The late author and crazy person Dr. Hunter S. Thompson on sportswriters:There is a dangerous kind of simple-minded Power/Precision worship at the root of the massive fascination with pro football in this country,and sportswriters are mainly responsible for it. With a few rare exceptions like Bob Lipsyte of the New York Times and Tom Quinn of the (now defunct) Washington Daily News, sportswriters are a kind of rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks whose only real function is to publicize and sell whatever the sports editor sends them to cover...
Which is a nice way to make a living, because it keeps a man busy and requires no thought at all. The two keys to success as a sportswriter are: 1) A blind willingness to believe anything you're told by coaches, flacks, hustlers and other "official spokesmen" for the team-owners who supply the free booze...and 2) A Roget's Thesaurus, in order to avoid using the same verbs and adjectives twice in the same paragraph.
HST could get plenty over the top in his prose style. Indeed, the above-excerpt, brought to us by the good folks at deadspin.com, was relatively restrained. But I bet Doc would never have described Razorback guard Courtney Fortson as having "more moves than a boa constrictor on a mouse farm" as did a certain local sports "editor" in his column in today's sports page.
"Requires no thought at all" indeed.
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