Small Talk

There are certain beliefs about modern sports media that I try not to trade in. Bias for or against certain teams/athletes, for one. I've come to realize that about 98 percent of those complaints are just fans being myopic, like fans tend to do. There's also the idea that media always creates stories and/or demand for stories, which I've always believed is overblown, even if it does look like it happens on occasion. As inane as the Patriots' ball scandal is (I refuse to call it "Deflategate" because Watergate wasn't about water), I think people are genuinely interested in what happened and how it's going to play out.

But when it comes to Marshawn Lynch, I'm making an exception.

To recap (on the off chance that you haven't heard enough about this already): Lynch has been... reluctant... to talk to reporters after games. He's been at it for at least the last two years now, and he was fined $100,000 after not speaking to reporters after the Seahawks-Chiefs game in November. Yet he hasn't changed his stance. He doesn't like doing postgame interviews because he finds them boring and doesn't really like talking about himself.

At this point, these guys (and they're almost always exclusively national guys) have to know, right? The man said at Super Bowl Media Day that he was going to give the same answer to every question. He even told the reporters what the answer was going to be! And he did the same thing again yesterday! Yet they keep going back to him, somehow thinking, "Today's gonna be the day! I can FEEL it!" knowing full well that today will not, in fact, be that day. They have no one to blame but themselves.

Look, I'm not saying that Lynch is some kind of hero for standing up to the big, bad media conglomerate by shutting up and not giving them what they want. And I'm well aware that by not addressing the media, he's breaking a clause in the NFL contract and is subject to a fine. I know it's against the rules. But it's a bad rule that has absolutely no effect on anything that's actually important. (The NCAA has a million rules like this, by the way.)

This story only exists because the media has made itself the story. They're looking for something to be mad at, and whenever Lynch "hurts their feelings" by not playing along, he becomes an easy target for self-righteous hot takes and self-promoting phony outrage born out of a misplaced sense of entitlement. It's lazy, egotistical, self-serving, and assumes the worst about everything... in other words, everything that's wrong with modern American media.



This is the same media, by the way, which doesn't seem at all interested in asking why Lynch's $100,000 fine for not talking to them earlier in the season is higher than every other fine the NFL levied this year that wasn't because of a suspension. Chase Coffman hit a Ravens assistant coach on the sideline and was fined $30,000. Ryan Clark hit a defenseless receiver -- which he's made a career out of -- and was fined $22,050. Muhammad Wilkerson gets into a fight against the Packers and was fined $20,000. Chris Baker blindsided Nick Foles and it didn't cost him a dime. (Source for fine amounts: Spotrac.com) The only injuries Lynch inflicted were some bruises to the inflated egos of some media members and he got fined more than all four of those clowns combined. Strange that the media doesn't see the problem with that.

(This is also the same media who's given Bill Belichick a pass on this exact behavior for 15 years. I wonder why that is.)

I think there's something else going on here, too. A lot of the whiners are from the old-school, traditional mold, from an era where sports writers actually had the ability to make or break a player's reputation and public perception because it was the only way to do it. With the decline of real reporting and the willingness to actually challenge the establishment in favor of hot-take columns and "Talk about..." questions, as well as athletes' newfound ability to not only find their own voice, but use it on their own terms, that's not the way it works anymore. And a lot of these guys who are complaining about Lynch not wanting to talk to them either haven't realized that or don't want to admit that they're not as powerful as they used to be -- which is still far less powerful than they believed they were in their own minds.


Newsflash, guys: You need Marshawn Lynch a lot more than he needs you.