Quit being a jerk, Murph

Over on the Chronicle's University of Houston sports blog, sportswriter Michael Murphy mentions (see the end of the post) that he was co-hosting a sports talk show on a local AM radio station for four hours last night and did not receive a single call from anyone wanting to discuss UH athletics. According to him, the fact that nobody called in to talk UH sports means that Cougar fans are no longer allowed to complain about the lack of coverage they receive from the local sports media.

While it's true that there is a contingent of UH fans who constantly bitch and moan about a perceived lack of media coverage Cougar athletics receives, saying that UH fans don't have a right to complain about said lack of media coverage simply because no Cougar fan called into one evening AM sports talk radio show just doesn't make a lot of sense. Is media coverage of a certain team heavily correlated to the number of fans of that team who call in to AM sports talk radio shows? If UH fans suddenly began flooding these sports talk shows with calls, would coverage of Cougar sports dramatically increase? I doubt it.

What percentage of UH fans normally listen to AM sports talk radio, anyway? I know there are a few, but I'm betting that a much larger percentage don't. I don't listen to sports talk radio, because I find it to be incredibly boring (the only time I enjoyed listening to it was when I lived up in the Metroplex; everytime the Cowboys lost I'd listen to The Ticket to hear all the Cowboys fans complain, and in some cases literally start bawling). And I'd certainly not be listening to a sports talk radio show in the evening.

And what exactly is there to talk about right now, anyway? Basketball season is over. Baseball season has been rather dissapointing, and will be over soon enough. Spring practices for football are over, and football season itself is still almost four months away.

Commenters to Murphy's blog pointed that they didn't know that he'd be on last night, that they didn't know that UH sports would be discussed, that they didn't listen to his 6-to-10 pm radio slot because they're home eating dinner with their kids during that time, and the like. Judging by Murphy's testy responses to these comments, this isn't good enough for him. It's as if he's trying to argue that it is somehow the duty of every University of Houston sports fan to call into AM talk radio and create discussion about the program; that it is the responsibility of the fans, not the sports media itself, to generate coverage of UH athletics. And that's just absurd.

I know Murphy likes to ruffle feathers from time to time, but taking UH fans to task for not calling into AM talk radio to promote the program is just as futile as his constant criticism of UH fans for lousy attendance at football games. It's counterproductive and it just makes a lot of people angry.

Murph usually does good work and I appreciate his coverage of UH athletics. But this time, I think he's just being an antagonistic jerk.