The Sports Informant

A co-worker of mine approached me on Tuesday with a smile. “What are you in love with this guy?” he asked, showing me page 23 of the Nov. 7 edition of The Sacramento Union, in which I’ve placed a fairly large photo of Sacramento fighter Urijah Faber to tease a column I’ll be writing for the following week’s issue.

The question was a joke, obviously, but made a good point. We are constantly following Faber, and often he gets more individual “airtime” in our paper than any other athlete.

While I certainly like the guy, this has nothing to do with love. The simple fact is that aside from a Minor League Baseball team, Faber is the only champion we’ve got. And as long as he’s champion, we will continue to follow his every move.

Faber is the Featherweight champion of a major fighting organization (WEC), one on the rise like a launched rocket. In a few years, he’ll be a poster boy not just in Sacramento, but across the nation. It just makes sense to write about him before and after each of his fights. He happens to fight several times a year, so images of him are plastered all over our paper when he does. That’s just good journalism.

Any newspaper should heavily cover a champion in any sport, especially when he/she/it is competing to stay champion. If Sacramento had a boxer with the heavyweight title, we’d be damn sure there’s news about his upcoming fights in our paper. After the fight, wouldn’t people expect to read from us how he did in that fight? If we didn’t deliver the news, what kind of paper would we be?

Let me put it this way. The San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders are terrible, yet something about them is in our paper nearly every week during the entire NFL season. The Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants are the same story. The Sacramento Kings get more coverage than any sports team or individual athlete, yet they haven’t made the playoffs in years and have started this season 0-4. The Sacramento Monarchs won the WNBA title once, now are regarded as a mediocre team, yet even they got consistent coverage from us. Why do we follow such sad stories? Because you want to read them. You care about these local teams, just like you care about local athletes, and so when news comes up about any of them, we strive to be there to cover it.

Anything less would be lazy. And while I my six pack during Faber’s fights more resemble frost brewed than his chiseled abs, I don’t consider myself a lazy person.

Faber fights tonight, live on Versus. Catch if it you can. If you can’t, I’ll let you know what happened. It’s my job.