A week ago, a friend of mine was fired from his jobs … all three of them … on the same day.
What happened to Jerry Sullivan, and why, quickly became a source of regional interest.
Last Monday night, the former Buffalo News sports columnist was a guest on a podcast called “Trainwreck Tonight” and made sexist comments in response to a female listener’s question about critical reporting.
He responded, “The worst fans really are the women. They don’t get critical journalism. They’re all wannabe cheerleaders. It’s always a dangerous avenue to go down to criticize women in general because they’re better than men generally, but they don’t get it as fans.”
The next day, he was fired from his role as contributing columnist for the Niagara Gazette and the Lockport Union Sun & Journal and from Buffalo’s WIVB-TV as an off-air columnist on its website. Trainwreck Sports also condemned his comments.
The two newspapers, in a statement, said, “we do not condone misogynistic, insensitive or derogatory comments in any form.”
FOR HIS part, Sullivan responded, “I’d like to apologize for comments I made on a podcast that were uncalled for and insulting to women. I should be better than that.”
We’ve grown weary of the patently insincere mea culpas from politicos and celebrities after they realize something they did, said or wrote had offended the public. But having known Jerry for 33 years, I don’t question, for a moment, the sincerity of his apology.
But I also can’t defend what he said, it was an incredibly ill-considered rant.
However, four years ago, I did just that.
When he and Bucky Gleason were let go by the Buffalo News — according to them mostly due to their negativity — I wrote a column in their defense. You never saw … it didn’t run. My superiors at the Times Herald correctly pointed out that I was too far out over my skis criticizing management from a competing newspaper on a personnel issue. They were right, of course. I wasn’t mad, contenting myself with sending Jerry and Bucky, a former TH staffer, a copy of the piece and enjoying the relief one feels after writing an angry letter that doesn’t get sent.
WHAT’S INTERESTING to me is that Jerry’s experience is totally opposite from my own.
I’ve been writing columns for 50 years, and when it comes to those on the Bills and Bonnies, it’s been done with women in mind.
There’s this perception that guys “know all about sports.” Naturally, that’s not true, but those who don’t are disinclined to admit it.
In my mind, the biggest service I could provide female readers is to debunk jargon. My policy is to avoid phrases like “bubble screen,” “zone blitz” and “two-deep safety” or risk losing them. If jargon appears in a quote, I add a parenthetical aside explaining its meaning.
What’s never happened is a woman chiding me for being critical.
Some don’t understand why I would criticize a team that I’m covering, even though it’s part of the job. Instead, out of sheer loyalty, they state their positions and try to change my mind. It’s never confrontational.
Men, on the other hand, in my experience, have no such restraint.
Friends will come up to me on the street and demand to know why I’m “so negative about the Bills.”
One reader, almost weekly, offers that contention via email and has concluded that secretly I’m “a Steelers fan.”
The idea of a columnist offering a critique of the beat — good or bad — is an alien concept to them.
To be sure, Jerry would be the first to admit his current unwanted foray into the media spotlight was totally self-inflicted.
What’s odd is, since this has happened, there are those who maintain Sullivan never would have been in this spot if he had started his mini-rant with “The worst fans really are the men” nobody would have blinked.
And, in my view, he would have been exactly right.
(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
