AFTER DEADLINE
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By Curtis Murayama
Advertiser Sports Editor
One of my T-shirts features the phrase: "Sports is life."
Here's another phrase you hear all the time: "Life isn't fair."
Combine the two and you get "Sports isn't fair." That could easily be our standard response to those who feel their team/sport/child is overlooked while others are overcovered.
Advertiser library photo
Despite our efforts to offer the broadest array of coverage, we can't please everyone. And that's hard because Honolulu is a great sports town where fans care passionately about everything from sumo to sailing.
University of Hawai'i slotback Nate Ilaoa breaks free during a game against Eastern Illinois. Some readers say The Advertiser gives far too much coverage to UH sports, yet the sheer number of fans attending UH games and watching live telecasts indicates there is a huge interest in UH athletics in the community.
Too much UH coverage, they say.
Too few Division II stories, they insist.
Too many private-school articles, they suggest.
Too little junior varsity coverage.
Too little Mainland news.
I'm writing today to explain the whys and hows of coverage and describe the thinking that goes into those decisions.
Like all organizations, from a sports team to a corporation, hierarchy reigns.
To me, sports hierarchy is determined by the level of play and local interest, either by the buzz and/or attendance.
For example, the hierarchy for the level of play in football is NFL, followed by college, high school varsity and so on.
Sometimes, though, news interest in a youth sport transcends the level-of-play formula. Such was the case of the Waipi'o Little League baseball team when it went to the World Series last year.
Defending UH
Defending our ample coverage of UH athletics is easy.
Since Hawai'i doesn't have a major professional team, UH deserves the bulk of our coverage.
Just check out the numbers:
• Attendance: Despite the availability of live telecasts, UH football averaged more than 38,000 a game; women's volleyball, nearly 7,000.
I'm no rocket scientist, but just those sheer numbers tell me there is intense interest. And intense interest usually translates into high readership.
That's true nationwide.
In Dallas, for example, newspaper sales increase dramatically every time the Cowboys win. (Of course, that rarely happens nowadays.)
When the UH men's volleyball team won the school's first NCAA team title, our Sunday paper sales soared.
• Online. UH football draws the most consistent traffic to our Web site.
Just mention June Jones or UH football and it usually becomes one of the day's top "hits."
Heck, during football recruiting, our chart — not a story — about the top high-school football recruits and what colleges they were going to drew twice as many views as the week's other top stories.
• Television. K5 televises a variety of UH sports, such as football delayed and basketball, baseball and volleyball live.
According to Nielsen figures in a November period, K5's same-night delayed telecasts of UH home football games were seen by about 110,000 Island viewers.
Another 10,000 homes and 65 commercial establishments watched via pay-per-view, according to UH officials.
Prep coverage
"They work just as hard ... "
I've heard that line from just about every caller who suggests equal coverage for sports other than football, basketball, baseball or softball, as well as lower-varsity sports.
I agree, participants on the intermediate and junior varsity levels and in nonmainstream sports practice and play just as hard.
But we simply can't cover them all.
We have two reporters covering the high-school beat full time. They can't be everywhere, especially when you have 27 events occurring on the same day. That's happening right now with the overlap of basketball, softball, boys and girls soccer, etc.
The reporters choose the most competitive game to write about regardless of whether it's a private-school or public-school game.
Believe me, there is no private-school bias. I went to public school, as did my two assistant editors.
Regarding coverage of intermediate and junior varsity levels, my explanation comes from your own varsity coaches.
I posed that question to a few coaches during a recent dinner.
They all said they would prefer us not cover below-varsity levels. They contend that if parents and kids want to see their names in the paper then they should continue to work to reach the varsity level.
The coaches felt this was one way of motivating students into staying with the sport instead of straying.
Division II coverage
OK, I admit, we could do a more thorough job here.
We have just one reporter assigned to this beat, but he has to share his assignments with numerous other duties.
Why more reporters on preps than Division II?
In this case, attendance and participation supersedes the level-of -play formula.
While there are only four Division II colleges in Hawai'i, there are 49 high schools on O'ahu that offer sports.
Furthermore, some D2 games draw only a few hundred fans. I recently attended a hoops game involving nonpowerhouses Mid-Pacific and University High and that game drew several hundred people.
Now, if that nonglamour prep game draws the same as a D2 game, and there were six times more high school events than D2 games, then it's reasonable to conclude that more people are associated with high-school teams than with the colleges.
That said, I do want to increase the amount of coverage of Division II sports, especially since those teams are filled with local players.
Mainland coverage
No question, NFL is big here. So are Major League Baseball and the NBA. Even the NHL has found a niche of followers.
Why not more features, profiles, statistics on those sports or athletes?
We'd love to, except at whose expense? Local stories? I don't think so.
There is a limit to the amount of space in our section. No, we can't simply kill ads off our pages, as some have suggested. The ad line is the dog that wags the tail.
A few have suggested that we run those expanded major league baseball box scores.
Doing that would take a whole page away that we could devote to local news.
The thinking here is that all of the in-depth information on major league sports is available on TV, on the Internet and in specialty publications.
ESPN has game-day programs that show highlights of every NFL and major league game. Sports fans basically have seen every highlight, heard every sound bite by the time we go to press with our stories.
So for the most passionate fans, stories about Mainland games might be old news by the time you pick up your Advertiser.
But only in The Advertiser can you find out about Hawai'i sports and local athletes.
Given our space, manpower and deadlines, we try to do our best at giving what the majority of readers want, not simply what a few demand.
Curtis Murayama has been on the sports staff of The Advertiser since 1978 and has been sports editor since 1999. Reach him at cmurayama@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8017.
