Goodman On Fox: Hacking On The Kentucky Wildcats Is His Job

Sometimes there are people out there who, without even trying, can be a giant pain in the posterior. And sometimes there are people out there who can be that same pain just “trying to do their job”. I find Jeff Goodman to be the latter……………..with a twist. John Mellencamp did a song a few years ago called “Scarecrow”. In the story of the song, an auctioneer who was called in to sell off a family farm at foreclosure tells Mellencamp “John, it’s just my job, and I hope you understand”. Mellencamp’s response in the song was classic, because it not only spoke to the heart of the matter, it spoke to the use of the excuse “it’s just my job”. Mellencamp’s response was “Hey calling it your job ol hoss, still don’t make it right, but if you want me to i’ll say a prayer for your soul tonight”

Now, I am not calling out Jeff Goodman for what could be referred to as nothing more than “doing his job”, no, far be it from me to make fun of a guy for working hard to earn a buck. However, Goodman is doing far more and he knows it. During his interview with Kentucky Sports Radio’s Matt Jones, Goodman claimed he is not worried about “hits”, or how many people read his stuff, he just does what he does because it is his work. I find that answer not only disingenuous, but completely self-serving and juvenile. Not because it is just untrue, but because it is wholeheartedly misleading. And Goodman thinks that he is talking to the pre-school class that my daughter attended when she was four, if he thinks that the fans don’t know any better. You see, Jeff Goodman gets paid to rile up folks like us, who love our teams, and the young men who play for them. He calls that “news”. I call it keeping the folks who read your columns and go to the sites time and time again, which in turn increases traffic to the site, which in turn increases the rates that the site can charge for advertisers fighting with you online and commenting, and keeping up the back and forth, and I guess that is just “doing your job”, Mr. Goodman. So in the interests of completely truthful disclosure, I am going to talk about something that no one likes to discuss about this wonderful world wide web of ours. It too, can be all about the money, so to speak. Even here at Wildcat Blue Nation, we are hoping to increase our traffic to attract new advertisers who will pay us more to be on here, so we too are looking to “get hits”. Yes, we do this because it is fun, and our egos get stroked from time to time with a link from the guys who really drive the traffic, but make no mistake, we want to get our site traffic higher and higher, if for no other reason than it prevents us from becoming a “pay for play” site. But I am not going to try to disguise that, or hide it, because you folks are smarter than that, even if Goodman does not think so.

Keep in mind that although it is a job for Goodman, he would not have a job if no one read his stories. And not to blow my own horn, but I can get most of the stuff that Goodman writes from a one word Google search every day. Of course, if I pulled a stunt like Goodman pulled the other day at the Final Four, I would expect that most of, if not all of you would come crashing down on my head like a ton of bricks. And I also know that by writing a story about Jeff Goodman writing a story like the one he did will generate “hits” for the site. It is a fact. So why try to avoid it?

And for you Mr. Goodman I have this point. This is not a lecture in ethics or morality, because frankly, you are much too far along in your career for that. The time to learn ethics and morals is when your are in your formative years, say from 5-20 years of age. That is the time someone should have pointed out to you that as it is written in Ecclesiastes, “For everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven”. That’s one of those things you learn in Kentucky when you are young, unless you are too self-righteous or high-minded to be taught manners. You see, I don’t mind someone “telling it like it is” when a story needs telling. But to put something out that neither adds nor enhances the event is what I was taught to call sensationalism in my high school English classes. Of course, I am no journalist, so I can’t use the excuse that “it’s just my job”. No, I am just trying to get hits.

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