Farewell, Keon

I was extremely disappointed to hear that Keon Lawrence will be leaving the University of Missouri.

All season we heard that Keon had been considering moving closer to his home in New Jersey but at the end of the year it appeared that he had fully committed to MU and Mike Anderson. In fact, on Wednesday he sounded very upbeat when talking about this year's group with the Kansas City Star, "This squad, everybody’s about the team,” Lawrence said. “They’re going to give what it takes to win. Whether somebody doesn’t like it or not. They’re here to please the coach."

Keon told the Star that the reason he is transferring is to be closer to home but that was after he had taken a subtle shot at the MU coaching staff earlier in the day when talking to the Columbia Tribune, "It's not my teammates, and it's not the fans. That should tell you something."

He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch over the phone that he's not even sure he'll return to school.

Keon's past has been well documented. Gangs were prevalent in his life throughout his childhood and adolescent years. Earlier this year his brother was murdered and his sister is also reportedly deep into the gang life. According to the P-D, Lawrence will move back to Newark with his mother, who abandoned him as a child, to the streets that nearly swallowed him before escaping to Mizzou. 

"The people I used to run with know I'm coming back home and I don't know what's going to happen," Lawrence said. "But this might be best for me right now."

I'm not going to pretend to understand Keon's situation or try to say that I know what's best for him. But I can't imagine this being a good decision. Keon appeared to have overcome his past and survived, but his battle could be long from over.

I'm not going to bash him for leaving MU even though it's extremely disappointing. I do think his jab at the coaching staff was a little below the belt. And I'm not taking Anderson's side in this. Anderson could be driving the program deeper into the ground than it already is, we don't know and only time will tell. But if you're going to say something like that about your coach after you leave decide to leave the program you better be prepared to explain exactly what the problem is that you have with him. Don't hint that there was something there the public didn't know about and then refuse to answer any followup questions, which is exactly what Keon did. Either tell-all or don't tell a thing.

But that's really the secondary issue here. Keon's obviously a very troubled young man who's going through a lot of serious problems that most have us couldn't possibly comprehend. I hope he has the wisdom to stay as far away as he possibly can from the people that got him into so much trouble in his high school years. 

If you've ever seen Keon in a public setting he always seems to be having a great time. He's a guy who's always the life of the party. It's hard to believe he's been as unhappy as he says he's been. 

I've gushed about Keon as a player before and I sincerely believed he was going to be the catalyst that turned the program back around. But it wasn't meant to be. This is a significant blow to the team's Tournament chances next season but that's also besides the point. 

Right now this looks like a heartbreaking story. My prayers are with Keon and I hope he's able to find his place, wherever that may be.

Kim English=my new favorite Mizzou hoopster

I wrote a little bit yesterday about how much I like Keon Lawrence being in a leadership position on the MU basketball team next season. I've always been a big fan of Keon even during his season-long slump last year. In fact, I'd consider him my favorite player on the team. But that might change real soon and it's no fault of Keon's.

Freshman guard Kim English's mutigers player bio says he "has been called a gym-rat by coaches and teammates because of his tremendous work ethic." But after reading this Mike DeArmond story in Thursday's KC Star, I'm starting to think that gym-rat doesn't do him justice. It's a short blurb (but very telling) so I'll go ahead and post the entire thing:

Kim English lives only half a mile from Mizzou Arena. However, for the last four nights, he has made the basketball locker room his bedroom.

“On my recruiting visit, they told us this was a 24-hour practice facility,” English, a 6-foot-6 freshman guard from Baltimore, said Wednesday. “We’ve got a key and it works at 12 p.m., it works at 1 a.m. It works 24 hours a day.”

English sleeps in a leather chair that he drags from the players’ lounge to the locker room, allowing him to work around the clock.

“To help this team win this year, I’ll do anything,” said English, who played at Notre Dame Prep in Fitchburg, Mass., last season, averaging 17.3 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game.

“I’ll sleep outside if that’s what it takes.”

How many 18-year-olds do you think spend the summer prior to their freshman year of college literally living in a gym? How many nights do think Jason Horton spent sleeping in the gym during the last four years? 

In addition to the locale that he's decided to take up residence in, his mutigers bio also calls him a "basketball junky that follows the prep, collegiate and NBA games with a passion." So he's also a student of the game. Oops! Sorry, I just drooled on my keyboard. 

