{"id":275,"date":"2015-02-15T17:53:15","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T22:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/?p=275"},"modified":"2015-02-15T17:55:42","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T22:55:42","slug":"just-like-smith-barney-they-earned-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/2015\/02\/15\/just-like-smith-barney-they-earned-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Like Smith Barney, They “Earned it”"},"content":{"rendered":"

When an athlete joins the media herd it’s almost as if they have two strikes against them even before they start….It’s not uncommon for viewers\/readers to come to the conclusion that the only way the player got the job was because he played the game (and had a recognizable face\/name)…The second is that just because they did<\/em> play the game, they understand it better…Awful Announcing<\/a> has made a living discounting that premise…<\/p>\n

So it was with this in mind that Billy Jaffe<\/a> and Matt Chatham<\/a> visited the B-U sports journalism seminar series recently to shed some light on their life after playing…<\/p>\n

The first thing i have to tell you is that Jaffe brought an energy and approach never seen before in the series, that dates back t0 2005…He commandeered the room immediately and stood for the entire two hours….Not only did that put me on notice but it caught the attention of every student in the room…”Go to the camera, said Jaffe, don’t let it come to you. If you let it come to you, like every thing else in high DEF, you’ll look like &*#%!”…Jaffe didn’t waste any time…<\/p>\n

Both Jaffe and Chatham dealt with being ex-pro athletes when they first started out and had to be careful not to patronize the players they were commenting on…But there’s no doubt having played the game, gave them a perspective the average viewer never has….”Even when i was going after a guy, I thought of all the other plausibilities, said Chatham, \u00a0what other things could be there that are a factor on what made it look like it did.”<\/p>\n

Chatham, of course, sports three Super Bowl rings and played nine seasons in the NFL…A resume that no one questions when he talks about the players and the league…Jaffe never made it to the NHL as a player after a couple of seasons at the University of Michigan but worked his way up slowly to get to where he is now, NESN, the NHL Network and Sportsnet Canada…Nobody handed him anything and he’s acutely aware of his position; “If this is how I was going to make the NHL, this is how I was gonna make it. \u00a0But now I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure i don’t get sent down to the minors.”<\/p>\n

Former players, sure …Pretty faces, up to you to decide…Hard workers, no doubt…These athletes have made the transition the same way they did it in sports, they earned it(with credit to Smith Barney<\/a>)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When an athlete joins the media herd it’s almost as if they have two strikes against them even before they start….It’s not uncommon for viewers\/readers to come to the conclusion that the only way the player got the job was because he played the game (and had a recognizable face\/name)…The second is that just because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}