I love sports.  I read whatever sportswriting is available voraciously. I even read about sports that I don't follow very closely, so I can have a general knowledge of what's happening in that sport.  I know there are millions of fans just like me who love to read whatever information they can get about sports. That is where the internet has been a blessing and a curse.  Although we are blessed with many gifted writers - and recieve overwhelming access to every move teams and athletes make, we are also cursed with a plethora of awful writers who seem to just throw a few snippets of information, their generalized opinion (rarely based on actual facts), and what they feel are a couple of funny one liners - and present that pablum as an article.  As we Jaguar fans know, we have been the victim of "lazy journalism" more than a few times.  Well, with the release of the 2011 schedule, here is the latest, from Jason Cole of Yahoo Sports:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_ylt=AtWCTG7XrqOa_C67NzaiDThDubYF?slug=jc-cole_best_worst_games_2011_041911

Now, it's not the worst thing that's ever been said about our team, but it's annoying nontheless. The 2 insults that stick in my proverbial craw are these: 

#1 - "Jaguars will be competitive, but dull". Huh?  Why are we going to be "dull"?  If Cole feels we will be competitive, what's "dull" about that?  Is winning "dull"? 

#2 - "this game could set a record for most empty seats at a game ever purported to be sold out". Oh, I get it - we had NO BLACKOUTS last season, so since you can't make fun of that, you go with "purported " sell out.  "Purported" by whom?  The Jaguars never once used the term "sellout".  In fact, each and every email I got from the Jags and Team Teal stressed that, even though we had avoided the blackout, many seats were still available.  Maybe if Cole actually looked into these things, he would realize the transparency of ticket sales the Jaguars have stressed the last several years.

Again, I know in the big scheme of things this isn't that huge a deal, but it drives me up a wall when I am reading NFL news and come across a pointless insult that is made for the sake of filling a writer's word minimum.  Maybe with our several primetime games this season we will have loud, intense fans creating sellouts, and Jason Cole can write about the rabid fan base here in Jacksonville, but I wouldn't hold my breath.