Friday, July 25, 2008

Atlanta Sports Writing's Most Confident Dunce Strikes Again

Jeff Schultz is not the most complex of creatures. He is varying his well-paid act slightly these days, working generalized put-downs of the Thrashers (of the Thrashers, not necessarily of the Atlanta Spirit Group or even, this time, Don Waddell) into columns about the Atlanta Hawks. But still, his criticism rarely expands beyond "My God, the Thrashers suck. Everyone else in my trade thinks so, so I agree."

There are plenty of problems with the way the Thrashers and Hawks franchises are run, but they mostly have to do with the ownership. Not entirely to do with the ownership, but I find it pretty hard to disagree that the Spirit are the root cause of a lot of the Thrashers' woes. Don Waddell is just a highly visible scapegoat onto which Jeff Schultz and Scott Burnside unleash their resentment. I have no problem with a thorough and honest critique of the Thrashers' problems (I like to think that this blog does this every now and then, in a haphazard way), but Schultz's complaints rarely contain much more content than "I hate hockey. Get it out of Atlanta. Low standing last season...Don Waddell...something...perception...something...I-I want people to believe I know what I'm talking about..."

And working a dig at the Thrashers into a column otherwise totally concerned with the Hawks is just gratutitous.

You'll have to explore the AJC on your own if you want to read Our Jeff's latest emission. It's now the Chronicle's policy not to link to the excrement-farmer.

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