Chasing the Crew: Improvements, Local Media on Week One, (minor changes)

By: Jeff | April 11th, 2007

Well…let no one say I’m unwilling to spend (waste?) money to provide better coverage of the Columbus Crew. Recognizing the futility of trying to watch games as they air in a four-person, one-TV household, I took the plunge and bought MLSLIVE.tv. Will I get hosed? Can’t say, but I’m patting myself so hard on the back just now that my arm is cramping. Go get daddy a beer, will you suge?

Ahem.

With things finally settled down in my schedule, and with the reports of Guillermo Barros Schelotto’s possible arrival in something of a holding pattern, I finally had the time to check on the how the local media viewed the Crew’s goalless draw against Red Bull on opening weekend. After weeks of wondering whether they cover the Crew at all, the Columbus Dispatch came up good enough with a decent perspective piece (the “CREW REVIEW”) on the team’s first game that they posted Monday; they also have a neat-o feature for most the local teams called, Five Games Out, that says who these teams will play over the next, um, five games.

More impressive than that, though, was the summary/analysis compiled by Chris Deville for Sensory Overload, a blog attached to a publication called Columbus Alive. It helps plenty that the author saw roughly what I saw (helps with that whole “credibility” thing, which can be deliciously selective of course), but I also like that DeVille approaches the game as a fan/consumer. I liked this bit in particular:

“Defender Frankie Hejduk chalked up the mediocre start to first-game jitters and repeated that frighteningly familiar mantra, ‘The goals will come.’ But Ned Grabavoy, whose play at midfield outclassed his teammates and stood the test against aging great Claudio Reyna, offered a more sober perspective.”

“‘Obviously you don’t want to leave points on the field, you know?’ Grabavoy said. ‘You can say, “Yeah, we did well, and we did this and that,” but in this league, that’s what happens. You get in July, and you say “That game, and this game, and this game,” and it starts to add up.’”

For those who didn’t catch it, DeVille used the magic word: “Grabavoy.” Between he and Eddie Gaven, you’ve already named the two players drawing the most praise (example; see fourth paragraph) for Saturday’s promising, if futile, performance. Even my daughter noticed him - though only because he looks a bit like Alan Rickman as Severus Snape with the hair he’s rocking.
Snape
Grabavoy

At any rate, one could describe the sense of the local media as “interested, but without wanting to seem easy,” a reasonable position given the abuse they endured through 2006.

(NOTE: In discussing “the locals” media I should acknowledge one gorilla-sized source: the Crew’s corner of the Big Soccer board. Between unwittingly offending some of them by trying to introduce new customs and the fact that one has to wade through a pound of crap to find a morsel of good stuff (peanuts? sorry…) I’m inclined to limit the use of that space; it’s not bad for what it is - a place for “true fans” to mingle and bitch - but it’s very time-consuming and very insider-y, which makes it troublesome as ready source. But, if you’re a Crew fan, go on over there and yuk it up.)

And that (somehow) brings me to a final note. On the off-chance that people expect to see something in this space at a given time (say, between 9 and 10 a.m. PST), I wanted to mention that I’ll be posting to this space later in the day. The thing is, a lot of what I find on the Crew, I find in places outside the Columbus’ media world; there’s a lot of serendipity involved, as when I found Crew forward Jason Garey among the “13 Players to Watch” in Greg Lalas’ feature for Sports Illustrated (click to #10). In hope to find more of those, then, I’ll post later in the day. All for now.