Book: God Save the Fan by Will Leitch, 295 pretty-good-then-not-so-good pagesBy Matt
For full disclosure I should say that the author of this book, Will Leitch and I went to the University of Illinois at roughly the same time and overlapped briefly at the Daily Illini student newspaper. I read his work in college - awesome - but I never knew him,and he wouldn't know me from Ron Zook. Also, my boss, and friend, is very good friends with Leitch.
I should further admit that I was in no way biased by the fact that I thought it was awesome that on page 138, Leitch mentions - for no reason I can find - the Aurora Beacon News. Booya! All of which really had no impact on this review being posted for six people.
I started out wanting to dislike this book. Leitch is the former editor of Deadspin, an interesting and addicting sports blog that, of course, makes me uncomfortable because I work for a little newspaper that is being eaten alive by blogs. I don’t hate blogs, at all. (Obviously.) But I’m alternately amused and disgusted by Deadspin, which reports rumors and wallows in the mud too often for my taste.
I should further admit that I was in no way biased by the fact that I thought it was awesome that on page 138, Leitch mentions - for no reason I can find - the Aurora Beacon News. Booya! All of which really had no impact on this review being posted for six people.
I started out wanting to dislike this book. Leitch is the former editor of Deadspin, an interesting and addicting sports blog that, of course, makes me uncomfortable because I work for a little newspaper that is being eaten alive by blogs. I don’t hate blogs, at all. (Obviously.) But I’m alternately amused and disgusted by Deadspin, which reports rumors and wallows in the mud too often for my taste.
But, on the other hand, I know Leitch is a fantastic writer, a funny guy and very smart. And for the first quarter of God Save the Fan I was hooked. The book is divided into essays about players, owners, the media and fans.
In the players sections, Leitch is fantastic, combining personal experiences, anecdotal evidence and strong logic into insightful essays about sports. I couldn’t stop reading and I was learning about the sports I love. He took on owners and players in insightful, humorous ways. He told me steroids didn’t matter and I was with him. The reason people actually don’t like most blogs (outside of anonymity and no accountability) is that they’re boring. Being an essayist - which is what many bloggers are - is probably the hardest form of writing. But for the first quarter of the book, I was ready to concede that Leitch was the great sports essayist of this generation.
And then he fell off the tracks, in the strangest of places. He went after sports media. Where there had been logic and insight, there was contradictions and pettiness. Consider the chapter called Beware Those Who Come Bearing the Tag "Experts", where he declares there are no experts. To summarize, Leitch says no one knows what they’re doing and no one really has any more information than any other person who wanted to research a topic. Sorry, that makes no sense at all. Someone who studies the subject material, talks to other experts is an expert. This kind of weak logic is littered through the second half of the book, along with petty barbs and no-duh conclusions.
The worst comes out in the chapters about ESPN. I watch ESPN for the game scores, maybe a game, then I move on to other things. But both Deadspin and this book have a full-out obsession with ESPN’s anchors and programming. Leitch clearly delights in embarrassing these people. For what reason, or purpose, he never articulates. (Is Scott Van Pelt's love life really interesting to anyone, including Scott Van Pelt?)
In the players sections, Leitch is fantastic, combining personal experiences, anecdotal evidence and strong logic into insightful essays about sports. I couldn’t stop reading and I was learning about the sports I love. He took on owners and players in insightful, humorous ways. He told me steroids didn’t matter and I was with him. The reason people actually don’t like most blogs (outside of anonymity and no accountability) is that they’re boring. Being an essayist - which is what many bloggers are - is probably the hardest form of writing. But for the first quarter of the book, I was ready to concede that Leitch was the great sports essayist of this generation.
And then he fell off the tracks, in the strangest of places. He went after sports media. Where there had been logic and insight, there was contradictions and pettiness. Consider the chapter called Beware Those Who Come Bearing the Tag "Experts", where he declares there are no experts. To summarize, Leitch says no one knows what they’re doing and no one really has any more information than any other person who wanted to research a topic. Sorry, that makes no sense at all. Someone who studies the subject material, talks to other experts is an expert. This kind of weak logic is littered through the second half of the book, along with petty barbs and no-duh conclusions.
The worst comes out in the chapters about ESPN. I watch ESPN for the game scores, maybe a game, then I move on to other things. But both Deadspin and this book have a full-out obsession with ESPN’s anchors and programming. Leitch clearly delights in embarrassing these people. For what reason, or purpose, he never articulates. (Is Scott Van Pelt's love life really interesting to anyone, including Scott Van Pelt?)
The worst part is that the ESPN stuff is neither well-sourced nor well-thought out. Leitch picks the worst ESPN analysts and eviscerates them, then dismisses the real experts (like Ron Jaworski) with a brush off - “no one cares about experts”. Weak and inaccurate.
Leitch is quick to dismiss sports reporting because - I swear this is in the book - he once had the penis of University of Michigan’s fat center Robert “Tractor” Traylor’s in his face during an interview. It depressed Leitch and so, therefore, sports reporting is dead and irrelevant. Well, bad sports reporting is dead and irrelevant. But I read Mark Tupper of the Dectur Herald and Review because he tells me things about Illinois basketball - and college basketball - that help me better understand and appreciate what I’m watching. I listen to Peter Gammons of ESPN because he knows about baseball and helps me put players and games in perspective.
With great intensity, Leitch tells us ESPN is a big corporate empire that is mean, protects its brand and likes to make money. Well, duh.
The ESPN rant goes on and on. And on and on. (At one point, he watches 24 straight hours of ESPN programming in what’s supposed to be an ironic experiment, but you have to wonder.)
Leitch is quick to dismiss sports reporting because - I swear this is in the book - he once had the penis of University of Michigan’s fat center Robert “Tractor” Traylor’s in his face during an interview. It depressed Leitch and so, therefore, sports reporting is dead and irrelevant. Well, bad sports reporting is dead and irrelevant. But I read Mark Tupper of the Dectur Herald and Review because he tells me things about Illinois basketball - and college basketball - that help me better understand and appreciate what I’m watching. I listen to Peter Gammons of ESPN because he knows about baseball and helps me put players and games in perspective.
With great intensity, Leitch tells us ESPN is a big corporate empire that is mean, protects its brand and likes to make money. Well, duh.
The ESPN rant goes on and on. And on and on. (At one point, he watches 24 straight hours of ESPN programming in what’s supposed to be an ironic experiment, but you have to wonder.)
By the end, I came back to the cover of the book, which is a foam finger that is putting up the middle finger rather than the traditional “We’re No. 1” indexer. It was be provocative, surely. It was clever, of course. But what was the point of that image? I sort of felt the same way about this book.
Good for: Fans of Deadspin, although some people say this book is a rehash of what's been up there. (I don't read faithfully enough to know for sure.) People who live on ESPN, fantasy sports or their favorite team. People who want to poke fun at the often too-serious world of sports and sports journalism. People who want to read the first half of a book. Checking out of the library.
Skip it if: You don’t obsess of the sports media landscape. You want in-depth, new reporting on sports.
Skip it if: You don’t obsess of the sports media landscape. You want in-depth, new reporting on sports.
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