Souhan, worst writer ever

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drinks at Northpoint

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Since the games haven't started and there is already a KFAN bashing thread, I thought I would post a Souhan bashing thread. Today's article about Favre was terrible writing. He chose to write it in an imaginary "fly on the wall" type article. It was just amateurish and stupid. Something a teenager would write. I think he wrote the four worst columns I've read in the past year. And I'm not counting his articles bashing Brewster and trying to get attention as the person calling for his head the loudest. The worst articles are (in no particular order):
1. Today's Favre piece.
2. The article with him pretending to talk to a young child about college football rivalries and re-alignment.
3. The trade Delmon Young opinion piece. This was right before Delmon Young tore up the league for 6 weeks.
4. The article saying Xavier Basketball sucked. Followed up by him calling the Xavier coach 'Wimpy McBalderson' and that Pitt's coach would school him in the next round (which of course, didn't happen).
Based on style, content, and opinion, he is the worst writer in the market, the state, the region, possibly the nation.
His style and quality of writing is well below Reusse and Powers. His content is neglible. He never breaks news like Zulgad or even Sid. He never adds anything I hadn't heard from every other talking head or announcer. And his opinions are poor attempts at getting website hits. Trade Delmon? How would that have worked? Xavier Basketball doesn't belong in the tournament? If he were capable of shame, he should have resigned after that episode.
And this doesn't even include all the Gopher FB bashing.
P.S., I can't wait for the games to begin to have something better to talk about.
 

Even those with vague sports knowledge can surmise that Souhan is hack who authors pure drivel. The Delmon piece was utterly laughable.
 

I stopped reading him long ago, and thank you for reminding me why I did. The sad thing is that he got what he wanted, a lot of clicks, and a lot of comments (which will result in more clicks when people go back to see how the others "voted").

The comments are much more entertaining than the content of the article. A quick glance shows about 80% of the comments telling Souhan to quit. I concur.
 

I just realized why these people still remain employed. Their employers are afraid. No, they aren't afraid that the person they fired will go on a rampage, they aren't afraid that this person has fans who will come at them in a mob armed with pitchforks and torches.

They are afraid of paper cuts.

Normally, a paper cut is no big deal. It hurts, but is really just annoying. But thousands of paper cuts could kill. If they fired these people, the resumes from good writers would fly in fast and furiously. If they didn't jump out of the way in time, they could have thousands of paper cuts from the thousands of resumes that would pour in.

Seriously though, there are so many good writers who would jump at the chance to work in a major market. And if people actually got to try reading good writing, where the writer knew his material and cared about it, it would be like trying a good steak after knowing nothing but gas station hot dogs.
 

You are also forgetting about the gem that suggested they should trade Mr. Mauer for a new closer.
 


Unregistered User said:
I stopped reading him long ago, and thank you for reminding me why I did. The sad thing is that he got what he wanted, a lot of clicks, and a lot of comments (which will result in more clicks when people go back to see how the others "voted").

The comments are much more entertaining than the content of the article. A quick glance shows about 80% of the comments telling Souhan to quit. I concur.
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When I first read this, I thought you said he got a lot of chicks. Then I re-read your post and it wasn't as cool.
 

We are not going to get better press until we win more games, especially trophy games. Sorry, but we are not talking about a middle team having a bad season or two now.
 

Gopherhurrin said:
We are not going to get better press until we win more games, especially trophy games. Sorry, but we are not talking about a middle team having a bad season or two now.
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Uh, Gopherhurrin not that you're wrong, you're not, but if you read the original post only one of the items even casually related to Gopher Football. ;)
 

Last April

he said Tubby was as good as gone (to Oregon I believe)
 



He is terrible.

I don't read him. I love how he often sumarizes his articles by throwing a tag line that refers back to nothing. I'm always, wait... did I miss something. And then i spend another five minutes trying to figure out what he's referring to. It's like he has erroneous thoughts that relate to nothing and can't help but throw them in.
 

