The Charlie factor

In the business of sports, I coined the then infamous term of christianizing, the common practice when a reporter, who does his or her job, writes his or her stories, then only to have someone collect from the source, "You got your story, pay up (And no, this is not about DJ Montano, though he must pay up)

Or, during a coverage, when every reporter is supposed to submit a story, somebody goes to the event organizer and collects the payment "so the reporters will write a story."

You've been christianized, I always told them, or in some instances, I or we say, "Na-christianize mi."

There is another term I will introduce. It's CHARLIED, and the honor goes to the president of NOFA.

NOFA, in all it's brilliance and love for football for this country,  is organizing a tournament for the best collegiate teams--you know, the major source of players for the national teams--the same week the national team will be playing.

The PFF is about to get charlied and will be charlied because of Charlie Cojuangco.

And boy, it's all for the love of the game, the charlie is, Pinoysoccer.com reported, “This is the launching tournament of what we envision to become an annual summer event,” Cojuangco, president of the Negros Occidental Football Association, said in a press release. “We hope to provide an avenue for our football community to come together, play, and on the whole, bond,“ he added."

This launching tournament, I bet my left ball, wouldn't be held if Iloilo didn't get Bacolod's job--to host the Asian Challenge Cup.

And I bet my right ball, that this annual tournament won't be here next year, you know, because there are no more Challenge Cup that you can charlie.

Bacolod cried foul because they were left in the dark in the hosting job of the Challenge Cup, since they hosted the SEA Games and the AFF Qualifiers, that meant, they weren't left in the dark then?

So get us out of the dark then and tell us where the P300,000 budget for the media go during the Challenge Cup, which NOFA co-hosted and which, you weren't left out of the dark.

The figure, I got, from Bacolod.

During that Challenge Cup, I got invited to a media party, and they had this paper, knowing all the christianizing in the business, I didn't want to sign anything, much less an attendance sheet.  But having that paper thrusted to me, twice and more, I got to sign it, it was for the raffles they say.

When I got to sign it, I was around No. 25 or higher, which got me to thinking, where were the 24 other reporters during the game (there were at most, six of us).  But the raffle proved  me right,  everybody  won, which showed they didn't need our names since they already have it.  What they needed was our signatures.

All I hope is that I was able to down enough beer to get my share of the P300,000.