The Knuckles: Super Bowl Media Edition
(Disclaimer: I am a member of the sporting media. This edition of The Knuckles is not directed at the entire sporting media or every single member of the sporting media covering the Super Bowl.)
BRONZE, SILVER and GOLD: The Sporting Media — The biggest week of the year for the sporting media is also the worst week of the year for the sporting media and oh boy do we have some serious contestants to nominate for this week’s edition of The Knuckles.
It is here, at the Super Bowl, when the folks lucky enough to have worked themselves into a position to be paid to attend and report on such an amazing event, take every opportunity they can to remind the rest of the world how important and valuable they are.
Cross them, and your name is mud. Don’t feel like spouting the same tired cliches and platitudes for the 457th time in an hour? They will DESTROY you. How dare anyone not want to do a reporter’s job for him or her?
The thing is, when there are this many folks in one spot to cover an event and the amount of time to kill before that event goes down, there are bound to be knuckleheads. And with Deflategate and Marshawn Lynch’s press conference habits on the docket you can bet that the hotter the take, the bigger the knucklehead.
We’ve been inundated with fiery Deflategate takes in these parts for days and days and days at this point and even though there are still a truckload, some of the best have been distilled for you right here. So let’s narrow our focus down to those who hate Marshawn for no reason other than the fact that he won’t tell them he’s thrilled to be here or that both teams played hard or that this is a big game that will be a challenge or some other such nonsense that does nothing for anyone except take up seven seconds on a recording device.
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Let’s start with Ed Sherman, a sports media critic so offended by Marshawn’s indifference to talking that he believes all sports media should be angry enough to boycott Skittles, the candy Lynch loves and is paid to endorse. Scorching.
Next, we have the New York Post’s Bart Hubbuch, who thinks Marshawn is speaking a different language when he says “you know why I’m here,’’ or “I’m here so I won’t get fined,’’ and sets a new standard for self-righteousness in his reaction to Marshawn’s behavior toward media in the locker room.
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Wow, once I regain my sight from being temporarily blinded by the white heat of this take from ol’ Bart, I think that’s something I’d like to see. Marshawn sounds pretty cool.
Last but not least, there’s Brian Murphy, a Minnesota Vikings reporter from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who believes that he, not hard work, talent, athleticism or ability is why Marshawn is a superstar NFL running back on the cusp of winning his second championship.
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And people think Bill Belichick is arrogant. In an ocean of folks who lack basic self-awareness, Brian may be the best swimmer. It’s bad enough that he thinks he’s the reason NFL players are who and where they are, it’s worse that he feels that so strongly that he’s willing to show the world his hindquarters by saying/tweeting it out loud.
All this and we haven’t even gotten to the bandwidth wasted on what a mockery Marshawn made of Media Day. That’s right, he was the problem with an event featuring people in superhero costumes, wedding dresses and wearing giant barrels traipsing around. So what’s really going on here? Why the self-importance? What’s at the root of these fiery takes anyway?
Seems as though there are two possible answers. The first is that people like Brian and Bart and Ed are so secure in their self-importance that they actually believe Marshawn not offering up reheated, boilerplate banality is a real affront to their livelihoods. The second is that they have calculated no matter how much of an ass they publicly make of themselves, it’s a small price to pay in exchange for the exposure they will get from it. A perfect example of this is Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel, who actually went on Dennis & Callahan and compared the Patriots and Deflategate to the 1919 Black Sox.
Or it’s a combination of both. At the end of the day, Marshawn owes the media nothing. If he doesn’t want to talk or have anything to say, so be it. There are some media members who realize this and act accordingly. But sadly, there are plenty more who keep going back, time after time, thinking they’re on some sort of crusade, martyring themselves at the stake of jounalistic integrity when it reality, all they’re really doing is making rational, critical thinkers believe they’re a bunch of knuckleheads.
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