Conflicted

 I don't have a lot of faves on sports-talk radio, other than the local guys. But Sarah Spain is one of them.

Until the local affiliate ditched ESPN for Fox -- a lame decision that now subjects us to daily doses of Colin Cowherd and the Trumpazoid Clay Travis -- I was a regular listener to her radio gig. She always had something to say that made me think, which is how I gauge the worth of this particular genre.

So I'm sure she'll find some way to handle the conflict of interest she just created for herself.

This upon the news that Spain has signed on as a minority owner of the Chicago Red Stars of the National Women's Soccer League, the women's version of MSL. On one level, it makes all kinds of sense; Spain is a Chicago native and former collegiate athlete who's followed the team for years and has become a leading proponent of a bigger footprint for women in all levels of sport. So, yeah, perfect.

On the other hand ...

Well, this is where Old School Journalism Guy grabs the wheel and takes me on one of his curmudgeonly up-on-two-wheels joyrides.

Old School Journalism Guy, see, looks at a sports journalist becoming a sports owner and gets a little queasy. I came up in an era where you kept a certain professional distance between you and those you covered. There were certain lines you simply didn't cross, and they were clearly delineated. If you were friendly with sources because sources are the lifeblood of journalism, you always guarded against becoming familiar. 

Now?

Now the notion that a journalist should avoid conflicts of interest like, I don't know, Colin Cowherd's radio show, seems impossibly quaint. Like milk bottles on your doorstep, or Sunday rides in the country. 

Partly this is due our late unlamented President, who made conflicts of interest official policy during his four years of corruption-as-usual. Propriety and rules? Bah. Only losers cared about them.

And so it is in journalism these days, too, or that's how it seems to the grouch driving this sentence.  As more and more media becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the traditional lines become blurred if not extinct. Media entities that own newspapers or TV properties also own sports franchises or  financial institutions or energy companies. Athletic conferences have their own broadcast entities now; ESPN itself owns the exclusive rights to SEC football and basketball.

And so when the former reports on the latter, it becomes more than just a conflict of interest. It becomes damn near incestuous, and makes suspect everything that gets reported.

This is no reflection on Sarah Spain, understand, or on her integrity as a journalist. She established her bonafides there a long time ago. But it does make you wonder what happens if some scandal breaks in the NWSL, or more specifically with the Red Stars.

How would Spain handle that? And would simply acknowledging her connection to the team -- which is how she says she'll handle it -- be enough?

I guess in this world it would be. But in the world of Old School Journalist Guy, she'd have to recuse herself from the discussion entirely.

Of course, that notion seems impossibly quaint these days, too. 

Ah, the joys of being an anachronism. Yes, sir.