Souhan is a dolt but he actually has a point about Delmon. While there are no spikes of note in his LD%, BABIP or anything like that the one thing I do notice is a big jump in his O-Contact% over historical averages:

2006 54.0%
2007 51.3%
2008 57.1%
2009 53.8%
2010 74.8%

So he's making contact with a huge percentage of pitches outside of the strike zone over what had been a very consistent historical average, which when combined with the consistency of his other numbers points to this being a statistical outlier. That's not to say he'll go back to being as bad as he was next year, but making contact with almost 75% of pitches outside of the strike zone that you swing at is not sustainable. There's a very good argument to be made for selling high on Young and moving him and his bad defense (among the worst in the majors UZR/150 of -18.6, -22.7 and -11.9 in his three years in left with the Twins) before he hits arbitration.

Based on his historical numbers Delmon is probably about a .750 OPS corner outfielder with woeful defense. He's having a nice year so they can ride out this outlier, but I'd put serious thought into trading him in the off-season for pitching.

The Twins do not employ a statistician though (which is mind-boggling) so that's not going to be their thinking. They'll look at the RBIs and dingers and other dumb stats and ink him to a long term deal he won't live up to.

~ da twins ~
 

Khaliq said:
Souhan is a dolt but he actually has a point about Delmon. While there are no spikes of note in his LD%, BABIP or anything like that the one thing I do notice is a big jump in his O-Contact% over historical averages:

2006 54.0%
2007 51.3%
2008 57.1%
2009 53.8%
2010 74.8%

So he's making contact with a huge percentage of pitches outside of the strike zone over what had been a very consistent historical average, which when combined with the consistency of his other numbers points to this being a statistical outlier. That's not to say he'll go back to being as bad as he was next year, but making contact with almost 75% of pitches outside of the strike zone that you swing at is not sustainable. There's a very good argument to be made for selling high on Young and moving him and his bad defense (among the worst in the majors UZR/150 of -18.6, -22.7 and -11.9 in his three years in left with the Twins) before he hits arbitration.

Based on his historical numbers Delmon is probably about a .750 OPS corner outfielder with woeful defense. He's having a nice year so they can ride out this outlier, but I'd put serious thought into trading him in the off-season for pitching.

The Twins do not employ a statistician though (which is mind-boggling) so that's not going to be their thinking. They'll look at the RBIs and dingers and other dumb stats and ink him to a long term deal he won't live up to.

~ da twins ~
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Maybe you don't understand averages. Delmon is now above average in a variety of categories, a fortiori he will never fall below those averages. It's simple Tennessee math.
 

Iceland12 said:
Uh, Gopherhurrin not that you're wrong, you're not, but if you read the original post only one of the items even casually related to Gopher Football. ;)
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I did not realize I was on the "Off Topic" board, my bad.:confused:
 



Liriano for Beltre

Trade Liriano for Adrian Beltre ranked right up there with that kid who wrote to the editor about 20 years ago with a few suggestions on how the Wolves should package Pooh Richardson, Brad Lohaus, and Scotty Brooks for Magic Johnson.
 

Once again, the quickest way to get rid of writers is to NOT BUY THEIR PAPER/CLICK THEIR ARTICLE LINK.
 

Add to your title thread... and talk show host.

While we're on the topic of local media hacks, I'd like to see a poll taken of the Metro's worst media tools from our Gopher Hole members. And to be fair have one of the most liked too...
 

Another entry in the worst article of all time. Today souhan writes about why McCarthy is a better coach than Lombardi.
I hate myself for reading it. By doing so, I only gave him a reason to make more assinine columns.
 

drinks at Northpoint said:
Another entry in the worst article of all time. Today souhan writes about why McCarthy is a better coach than Lombardi.
I hate myself for reading it. By doing so, I only gave him a reason to make more assinine columns.
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Saw the title of the article and thought "Well, this could be interesting".
Saw the author and thought "No. No, it will not be interesting".
 

It's such transparent attempt to increase web hits, I'm ashamed for reading it.

Heap praise on hated rival....check.
Make preposterous statement in headline.....check.
Stupid attempts at humor.....check.

He hit all his trademarks.
 

