From: gharris@jade.tufts.edu (George W. Harris)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.college
Subject: Re: best sports papers
Date: 12 Jan 93 19:14:20 GMT
Organization: Tufts University - Medford, MA

In article <C0pGq5.42q@apollo.hp.com> stuart@apollo.hp.com (Stuart Troutman) writes:
>
>I've been meaning to do this for a while, and it sorta fits with some
>of the recent commentary here, so.....
>
>I'm STILL hurting from the collapse of The National, so I want to com-
>pile a list of the daily newspapers with the best sports sections. For 
>my own practical purposes, I'm confining this to English-language news-
>papers, but if anyone knows of papers in other languages that really 
>qualify, then I'm open to persuasion. These needn't necessarily be 
>easy-to-find metro US papers only (I have possible access to a number 
>of news distributors). My criteria are generally: 1) timely coverage; 
>2) extensive scores (i.e., obscure small colleges in distant towns); 
>3) quality writing; 4) detailed box score stats; 5) in-depth coverage 
>& good features. 

	Well, at this point, I was sort of considering posting about how the
Boston Globe has hideous coverage of college basketball...

For instance, although I'm biased, I still believe the 
>Boston Globe sports section is the finest in the US. 

	Here, you'll have to imagine it, because I don't know how to spell
a spit take.

>Please spare the whole group from a barrage of postings about this,
>and email me directly: stuart@apollo.hp.com. Thanks.

	Sorry, but I feel this rebuttal is worthy of the group...I'll do this
by the criteria you list.

	Timely coverage.  Well, the generally only report for the previous
day's games.  If it was a late west-coast game, it never gets written up.
Big thumbs down on this one.  Oh, and I should mention that they *never*
write up *any* non-top 25, non-New England (or Big East) games.  Absolutely
none. 

	Extensive scores.  Admittedly, they do list pretty much every result 
in college basketball, albeit in the agate type.  They do okay here, but no
better than hundreds of papers across the country (they also print the day's 
results the next day and the day after, so at least they get west coast scores
in.

	Quality writing.  Well, for the local schools, I suppose they do okay.
Of course, you can only read so many features on B.U. and Northeastern....
Nationally, they publish very little.  

	Detailed box-score stats.  For college basketball, the only stats they
list for the individual players are FGM, FTM and PTS.  They don't list attempts,
rebounds, assists, fouls or turnovers.  I think they list the team totals for
rebounds as well as team leaders, but I think they ignore assists and turnovers
altogether.  They do break down three-point attempts and successes, albeit in
the team summary, rather than in the players.  These are the most pathetic
excuses for box scores I have ever seen.  Oh, and they only give box scores
for top 25 teams.

	In depth coverage and good features.  Extremely narrow.  The only 
features you ever see are on local teams, and you rarely see anything on 
college basketball in general.  I've already mentioned how they ignore anything
that's not top-25 outside of NE & the Big East.  Overall, very sketchy and
provincial coverage of college basketball.

	I'd have to say that the Boston Globe's coverage of college basketball
is vastly inferior to that of the Raleigh News and Observor, the Charlotte
paper (arggh...mental block), and even the little Durham Herald-Sun.  Of course,
this is in keeping with the Boston media in general, as we don't even get the
ABC and NBC nat'l games, as the local affiliates prefer to show program-length
commercials instead.

--
gharris@jade.tufts.edu          
George W. Harris              	"He'd kill us if he had the chance."  
Dept. of Mathematics            
Tufts University              			The Conversation  
Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.college