Sports journalism and the role that Big MO Sports (and other blogs) will play in it

Photo through Creative Commons

I'll start this post with a disclaimer: If you are looking for commentary on Mizzou athletics then you should probably skip this post and come back later this week. I've been meaning to devote a post to Mizzou's running back situation and plan to write that sooner rather than later. But for now I'm going to be discussing something that is pretty much unrelated to Chase Daniel, Aaron Crow and Keon Lawrence.

I'm still trying to figure out what direction to take this blog. I plan to keep its focus predominantly on all things Mizzou, but since the conception of Big MO Sports, I have tended to include a lot of commentary on the world of sports journalism. That in itself is not entirely unrelated to Mizzou considering MU is essentially the journalism capital of the U.S. But I would like to include more of those critiques in my posts since sports journalism, along with MU athletics, are probably my two favorite things to talk about.

And that's what brings us to tonight's post. By now, if you care about blogs, journalism or Friday Night Lights (the book, not the movie or TV series) then you've probably seen or at least heard of (Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the author of the groundbreaking FNL) Buzz Bissinger's infamous tirade on the HBO program, Costas Now, directed at Will Leitch, founder of the popular sports blog site Deadspin. 

I avoided commenting on the Bissinger ordeal immediately after it happened for several reasons:

1. Virtually every sports-related blogger commented on Bissinger's comments to the point that the topic was completely beaten into the ground and there was nothing left for me to say that hadn't already been said.
2. Bissinger's comments were completely off base. He proved to have no comprehension of what blogs were nor what they should or could be. He sounded like an angry carriage driver refusing to acknowledge that the automobile is the means of transportation of the future. Which leads me to my final reason.
3. I hated seeing what a moron Bissinger at least seems to be. I guess previous to his appearance on the show I could have been considered a Bissinger disciple. I loved his book on Tony La Russa, 3 Nights in August, and Friday Night Lights should be read by every aspiring journalist whether they have an interest in sports or not. 

Now the reason I bring Bissinger up now is not to point out how stupid (and cruel) his comments were but to use him as the prototypical example of a guy who doesn't understand where journalism is headed and the role that blogs will play in said future. 

Furthermore, I'd like to compare him to a guy who I believe does get it, the Kansas City Star's Joe Posnanski. Joe-Po recently did an interview for the blog, The Big Lead in which he discussed many interesting topics including the future (or lack thereof) of newspapers. 

The future of that medium has been a growing concern of mine with my entrance into the working world growing nearer and more and more people, including Tony Kornheiser, proclaiming that newspapers are dead. That death is being largely attributed to blogs like Deadspin and Fanhouse (although I have yet to hear Big MO Sports blamed for this death). But something Posnanski, who writes one of the best sports columns in America and also updates a brilliant blog regularly, points out is that although Kornheiser is great at what he does (he's wonderful on his radio show, fantastic on PTI and excellent on Monday Night Football) and has been one of the best sports writers of our generation, he hasn't really been a newspaper writer for quite a long time now. Therefore, he is probably not the most qualified person to be making such bold statements. 

Moreover, Posnanski sees the use that blogs can have in supplementing newspapers:

"It seems to me that blogs can be whatever we want to make them, but we have to make them ESSENTIAL. They are a direct line to our readers. It’s a great opportunity, but it’s more important than ever that you offer something unique — a strong voice, an informed outlook, an insider’s view, a funny approach, a breath of honesty, whatever — because there’s just SO much out there."

Posnanski also mentions that, depending how you choose to measure it, newspaper's readership is actually bigger than its ever been: 

"You know when you combine online and the print product, more people are reading newspapers today than at any point in American history."

The point that Posnanski goes on to make is that newspapers aren't dying but changing and changing drastically. And it's that change that makes a guy like Bissinger go on a rant with a temper and fury that would make Bob Knight blush. 

But the entire interview with Posnanski is worth reading, especially if you're interested in journalism. There's really a lot of practical advice for aspiring journalists. 

One thing I found particularly interesting is that he tries to avoid as much commentary on the world of sports (ESPN, talk radio, etc.) as he can so he is able to form his own opinion. That's a strategy that makes a lot of sense and would probably benefit a lot of writers. When you are overloaded with so many opinions on every topic in the sports world, many of which that make sense and many of which that don't, it becomes difficult to decipher your opinion from those of the Woody Paiges and J.A. Adandes. That in turn, makes it impossible to form your own unique voice, something I think most writers would tell you is the cornerstone to becoming successful writer.  

Anyways, that's my two cents on where the profession is going. Maybe it's just me hoping that I'm not entering into a dying business and destined to be homeless in 10 years, but for my sake lets hope not.