WHITT'S END: 11.7.13

      Whether you're at the end of your coffee, your day, your week or even your rope, welcome to Whitt's End:

   *Heart-breaking news about one of my all-time favorite Cowboys. Tony Dorsett played 11 years for Dallas in a career that landed him in the Ring of Honor and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. These days the 60-year-old Dorsett carries not a football, but the burden of a degenerative brain disease found in more than 50 deceased former NFL players. It's the concussion syndrome, the baseline of the recently settled lawsuit between the league and former players and the reason for all the rules changes aimed at making football more safe and less violent. "My quality of life deteriorates every day," Dorsett says. He suffers from disorientation, depression and even thoughts of suicide. Next time you start to scream "Put a skirt on 'em!" or start yapping about the "Wussification of America", consider what a decade of helmet-to-helmet collisions has done to Tony Dorsett.

   *I'm hearing that the injury that kept Dez Bryant out of practice Wednesday is more serious than a "balky back." That in and of itself would be a concern. Elite athletes who just turned 25 shouldn't have balky backs. But there are whispers at Valley Ranch of ominous words like "bulging disc" and even "traction." Dez will play Sunday night in New Orleans, but this isn't one of those temporary spasms that flares up and goes away quietly.

   *Josh Brent retired from the Cowboys. But apparently he still works for the Cowboys. Guy who works at the team's merchandise warehouse off Highway 114 in Irving swears to me that Brent works alongside him. Critics of Jerry Jones had a problem with the owner employing Brent as a player. But what about as a warehouse worker?

   *I'm all for sending messages and the Mavs have to beat the Thunder before we're all convinced that they're legit. But I'm not sure the messenger should be Vince Carter, the message should be a flagrant elbow and the messagee recipient should be somebody named Steve Adams.

   *This happened last night at Blue Martini in Plano: A guy (shorter and skinnier than me and wearing a sleeveless puffy Parka) walks up to Sybil and begins flirting. With me within earshot and within 30 seconds he boasts that he plays "professional hockey" for "Dallas, you know, the Stars." Oh wow, Sybil says, asking his name. "Trevor ... Trevor Drkvozakdiadyivasm," the guy mumbles. I'm familiar with Trevor Daley and I think this year they had a 6-foot, 200-pounder named Trevor Ludwig, but no way this dude is either. For the sake of entertainment I let the guy go weaving his web of lies and cheesy pick-up attempt. Later a buddy and me quiz Trevor Drkvozakdiadyivasm a little more. "Weird that you guys played in Boston last night and flew home before going back to Detroit tomorrow night." Trevor: "Yeah ... what?" Just for fun, dug around the minor-league Texas Stars and, nope, no Trevor. Also, no player listed at 5-6, 145 pounds. But good luck to you "Trevor." Keep casting worms in the water. Sooner or later you'll get a bite.

   *Wait, Richie Incognito was considered an "honorary black man" by his teammates? So on the dysfunctional Dolphins a white dude is black but the half-black player (Jonathan Martin) is white? Got it? Martin, by the way, is considered "soft" by some black teammates because he is Stanford educated and the son of wealthy parents. America salivates for some black vs. white controversy along racial lines. But I don't think it's clear who roots for whom. Either way, while Incognito being an "honorary black man" is perceived as a compliment, I don't know many black dudes who desire to be an "honorary white man."

   *Hot.

   *Not.

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   *Don't understand all the whining over the uniforms Northwestern will wear Nov. 16 against Michigan. The look includes a distressed American flag critics say looks like splattered blood. But, um, aren't they honoring our Wounded Warriors?

   *Unless you have a farm of Daffodils in your back yard, the issue of a "frost warning" is the biggest weather over-hype of all. I'm guessing that less than 1% of folks who are warned about an impending frost actually lift a finger to do anything about it.

   *Okay, Blockbuster, now what am I supposed to do with these two videos I've had for a year. I mean, I was gonna return them today but ...

   *Dead 'n Gone: The Houston Astrodome. Hard to fathom now, but there'll come a day when AT&T Stadium will be old and cramped and outdated and dilapidated and, yep, torn down for something shiny and new that costs upwards of $5 billion to build.

   *Gotta give it to Toronto mayor Rod Ford. Dude has some big balls. In the wake of a video showing him using crack cocaine, he explains it away by adding that it merely occurred as part of a "drunken stupor." That's like admitting to your wife that you kissed her sister, but it's no big deal because it happened during a threesome with her mom. Shockingly, the guy won't resign. And somehow his approval rating has increased during the scandal.

   *Tired of hearing me carnival barking for Pizza Buzz? Fine. Let's let others do it for me today. Take it away, Dallas Morning News and Dallas Observer and Channel 8. Thanks for the support.

