Column

Open any sports section of the Albuquerque Journal, and on that front page, almost always, you will find a headline on Lobo football or basketball.

Turn a few more pages, and you will find a "quick hit" on UNM volleyball, skiing, softball, tennis or a rare track blurb.

So here's my chicken or egg question: Does the media not cover what they've created to be "secondary" sports because people don't care about them, or do people not care about these sports because the media doesn't cover them?

To back off from the Journal, each form of major medium is guilty, from broadcast to the Internet to print. The trend is throughout, but why?

Could it be the sports programs' successes? With few exceptions in Loboland, the answer is no.

UNM football reeks of mediocrity, at best, and until Steve Alford's arrival last year, men's basketball reeked even worse. In 2006, men's basketball went 15-17 overall and an even more embarrassing 4-12 in conference while football posted a 6-7 record capped with a loss of our own made-for-UNM New Mexico Bowl. In 2007, the team finally managed to win its own bowl game and scraped by through an easy schedule with a 9-4 record, numbers that fired other coaches across the country in programs that have higher expectations.

Speaking of programs with higher expectations and programs that undeniably produce better results, how about the University men's soccer team or the ski team?

Well sure, soccer competed in the national championship in 2005 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament in 2007 for the sixth time in the last seven seasons.

And hey, the ski team is the only team at UNM to ever win a national championship, and they've finished in the top 10 at the NCAA Skiing Championships for the past nine years.

So apparently success is worth a two-inch blurb, while defeat and inadequacy shine in the spotlight like a nasty zit on the tip of a nose.

Every football game day, the Journal produces at least a four-page layout previewing the game that lists the depth chart and features a standout Lobo player. Yet it took track star Katie Coronado placing second at the NCAA Championships for the Journal to run a feature about her. If the football team reached the second rank in the nation, the paper would probably print the story on golden paper with the headline written in diamonds.

An alternative and equally futile excuse as to why media practically ignore sports other than football and basketball is popularity and attendance.

First of all, the numbers announced at games stating the total attendance are misleading. Just because 28,000 tickets were sold to the game in no way means 28,000 people attended the game. I've seen 28,000-people crowds that looked a lot more like 7,000, especially as fans leave pathetic games early and losses stack up.

And popularity is itself determined by what the media air. During the Olympics, more people tuned in to watch Michael Phelps' swimming extravaganza than the men's basketball gold medal game. But do you see any of Phelps' other meets aired? Of course not. Event awareness is determined by the media, so guess what is published in the paper or previewed on TV before a soccer, tennis, track, volleyball or skiing event?

Not much.

The chicken had to lay the egg, but the egg had to hatch before there could be a chicken. Take your pick, but I say people don't know much and hence don't care much about "secondary" sports simply because the media make these sports practically invisible and inaccessible.