One of the first things I noticed when coming to the internet was the disdain that sports fans felt for the media in general.

Now, I heard over the years that folks did not like Howard Cosell or Curt Gowdy and then of course Brent Musberger became someone that folks went after on sports talk radio, but when I came to the internet it was like an angry mob going after the very folks who bought them the news, videos and pictures that they used to follow their teams.

I sort of equated it to a church member hating all preachers.

I guess I am just the opposite in this arena of media hate. From my earliest days of being able to read I always enjoyed the sports stories and the writings of any one who covered sports. I remember the first sports writer that I read on a regular basis was Bill Kastelz of the Florida Times Union.

In those days of course it was not the sports writer’s duty to bring much locker room or off the field stuff. A story about an athlete or coach was usually brought to the reader in a favorable light. The athletes and coaches were our heroes and it was the media’s job to report what fans wanted to hear.

I can remember a few things changing that along the way.

Roger Maris will pretty much trashed for not only breaking Babe Ruth’s single season home run record, but he had the nerve to also beat out everyone’s favorite Mickey Mantle. I can remember reading some stories back then on how the press was treating him and how it was even causing his hair to fall out.

Now I do not know if all this was more because he was going to beat the Babe or he was beating Mantle, but the sports writers used the excuse he was not colorful and that a player of his stature had no right to have the record.

I sided with Maris on this one and he is to this day, my favorite non-Gator athlete of all time.

That did not cause me to blame each and every writer and refuse to read their stories or listen to them on TV.

I think Jim Bouton’s book had as much to do with the undressing of stars that anything else. Some equate it to the Watergate era and such, but I believe the Watergate press was able to do what they did, because writers were already doing it with sports stars. If America was able to deal with falling stars in the sport’s world then what was a crooked politician or two.

Talk radio and the internet took the locker room out of the belly of the stadium and put it on the front page of the news. I mean with talk radio taking off and operating 24/7 there was only so many words about the games that could be spoken.  Reporters had to start digging and looking for news, often finding it, sometimes creating it.

Still though that is what sports reporters are paid to do, report on sports or (and this is the one that fans of teams really hate) write opinion pieces of their thinking.

While that might not be popular it sure did work for a long time.

So this is one of the areas that I really differ with my fellow Gator fans. I do not care that there is not a sports writer, commentator, analyst or studio host that is not crucified on a keyboard daily, I enjoy sports media.

Maybe it is because I have a life long wish that I would have pursued a skill of writing.  A good friend of mine, Gary Griffin who is editor of the local paper, is more like me that anyone I know of, as it relates to sports and media. The thing is though, he pursued his dream and I did not.