Summary of this brilliant column: 'Every coach who in the current era who wins a play-off game is better then Lombardi because the league now is much more tougherer and stuff.'
 

magpie said:
Once again, the quickest way to get rid of writers is to NOT BUY THEIR PAPER/CLICK THEIR ARTICLE LINK.
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The Pioneer Press has had the same three columnists for 20 years? 30 years? Longer than I can remember, at least.

The Star Tribune has had Reusse and Hartman for 30-40-50 years? Barreiro was a columnist for the Strib for 17 years. Souhan's been at the Strib since 1990.

Somebody likes them....which is an indictment of most Minnesotans.
 

At this point I can't remember what the subject was on his very first article. But I do remember reading it and wasn't impress. Still not impress. As a result I never click on his articles, nor do I read his articles if I happen to have a paper as it simply isn't worth my time. I agree, why do employers keep people like these on as they clearly don't bring anything to encourage people to buy their paper?
 


BBQ Platypus said:
Souhan is awful, but the worst sportswriter in the world right now is Rick Reilly. He has clearly stopped trying:

http://sports.espn.go.com/blog/rick...id/787/hey-bartender-i’ll-have-a-michael-vick

And keep in mind, he gets paid $2 million a year.

But yeah, everything else that has been said about Souhan here is absolutely true.
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I agree, and the funny thing is that Reilly is clearly who Souhan is trying to mimic. Hint to potential sports writers out there, if you are going to fashion your style after someone, make it someone good. Reilly is a legend, but his ESPN stint has been hugely disappointing at best.
 

I think there should be a poll so we could vote for who is the worst writer or most hated writer in the metro area. Worst writer and most hated could possibly be two different people though so maybe two polls.
 

ruralgopher said:
I agree, and the funny thing is that Reilly is clearly who Souhan is trying to mimic. Hint to potential sports writers out there, if you are going to fashion your style after someone, make it someone good. Reilly is a legend, but his ESPN stint has been hugely disappointing at best.
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It's pretty sad, actually. Reilly was nothing short of brilliant during his heyday at SI in the late '80s and early '90s. It's a bit trite to use the adjective "brilliant" to describe a sportswriter, but he really was just that. I'm an ESPN mag subscriber, and when I opened and read the first piece he wrote for them, my initial thought was, "What the hell is this garbage?" Somehow, miraculously, he continues to get even worse than he was with that first piece.

I wish I could say the same for Souhan. He is a terrible writer, a terrible sports mind, and from what little I've seen of him on video, seems to be a terrible person. Reusse is a huge prick and lives to get under everyone's skin, but he is a great writer when he wants to be and has forgotten more about pretty much anything than Soupcan ever knew in the first place.
 

Unregistered User said:
Saw the title of the article and thought "Well, this could be interesting".
Saw the author and thought "No. No, it will not be interesting".
Click to expand...

+1000

I'm sure he got a ton of hits from angry puker fans, though.
 

I unfortunately have to admit that I read his article today about the Packer coaching debate. However, I did so knowing exactly what I was going to read, and knowing what I would be taking away from it.

After reading, it can officially be stated that anything Souhan writes, from this point forward (well, honestly, probably going back a little further), is being done simply to have people comment and not truly as an "opinion" piece. His argument in this case is THE most absurd point that a sports journalist could make and definitely loses any and all credibility. To let your "top" sports writer (or one of them) put this article in your paper is incredible. This article is basically stating that the Star Tribune sports section, is more or less, a blog of clueless sports people.

If I was still paying for the hard copy of the Star Tribune, this would be enough for me to stop.
 

Replacement Gopher said:
Trade Liriano for Adrian Beltre ranked right up there with that kid who wrote to the editor about 20 years ago with a few suggestions on how the Wolves should package Pooh Richardson, Brad Lohaus, and Scotty Brooks for Magic Johnson.
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I agree that the proposed Wolves' deal is ludicrous. No way the Wolves make that deal without the Lakers throwing in a draft pick!
 

50PoundHead said:
I agree that the proposed Wolves' deal is ludicrous. No way the Wolves make that deal without the Lakers throwing in a draft pick!
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Depending on exactly when that was proposed, the Lakers probably should have taken the deal. ;)
 

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