Can sports media really change the way you look at sports?

Tracking baseball and softball games has gotten so much easier. Yes, the app GameChanger certainly lives up to its name. And I'm beyond grateful for teams who use it and update it live, just as I'm thankful for coaches in any sport who reach out to me by text or email about their games. But while the stats are helpful, very rarely do numbers tell the full story. Oftentimes, most of these same coaches reach out to our Six Rivers Media sports staff about something going on with the team or in an individual's life. Being able to tell stories from those angles adds a special significance to whenever a student-athlete scores the winning goal or hits a walk-off home run. A prime example of sports media changing the way we look at sports is ESPN's 30-for-30 series. Those documentaries started coming out my senior year in high school, and I stayed hooked on them through my college years while pursuing my degree in communications. One of the early ones I saw was simply called "The U" — a documentary about the rise of the Miami Hurricanes football team in the 1980s. Their swagger made a lot of people uncomfortable, but those same people hating on Miami had no idea what the players and the program had endured to get to that point. "The U" provided insight like I hadn't seen before, largely because I'd only seen Hurricane highlights from the 1980s, as I wasn't born until 1991 — the year Miami won its fourth national title in nine years. One other 30-for-30 stands out in my mind, and it came out not long before I graduated UT-Knoxville. The name of it … "I Hate Christian Laettner." Apologies to any North Carolina or Kentucky fans who have not-so-fond memories of Duke's all-time greatest villain on the basketball court. Laettner, of course, led the Blue Devils to their first two national championships in 1991 and 1992, with yours truly entering this world between those two titles. There's one game from that era most everyone remembers — the 1992 Elite Eight game against Kentucky. It was a perfect night for Laettner … literally. He shot 10-of-10 from the field and 10-of-10 at the foul line to end with 31 points. But there are two moments fans remember, the first coming when he may or may not have deliberately stepped on Aminu Timberlake's chest in the second half. Laettner did receive a technical foul but wasn't ejected like Kentucky faithful felt he deserved. As a result, Laettner stayed in the game and hit arguably college basketball's most iconic shot — the turnaround jumper at the horn as Duke won in overtime 104-103. Whether Laettner or Villanova's Kris Jenkins now owns the most iconic shot in college hoops depends on who you ask. Jenkins' 3-pointer at the horn lifted Villanova over North Carolina 77-74 in the 2016 national championship game. The documentary focused largely on why Laettner received the level of hate he did from non-Duke fans, as well as sports hate in general. Granted, social media didn't exist yet, so imagine the hate he'd receive now. As a kid, I admit I almost always fell for the rage bait. My favorite team's athletes could do no wrong. The other team's athletes were classless. Or at least that's what I perceived. But as the documentary says, perception isn't always reality. The decade-plus I've spent in sports journalism has further verified that to be true. Now that I see things objectively and not as a fan, I'm able to see that oftentimes, about the only difference between student-athletes on the court or the field is the color of their team jerseys. Otherwise, there's so much more that unites the athletes and coaches than divides them. And in this day and age, we could all use a little unity, couldn't we? J.D. Vaughn is the sports editor for Six Rivers Media. He can be reached at jvaughn@sixriversmedia.com.