There’s a really funny story about a former boss – Alan Durban – whose side had gone to Highbury and lost 2-0 in a deadening game where they put every man behind the ball and offered not one iota of adventure or inspiration. Both sets of fans were pretty disgusted, even the Gunners supporters who’s team had won the game.
In the aftermath of the game, Durban spoke to the media and when he was asked to defend his team’s atrocious performance, and the negativity of his tactics, he gave a spikey answer that went on to became one of the game’s best soundbites. The journalist was horrified, which is ironic considering the context in which I thought of it tonight.
“If people want entertainment,” Durban said, “they should go and watch clowns.”
That quote came back to me in all its brilliance when I saw what BT Sport had done tonight, by inviting Kris Boyd to partner Chris Sutton in the studio. This is the downsizing of sports journalism to the level of a pub debate. This is literally sending in the clowns.
I like Sutton, but it’s hard to take him seriously at times. He seems so set on creating a persona for himself that it gets in the way of being able to treat him as someone whose opinions deserve respect. Which, in his case, is a shame. He is a smart guy, he knows the game inside out and could easily become a top broadcast journalist. He also has guts and speaks his mind, which is where the problem comes in. A guy like that, one not afraid to rub people up the wrong way, could be a great asset to the profession … but it’s already going to his head.
Boyd is an empty vessel. I’m getting tired writing about this joker, but as long as the media keeps giving this halfwit a platform I am going to keep writing about it, because his presence in a press box or newspaper office is an insult to every single one of us. He has never had an original thought in his life. He cannot contain his bias. You could pluck literally any fan from the stands and let that person have a say and he or she would not be worse.
Boyd does not belong in the media. He belongs in a zoo. He is a brainless dolt who got lucky in having some moderate football skills because he would never have been a brain surgeon. His room temperature IQ would have made shelf stacking a greater challenge than it needed to be. He is like a Radio Clyde caller given a national platform and the only discernible reason for putting him alongside Sutton tonight was to cause a stir.
And this is what TV sports journalism has been reduced to in Scotland, to a broadcaster putting a halfwit in a studio just to stoke controversy. If they were hoping for a fist fight they were disappointed because Sutton seemed to dismiss his dumb remarks as exactly that, but those dumb remarks are what he was put in the studio for.
The next time someone in the MSM complains about the standard of debate online, refer them to this panel tonight. Ask them if their own industry is that much better. Giving Boyd a newspaper column elevates a guy who I wouldn’t trust with a blog. He will never give anything other than a Sevco-centric opinion. He, like Derek Johnstone, doesn’t even pretend impartiality, and that’s why his opinions are not worthy of reasoned debate.
There are some bloggers who give all of us a bad name. There are others who would at least try to keep the level of debate above the gutter. Those in the press who sneer at the lot of us for that want to consider what their own profession has become.
For me, if I want to watch low comedy I will go and watch clowns.
BT Sport seems to want to put them in the studio.