The Beast Doesn’t Need to Speak

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It is easy for the guy on the top of the pyramid to demand that the ones at the bottom do their jobs. To him, it is irrelevant that his job is actually to carry a football and get the snot beat out of him. That the “other duties as assigned” include ridiculous press conferences full of inane questions about pregame routines and how it felt to carry the football that one time or what was “going through his mind” when he stretched the football over the goal line. You know, the kind of hard-hitting journalism that truly transforms the world.

From where Roger Goodell sits, it is quite easy to call Marshawn Lynch a baby who needs to do his job. And it is also true that Lynch does seek attention. As it also appears that he had an easier time in front of the camera when he was younger.

Can it also be true that Marshawn Lynch just doesn’t want to be interviewed? That he actually looks pained when he has to answer these insipid questions? Is it possible that he’s tired of it?

It reminds me an awful lot of Ricky Williams, whose own emotional state was rich fodder for the media to obsess over. Both are supreme rushing talents who would certainly have much longer lasting legacies if they had a different temperament: if they were more like Walter Payton or Emmitt Smith.

What an obnoxious and evil thought. That success requires a personality transplant. And that we would demand it. That kind of evil thinking is on us.

Instead of showing concern for these men and their tortured relationship with the media, we speculate, we berate, and we call them babies. As if their primary job were to give these stupid interviews.

If we really believed that these interviews were so important, wouldn’t we expect more of the interviewer? Wouldn’t we spare no expense to get it right? Wouldn’t we expect more insightful questions than “what was going through your mind when” and “how does it feel”? We’d treat them like the negotiation of a cease-fire or a demonstration involving leaders from all over the world. These interviews are a niche interest pieces at best or an irrelevant waste at worst.

This is why the cajoling and the fining and the vindictiveness of forcing a grown man to do what he doesn’t want to do when it is the least valuable part of his job is so maddening. Because it isn’t really important, but it is clearly painful for the player. There is literally nothing gained by this. Particularly if it drives him nuts and it impacts the very thing he is supposed to be doing. Nothing gained, only something lost.

So this exercise is intellectually ridiculous. But what would we think if it is emotionally damaging?

Would we feel the same way about this if the player (in this case, Marshawn Lynch) has an anxiety disorder? Or has a high level of introversion that makes it impossible to just go through the motions? Would we feel the same way if every interview and every inane question was causing trauma to the player? Would we be so callous and glib? Would an SNL skit seem appropriate then? Would we accept the shortening effect the interviews have on some players’ careers?

Watching the video after their conference win two weeks ago was painful for me! Lynch seemed miserable. The reporters asking ridiculous questions, some earnestly trying to get him to say anything at all, the rest knowing the futility of the exercise, sound frustrated and angry.

So why? Why does the commissioner expect this? Why do the reporters even bother? Why do we watch? Why are we putting everyone through this? Is it worth it?

Photo Credit:  Music for Deep Meditation  via Facebook
Photo Credit: Music for Deep Meditation via Facebook

Enough already.

 

 

It should also be noted that the politics of sports is about as disturbing as anything else. The post-Super Bowl conspiracy would sound as ridiculous as any other. But the telling statement comes in the last paragraph of this good piece about an otherwise silly suggestion:

Some mitigating factors in Carroll’s corner: Marshawn Lynch is a beast mode of awesomeness, but was actually one for five on the season when rushing from the one-yard line. In other words, it was not automatic play to see Lynch to score the touchdown. If he fails, the Hawks have to burn that last time out and probably then have to pass it anyway. Factor in that Pete Carroll may have been thinking about a somewhat similar scenario when, coaching at USC in 2006 for a national championship, he ran the ball and failed. Given that Carroll himself was basically in a state of post-traumatic stress after the game and didn’t really explain much of anything, it may be a long time before we ever know what he was thinking.

To me, and the idea that the world was expecting a run, which usually makes passing at least worth considering, just further gives credibility to the challenge of what these people are trying to do. And a big part of that is deal with the jackassery of the people watching them hurdle their bodies at one another.