A media Event

 I once saw a drunk fan get outed by one of my media colleagues.

(And, yes, you could tell the difference. Smartass.)

It was a postgame football presser at Notre Dame, where the Irish had just dispatched West Virginia. Per usual, the visiting coach and a select player or two went first. On this particular day, the player in question was Mountaineers' running back Amos Zereoue, who'd had a big day. And here was Drunk Guy, asking Amos, a darkhorse Heisman candidate, if he thought he should win the thing.

Now, we're not always a perceptive bunch, we media folk. But we immediately knew Drunk Guy wasn't one of us. Somehow he'd slipped past the diligent ND gendarmes, and he stuck out like a sore thumb.

The aforementioned media colleague -- a Notre Dame grad who'd been covering the Irish for decades -- promptly commenced with the outing.

"Who are you working for?" he demanded.

Drunk Guy mumbled something about the student newspaper.

"Bullshit," our hero said, or words to that effect. And then called over the gendarmes to remove the clown.

I bring all this up because of something I saw on the website Awful Announcing the other day, which made me both remember Drunk Guy and struggle not to retch.

Out in Norman, Okla., it seems, Oklahoma football has hit on a new way to pick the pockets of its fan base, as if it's not vacuuming up enough of its dollars already. For the low, low price of $692.11, fans will now be allowed to sit in on head coach Brent Venables' postgame pressers. Drunk Guy has gone legit, in other words.

I can't tell you how wrong that is. I mean, I can, but I'm not sure you'd get it.

So let me begin by pointing out the line between sportswriter and fanboy has always been the third rail of our profession, and woe betide anyone who crossed it. A poop storm of contempt from his or her colleagues is the reward for doing so.

This is not because we're mean, heartless creatures who love to make fun of everyone and everything. I mean, we are, but that's not why fanboy "journalists" in particular draw our wrath.

It's because we're a tribe, and the tribe has standards, believe it not. You don't cheer in the pressbox (although derisive laughter is permitted when Coach Slobberknocker runs his fullback up the middle on third-and-12). You never refer to the team you're covering as "we". You try to maintain at least a modicum of professionalism, even if you're wearing a Burgville Bugler shirt so old the mustard stains qualify as an exciting archeological find.

Now, I get it. It's all different these days. You've got Blobs and podcasts and fan sites that have so blurred that aforementioned inviolate line you can barely see it anymore. The tribe may still be the tribe, its standards may still be standard, but the barbarians are no longer at the gates. They're inside the damn things, running amok.

So, sure, why not let fans into the inner sanctum of a postgame presser, especially if you can soak the hell out of  'em for the privilege? Why not turn a workplace -- our workplace, dammit -- into just another piece of the Complete Sooner Experience? Everything else is an Event these days, why not this?

I'll tell you why: Because we're not dancing monkeys, here to entertain the paying customers. Because no one sells tickets to open-heart surgery ... or lets Joe Blow From Kokomo, for a nominal fee, drive a backhoe on a construction site ... or gives Buddy Bill From Hooterville (for a nominal fee) a chance to hover over a bomb squad guy while he defuses an IED.

"Gee, Mr. Overreaction," you're saying now. "Little sensitive, aren't you? None of those are the same thing and you know it."

No, they're not. And perhaps I am a bit sensitive. But it's the principle, see.

The only saving grace?

The price tag, of course. What damn fool is going to shell out almost $700 to watch us ask Brent Venables questions? 

Ooh, look, Martha. The guy from the Burgville Bugle just asked Coach if he was a tree, what kind of tree would he be? What a stupid question! And just look at how the Burgville Bugle guy is DRESSED!

Why, I bet that mustard stain is older than Grover Cleveland. Goodness.