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Rosenthal: During Chicago Blackhawks' run, everyone's a fan
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Phil Rosenthal
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June 19, 2013
You don't have to be weatherman to know that, when a local sports team gets hot, this city is warmed.
Right now the Chicago Blackhawks are vying for a championship, but any Chicago contender will do. Team colors dot the city's skyline, schools and workplaces. Distinctions between "you," "they" and "us" melt into a puddle of "we," with the local media reflecting and ultimately fanning the flames of fandom.
One barometer of this post-seasonal climate shift: My suburban mother stifling a yawn because, she said, she couldn't very well go to sleep until somebody, anybody, scored in overtime the night before.
It's not that Chicago is suddenly awash in hockey fans. It's that Chicago is filled with Chicagoans. The tribal allegiance is not to the stoic Indian on the Hawks' sweaters — that's what they call their jerseys, mom — it's to ourselves.
This phenomenon academics call Basking in Reflected Glory, or BIRG, separates sports from other entertainment, sells millions of dollars in team merchandise, causes TV ratings to spike and much, much more.
A groundbreaking mid-1970s study of college football fans quantified what everyone might have guessed of BIRG: Not only were students more likely to wear branded school apparel when their teams won and felt this enhanced their image, the tendency to want to be associated with a successful team only grew stronger when one's own public image was threatened.
Think about the image of Chicago and Illinois. Who wouldn't feel better about the place in a hockey context?
"It is perhaps informative that the chant is always 'We're number one,' never 'They're number one,'" the study noted.
So precious public money is sunk into helping build stadiums for multimillion-dollar franchises. A cash-strapped city is talking about helping build a sports arena for a private university. A billionaire family is emboldened to ask for government assistance to fund a rehab of its aging ballpark.
Little wonder actual success sets off such hysteria, and so many seek to attach themselves to this strain of civic boosterism. Media outlets and those who work for them are not immune.
While jarring to those of us who expect a certain professional detachment from those who report the news, it seems almost futile to rail against WMAQ-Ch. 5 reporter Natalie Martinez for wearing a Jonathan Toews sweater while reporting Monday on fan reaction to the Blackhawks' Game 3 loss. The criticism is as boilerplate as the response by now.
"Clearly the Chicago area is excited about the Blackhawks going for the Stanley Cup," Frank Whittaker, WMAQ's station manager and vice president of news, said in a statement. "We have reported on that excitement in our newscasts. We've also been very straightforward in our coverage of the games, telling our viewers what the Hawks have done well, and not-so-well, in their playoff run."
WLS-Ch. 7 sportscaster Rafer Weigel wore a necktie festooned in Blackhawks logos while talking on the air about Game 2. It was, he said, a tribute to his late sportscaster father, Tim, who wore it on the air 21 years earlier.
"You have a valid point," Weigel tweeted in response to my criticism. "I knew by wearing it I was going to get heat from it. Did it anyway."
Since leaving the sports department 15 years ago, where "No cheering in the press box" is the credo, I personally have felt freer to let my fan flag fly when off duty. But my work inevitably intersects with sports a few times a year, and it's incumbent that I can properly set aside my allegiances as appropriate. My attire or mindset in the stands has no place in the press box or locker room.
Judging from what I've read from various media types during Blackhawks games as Twitter becomes a veritable sports bar, I am not alone in seeking to achieve this balance. Those who cover religion are not expected to forgo faith; rather, they must not allow their beliefs to interfere with their ability to do their job. When you cover government, you don't surrender your citizenship. If anything, it makes you more interested in understanding what is happening and why.
But those who see sports as mere entertainment, and thus not subject to the same reporting standards as, say, politics, miss the big picture. Beyond the fact that sports and hard news often overlap, the standards of professional journalists help separate their content from that of bloggers and other nonprofessionals.
"I wince a little bit at the cheerleading," said Owen Youngman, a former Chicago Tribune editor who is now the Knight Professor of Digital Strategy at Northwestern University's Medill School. "Things like this trouble us because we see confusion in the minds of not just the audience, but our bosses and our families.
"OK, we're being responsive to what we think the audience wants. But there's a short-term, long-term thing here. Today the corporate managers say it's great to be plumping for the Blackhawks, but over time is that going to be the thing that sustains the coverage their people are providing? … If we're Hawks fans, do we only want to hear from other Hawks fans?"
No one knows better than Chicagoans that runs such as the Blackhawks' are fleeting. The hangover of weeks with nothing but baseball will be here soon enough.
Knowing how the Hawks' success and failures play on the mood of the community and affect its judgment, it's instructive to note an interview WMAQ's Rebecca Haarlow did with Rocky Wirtz, the team's chairman she identified as "the man, the myth, the legend." Haarlow asked Wirtz if he would sing "Chelsea Dagger," as United Center fans do, on the road in Boston if the Blackhawks scored a goal.
"I'll certainly stand up," Wirtz said. "But I won't make a fool of myself."
Words for us all to live by.
_________________ The Hawk wrote: There is not a damned thing wrong with people who are bull shitters.
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