COLUMN: WIDE OPEN; Sports writers can make a difference too

"You sound quite smart," Helen Davies, associate dean of the Penn medical school asked when I interviewed her for a story earlier this year. "What are you doing writing sports?" While she said it somewhat facetiously, it sounded like a back-handed compliment, so I asked her what she meant by it. "Take it the way your mother would want you to," she responded. My mother would agree with her. What are you doing writing sports? For if sports are just a bunch of men playing little boys' games, then sports writers are a bunch of men writing about men playing little boys' games. And that sounds pretty pathetic. At the time, back in September, I brushed Professor Davies' question to the back closet of my mind. But now I cannot avoid it. I guess it was the question in a recent job interview, "So what have you contributed in your four years at Penn," that forced me to stare her question down. For if I do want to be a sports writer when I grow up, then I want to feel like I am contributing something, to somebody, somewhere. I want to know what I am doing writing sports. I realize sports writers are not supposed to write this kind of thing. We are the neanderthals of the newspaper. We are supposed to go out and get quotes like, "We are going to take it one game at a time," and weave these quotes around a game score. And for columns we can worship the basketball team or question Fran Dunphy's latest move. It is definitely bad form to ramble on hoping to find ourselves, for as Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight once told a player, "Son, you might not like what you are going to find." I guess I should have asked myself these questions earlier, like the time I saw one of my articles floating in a toilet in Steinberg-Dietrich. If there is ever a time to question your work, it is when you see it swimming in a toilet bowl. But by nature, I am a procrastinator. And my guess is that many seniors, so close to the finish line, are finally starting to question how we have run the race. My guess is also that most of us came to West Philadelphia thinking we would leave our mark on Penn, only to realize four years later Penn has left its mark on us. So I question what I could have done with all the time I have spent staring at this screen and writing about sports. And whether I should spend more time doing it next year. The usual response is sure, go for it, it sounds like fun. What a job. You get to rub elbows with athletes and travel and get free food and get free tickets to games. Then you realize most of the athletes would rather rub their elbows in your left eye. And who can really blame them. Here you are, a guy who can't toss a sopping wet paper towel into a garbage can three feet away, and yet you have the nerve to ask them why they missed that clutch free throw. As for the travel, one writer for the Philadelphia Daily News claims he can name the mall in any major city in the country. Yet even knowing all this, there is still an amazing adrenaline rush in seeing something you wrote in the paper the very next day. Instant gratification. And maybe, if all your hard writing makes for easy reading, instant literature. And there is an even better feeling in knowing that maybe you told somebody's story, and really nailed it -- really understood them. Maybe, that is a good enough reason. Maybe it is not. But let me at least contribute this to the senior class: For whatever job you choose, try to answer Professor Davies' question, "You sound quite smart. What are you doing??" Adam Steinmetz is a Wharton senior from West Palm Beach, Fla., and a sports writer for The Daily Pennsylvanian. Wide Open appears alternate Tuesdays.