I have to start off saying that I like ESPN. No other media outlet has given me greater access to sports: highlights, columns, interviews, fantasy sports...it has everything. But can that be a problem? It's a question we'll get to in more detail with later posts. Right now, I want to focus on the article I've linked to above, per ESPN.com.
Dan Graziano writes about the need to play first-round rookie quarterbacks. While it's a decent argument for logical reasoning as to why fans and sportswriters want rookie quarterbacks to be tried and challenged at the NFL level straight away, he completely misses the point and illustrates a rampant issue in sports media and public perception of athletes, particularly Black athletes.
It happens in many other articles besides this one, but how many times do (mainly) white, arm-chair journalists with a fancy vocabulary use dehumanizing descriptives when waxing lyrical about a stellar performance in a game? Athletes, particularly in the NFL and NBA, which for the majority are Black athletes, are often compared to cars and horses, whereby changing their oil or putting them in the garage and following X-Y-Z prescription will get them back on the racetrack. Athletes don't need an oil change, they don't need new brakes or better suspension...the relative concepts might be similar in terms of taking care of ones body and that we, along with horses, do have biological anatomy, but using dehumanizing language such as this only serves to feed the notion that athletes (again, particularly NFL and NBA athletes) aren't human. They're ANIMALS, or they're CARS. Not only does this minimize the years of mental dedication and perseverance it takes to achieve their athletic prowess and body performance, it also forces the millions of readers and viewers of these media channels to think of them as animals, something less than human, less than themselves.
Athletes don't need a tune-up in the garage, they need real support. Medical benefits, psychological counseling, financial planning...until the wider issue of athlete perception and racial issues that are prevalent with the 24/7 media scrutiny and coverage, concussion issues will never be fully addressed, post-career bankruptcy education won't be utilized, and incidents such as Ray Rice's domestic violence against his fiance (I may touch upon this in a later article...it's a big deal) won't see real debate and eventual progress. Athletes will continue to be perceived as some sort of god-created super specimen with a one-dimensional vision and thought-process being used to satiate our need to see huge guys run fast and hit hard.
So, while I would love to see Teddy Bridgewater earn his starting spot and lead the Vikings to our first super bowl title, I also would like to see journalists and media pundits think about the way they talk about these kids. Speak about his precision accuracy, speak about his mental capacity and leadership qualities...don't make him out to be a shrink-wrapped product with an expiration date. With as many viewers and readers ESPN, DeadSpin, BleacherReport, and other sports media channels earn on a daily basis, their language and illustrations are the foundation of what the majority of casual viewers use to form their opinions and images of athletes...does the media have an obligation, in a wider sense then, to be less of a creative vehicle and focus more on real, society-based issues and news? I'd like to think so, but sometimes that doesn't sell as many tickets.
And to counter Graziano's opinion in two words: Aaron Rodgers.
ps- I blame Bill Simmons. He's made every relatively cognizant sports writer assume he has the talent and ability to write articles in poetic fashion. Bill has that; his articles and his Grantland webpage are some of the best thought-out reads you'll find in the sports writing universe. It would be great if they all had his talent for recall, description, and story telling, but they don't. Neither do I.
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