Aye aye Captain Obvious.
Get ready for the revelation of a notoriously obvious truth to become a media sensation.
I cannot stress enough how useless most interviews with most professional athletes truly are. After sorting through numerous rooms in the cliche convention that is a NFL player interview, you may find some small space for nuggets of truth and interesting banter.
We know they’re lying to us, or they adopt the Chicago Bears media relations policy of “go eff yourself!”
Or it’s Orwellian doublespeak, or banal, brainless coachspeak 90% of the time. New England Patriots QB Tom Brady further validated that today.
Here’s the quote that’s making the internet media rounds:
“I don’t often say exactly how I feel. And I don’t often say exactly what I think. Because you don’t want to cause controversy. When there is controversy, all your teammates start getting asked about ‘What Brady said.’ Really, it becomes a distraction to the team. You’re trying to get ready for an important game on the weekend, and then now, on Thursday and Friday, the only thing that people want to talk about is some comment the quarterback on your team made.
“When that happens, I feel bad and a certain responsibility to my teammates that in some way I let them down. That they have to be cleaning up a mess that I made for the rest of the team. And that’s never a position that I want to put my teammates in because we have too many other things to worry about.”
Be a Michigan Man today, Mr. Brady. Step up to your obligation.
Actually this makes some sense. I do the same thing whenever I have to deal with some bats$% crazy woman being a drama queen. Whenever shes asks me “about the other night,” I usually respond with “it is what it is, I’m trying not to focus too much on the past, just looking forward.”
And when asked about my feelings/objectives the best answer is always “I’m just working hard trying to be the best man I can, doing what I have to do.”
So for the players the objective is to give reporters enough for some copy, but not enough that the copy becomes a story bigger than the game. In other words, it’s another game of chicken between jocks and nerds. In other words, we after age 18, we never leave high school.