to Winston seemed to falling short and the team’s overall performance did not live up to the expectations of being the number one team in the nation, leaving the voters no choice but to move Mississippi State into the number one spot after their incredible performance against Auburn.

Now the pressure is on for number two Florida State as the fifth ranked Fighting Irish of Notre Dame come to town this Saturday. Not only is this the biggest game of the year thus far for FSU, but it will be showcased as the college football game of the week on College GameDay.

If there was ever a time that a team needed to get rid of off the field distractions this would be it. Unfortunately for FSU, it does not look like the distractions are going to end any time soon, as long as Jameis Winston remains their starting quarterback.

It will be interesting to see how the team handles all of the pressure and distraction this week as they aim to stay undefeated and regain their spot as the number one team in the nation.

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Has the Media Forgotten Hope Solo?

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By Kate Roth

Over the past few weeks, sports media has been flooded with story after story involving a domestic violence issue, with majority of subjects being players from the National Football League.

After the Ray Rice incident, the media seemed to put the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL on blast for how they were handling the situation.

With the increased pressure coming from the media, the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell felt he had to take action. In doing so, Goodell suspended Rice from the league all together and implemented a new policy to help deal with future offenses.

Upon hearing the news of the new suspensions for players involved in domestic violence incidents, the media may have felt that like they had a part in starting that implementation. What the media failed to realize is that while they were so zoned in on attacking the NFL incidents, there were other situations going on in other sports that needed to be addressed as well.

Take for instance the Hope Solo case. Solo, who has had domestic violence issues in the past, has now been accused of assaulting her sister and her 17 year-old nephew. Even with all the media buzz around domestic violence issues in sport, Solo remains active on the Untied States Women’s National Team as she awaits trial in November.

The media has given very little attention to this topic, causing it to fall off the radar. By neglecting to cover this story the media has failed to show the seriousness of the situation and has taken the pressure off of the USWNT to suspend Solo for any period of time.

If the media were to have given the same attention to Solo’s case as they did for the cases in the NFL, the USWNT may have felt enough pressure to address the seriousness of the situation and make an example out of Solo to prevent this from happening with future players.

I think that the media really dropped the ball by neglecting to cover this story and essentially contradicted themselves by giving all of their attention to the NFL issues and ignoring the same issues happening with an athlete in another sport, as if we should pretend that what she did was not as serious.

I hope that if another situation like this were to arise, the media would realize their mistakes and give their attention to all of the serious issues in sport, not just the ones involving the most popular leagues or players.

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MLB Playoffs: Lost in the Mix

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By Kate Roth

With all of the excitement surrounding the many college football upsets lat weekend it seems that the Major League Baseball Playoffs have gotten lost in the media.

One would think that a sport known as America’s national pastime would receive a bit more coverage during the playoffs, which are undoubtedly the most intense and exciting part of the MLB season. Yet every sports media show and site you look at is showing the same clips from the big college football games played on Saturday.

This is not to say that there has not been any media coverage of the MLB playoffs at all, but in my opinion the small clips and highlights that are shown on SportsCenter are not nearly enough.

Over the weekend the Kansas City Royals (a team who has not made the playoffs in 20 years) upset the Los Angeles Angels (one of the favorites to win the American League) by completing a three game sweep to advance to the American League Championship Series. To me, an upset like this on the stage that they had to play on should be the main highlight of every sports media page and show. Just watching the highlights from this series alone would get fans more excited to tune into the rest of the MLB playoffs.

Without the media giving the MLB any attention, it seems as though fans have forgotten that the playoffs are even in action. All of their focus has gone towards who will be the top four teams to make the college football playoffs, even though they are only half way through the season.

Fans enjoy knowing about the sports and teams they are going to watch before actually watching them, that way they are familiar with the players during the game and have a little more background to keep them intrigued.  If the media were to spend a little more time showcasing the MLB playoffs I think we would see an increase in fan interest because they would have more information on the teams giving them reason to actually watch the games.

Overall, I am excited to see how the rest of this MLB postseason will play out and I hope to see more attention from the media along with more fan interest in our national pastime.

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