   *Today? Lunching with my ol' pal Bob Lovell of Home Marketing Services, then considering attending the grand opening of the new Top Golf in The Colony for a little driving range and dinner weaved around Baylor-OU. Don't be a stranger.

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Reminder That You Read It Here First: Cowboys HQ to Frisco; AT&T Cowboys Stadium. Got It?

   Okay media, this is the carpet.
   And this morning you're being called onto it.
   Why? Because you know better. And you know you know better.
   Some will call this blog item "sour grapes" and others will belittle me as a pathetic whiner "tooting my own horn." Fine. Whatever. I categorize it as an emergency, necessary evil, because somewhere along the road to accountability and fairness we've forgotten the Journalism 101 ethics I began learning as a writer on Duncanville High School's Panther Prints newspaper in 1980.
   In the media game sometimes you break a story, and sometimes your competitor breaks one right over your head. Sometimes you nail it, you get the information right and you get it first. Other times you - ahem - get it first (Dez Bryant has a major finger injury ...) but only part of it right (that will land him on injured reserve.)
   Writing/radioing/TVing professionally in this market for 27 years, I've won both awards and goat horns. Like sports - and life - during the wins and losses journalism is supposed to teach us to be accountable. Do the best you can, deal with the results and try harder the next day. Right?
   But these days I'm embarrassed to say sports media has deteriorated into the despicable chap who cheats at golf.

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   When he stripes it down the middle he boastfully high-fives everyone on the course. And when he hits it behind the tree, he simply executes a foot wedge as if no one will ever see ... or call him out.
   It's bullshit. And it's wrong.
   I'm not going to pinpoint individuals because, personally, I respect and get along with most everyone on the local media landscape. But I will criticize media organizations, because I think the erosion of our morals starts at the top.

   In the past week I've posted news-making items on my lil' plot of the Internet regarding the Cowboys' impending move of their headquarters from Valley Ranch to Frisco, and their imminent naming-rights partnership with AT&T.
   Ground-breaking, Earth-shattering stuff? Naw. But in a market salivating for Cowboys' flavor while also being saturated with countless media digging for partial scoops of minuscule nuggets, it's a couple of tiny feathers in my small, fledgling cap.
   How do you know it's breaking news? Because if I wouldn't have written the Cowboys/AT&T story, you still wouldn't know about it. The first domino is always the most important, right?
   But not a word of credit. Or acknowledgment. On either item. From anyone in this town.
   ESPN is the worldwide leader in this sorry strategy, citing only generic "media reports" when it gets beat on a story. And the sick runs downhill from Bristol, winding up on ESPNDallas.com, where at 9 last night - more than 12 hours after my post - the site produced a piggy-back Cowboys/AT&T story citing "three sources" but never mentioning the genesis of the news.
   Just a simple tip o' the cap - "as first reported on DFWSportatorium.com." That's all it takes. Simple. Ethical.
    Similarly, Dallas' Only Daily posted a Cowboys/AT&T story Monday afternoon with nary a mention of the origin of the information. Worse, actually, the Morning News lazily and erroneously credited the scoop to 105.3 The Fan. Organizations from Sports Illustrated to D Magazine (you guys really should know better) and even a blog called The Landry Hat each mistakenly credited Fox Sports Southwest with "breaking" the looming partnership news, even though FSSW's story posted a good 80 minutes after DFWSportatorium's.
   And, what do ya know, this morning Dallas' Only Daily has an update - citing its "sources" - on the team moving its headquarters to Frisco.
   Slimy.

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   But it's not just me. I'm sure photographers feel the same about their pictures. And sales people the same about their cultivated leads and restaurants the same about their menus and ingredients. Any reporter that publishes exclusive information should be - at least temporarily - the king of the hill, not some poor sap raped of his handiwork and smothered and forgotten at the bottom of the media dog pile. To distinguish organizations from another, there is original, unique content that isn't supposed to be shared and distributed via Co-op like a final score or press-conference quotes.

   Like it or not, journalism needs to find an acceptable working margin somewhere between "stealing shit as your own" and "providing so many footnotes that you deteriorate your product into a bogged-down bibliography."
   Look, maybe none of this matters to you. The 24-hour news cycle has been tossed in our ADD, multi-tasking spin cycle and reduced to a 24-second shot clock of relevance. But to the media - from the largest corporation to the smallest blog - information, analysis and creative content remains our product. Delivering news first and accurate is what we're paid to do, or at least how we attract customers to spend money with us and/or our advertisers.
   These days I'm a one-man operation, with my time also being consumed by opening Pizza Buzz. Way more times than not I'll be the nail. But on these occasions when I am indeed the hammer, I still expect it the media to respect the fact that the noise came from somewhere other than their own workshop.
   Is that too much to ask?

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