"QUESTION NUMBER ONE!!!"

There's been a little chatter about the infamous "sports checks" at SJI. Let's talk about them for a second.

Sports check is basically a current events quiz about sports news and other trivia that takes place whenever Greg Lee and Leon Carter feel like shouting "SPORTS CHECK" or raining punishment on us for being too smart for our own good. Sometimes, we know when the quiz is going to be (every morning after or during breakfast), but sometimes, the quiz is to knock us down a peg and show us we aren't as clever as we think we are. Sometimes even when we are prepared, we discover we aren't as clever as we think we are.

However ...

The thing I've noticed as time goes on is that we are all prepared for a sports check at anytime. Sometimes Leon yells, "QUESTION NUMBER ONE" just to throw us off, but everyone moves for their notepad and a pen. We treat most of Leon's threats seriously, at least for a minute.

And the preparation is the most important thing. We've all been watching ESPN at night and in the morning. We read the St. Petersburg Times and typically either USA Today or the New York Times sports sections. We know scores and stats, records and rankings, names and numbers. We may not know every answer, but just about everyone is ready for the softballs.

And our sessions and this preparation has kept us sharper and more observant of the industry. The other day, I read an ESPN.com story about Randy Moss firing a new agent and saying he was available for the taking. Normally, this would have passed by my mind. However, this time I notice it was attributed to a Boston Herald story.

I went to the Herald story and noticed Moss had called the reporter directly (not the other way around), signifying a good relationship with the source. I went to the Boston.com story, and to Greg's eternal chagrin, found no mention of Moss' quotes from the interview.

I'm not trying to make judgements on the journalists involved (note the lack of names), but I noticed that someone had inside access to an athlete that the competition did not. This is something that happens everyday in a variety of publications, but it's something I would have never have noticed if SJI had not forced me to:

a) read these sources

b) be aware of who breaks news

c) be aware of the information competing stories provide (or miss)

d) be aware of how reporters break news

I definitely acknowledge that SJI sports checks, irritating though they can be, have been one of the most helpful tools we've had in our quest to become better informed journalists. Information is indeed what the business is about, whether it's knowing inside information on a story or knowing what you have to do to keep up or beat your competition. And we have to be constantly vigilant, because we won't know when we'll need to be able to keep our wits about us.

Sorry Greg. But thanks for the checks.