When news of the Ferguson killing broke I found my inbox inundated with news alerts from all the usual suspects—CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc. They all told the same story albeit from different sides. After a day or so of this it became clear that these news outlets were reaching. They clamored to find something new and exciting about the case to reveal to me so I’d tune in. Unfortunately, the evidence collection and examination process doesn’t run on their light speed schedule, so the conversations devolved into opinion, conjecture, and an absurd amount of finger pointing. It was par for the course of every big news story that has come out over the last few years. There wasn’t more to the story, so they needed to manifest more of the same story to fill hourly time blocks 24 hours a day. I largely abandoned the major news networks as my daily source of news for this very reason. I wanted careful considerate pieces instead of the ‘what can I say to make you love me?’ attitude found on all of these channels. For a time all I watched was sports news, figuring that in the refuge of sport I could find stories that avoided the neediness proliferated by the big three. Sadly, I was wrong. In fact, I discovered that sports news was possibly worse than the network news stations, because there were less stories they were willing to tell, and as a result, ‘what can I say to make you love me?’ was more apparent than ever.
I want to talk about Johnny Football. The late first round draft pick spent the summer battling for a starting role on the otherwise irrelevant Cleveland Browns. He lost. Despite news coverage to the contrary, he lost in a fairly dramatic fashion. Coach Pettine hinted at this, reflecting on the maturity and poise of his starter, Brian Hoyer. What Pettine didn’t say was Manziel flipped the bird to the opposing sideline, showing his glaring immaturity in the process. He didn’t say the media’s narrowly focused glare was so harsh that all anyone was willing to do was watch the story play out as expected—with the award winning college QB coming to the big show and wrecking shop. The media didn’t let it go. Brian Hoyer is not a story guy. Nobody cares or even knows about him. He doesn’t do Snickers commercials or party with Lebron. He doesn’t make ridiculous money signs every time he manages to do something relevant on the field. In defense of some analysts, Brian Hoyer isn’t great either. If he was, there wouldn’t be a Johnny Cleveland saga. There’d be a Johnny Cowboy saga instead. Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones all but acquiesced to this when he talked about how someone like Manziel would help the team remain relevant. Note: He didn’t say good. He even parsed the statement by talking about 8-8 records vs. Super Bowl wins.
The point is, the story isn’t even about good football anymore. The story exists almost entirely for itself. Johnny Football is a self-sustaining media organism that weaves, Kardashian-like through popular culture dragging with it some derivative slug wake of the American dream. Maybe he’ll be a top-notch QB one day, and maybe he won’t, but it is interesting to note that he gets more media attention than most of the QBs in the league—proven winners who have achieved again and again. He has been discussed more on Sportscenter than any other rookie QB, despite being one of two first rounder’s (Blake Bortles is supposedly on the shelf all year) that has no real chance to start week one
There was a MMQB article about football in Ferguson that may be the most poignant and useful story on the situation down there yet. What MMQB tries to do is tell the stories around football. This is the same site that had a deep and revealing story about the character of Richie Incognito months before bullying allegations cropped up. The same site that spoke with Jason Avant about the very real and troubling Locker Room Culture in America.
There are real sports stories out there for stations like ESPN, just like there are real personal interest and public interest stories out there for the big three. These stations actively choose not to tell them, because they want to lure viewers with the lowest common denominator: flash and attention. This is the reason why the blogosphere blew up when Coach Pettine wouldn’t say whether or not Manziel would get snaps on Sunday. Even not saying something is news there. However, the real news is happening all around it. The real news is about the Cleveland D and a rookie corner who could be Pettine’s key piece to what is likely to be a top 5 Defense. These are the stories not being told, and the stories not being told are the ones that matter.
We need better sports stories.
Some Thoughts:
- Yesterday I tried to convince my kids that my computer does not have voice recognition capabilities and they told me I was wrong. Then they said, “Ok Google, show daddy you can talk and use his computer” And it did. It looked up a bunch of stuff related to the prompt. Then it filtered down and selected the best million or so results based on what it thought I’d want to see. Technology is starting to freak me out.