The Instant Historian: Marshawn Lynch And The Importance of The Prosaic
By Ty Duffy
Marshawn Lynch did not speak to the media. His silence was the biggest news to emerge from the second week of Super Bowl coverage, for a second-straight year. It was the only news, but for the fact Tom Brady had a cold.
What Lynch did delights, in a sense. His act disrupts the perfunctory cycle that yields traditional gamers and press conference stories. But, what Lynch did also horrifies, in a sense. He’s not protesting hackneyed journalism. He’s protesting journalism, or his status as a public figure that should be subject to it. His self-created farce has little pathos. But, there’s a whole lot of logos for his personal branding. #BEASTMODE #SKITTLES
Codger cum columnists will pontificate, in a fashion only they can. That delivery detracts from what should be a valid fear.
England’s Premier League is the world’s most popular sports league. Domestically, the BBC paid $300 million, just to run highlights. Abroad, it’s preeminent on multiple continents. It’s the most visible constituent, on television, of America’s fastest growing sport.
The EPL has achieved that mass popularity while, by comparison, treating traditional media like vermin. Locker room access and practice availability don’t exist. Managers give occasional press conferences. Players are seldom, if at all, obligated to be available. This has had no adverse effect. In fact, it alleviates a lot of headaches.
Leagues have their own websites, TV networks and social media accounts to access fans directly. It’s out of custom the media relationship is still viewed by leagues as symbiotic, rather than parasitic. Wayne Rooney is a silent cipher for EPL advertisements. So, in a plausible near future, is the NFL’s Marshawn Lynch.
While pack sports journalism produces more than its share of tripe and twaddle, it still provides the meat for the carrion birds of the opinion cycle to fight over. It’s a challenge to official decrees. It’s one of the last notable buttresses holding off writerly gaze and navel.
Marshawn Lynch’s prosaic tidbits would add little. But, the Instant Historian would suggest the principle is worth fighting over, in the brief respite where journalism remains more than a few folks decreeing values atop optimized, poorly recompensed #content mines.
On Media Day… Super Bowl Media Day is bloated. Its inanity is canned. The “media presence to veritable news produced” ratio startles. None of this is fresh insight. It was true last year. It was true 30 years ago. Here’s ABC News reporter Judd Rose on Super Bowl Media Day from a Jan. 15, 1985 broadcast.
"Try the word overkill. There are roughly 3,000 media people covering about 100 football people and never have so many bothered so few for so little. Every leader needs a pack. This pack began the annual rite of winter by meeting the Miami Dolphins in Oakland. Oakland, of course, is the place of which Gertrude Stein once said there is no there there. And as the media mob crossed the bay to San Francisco it quickly became apparent there was no there here either."
The sub-structure is the same, albeit with 5,000 media people. But, the marquee date on the NFL’s non-event event calendar has received a few 21st Century tweaks. Media Day is now “fueled by Gatorade” and has fans piling in at $28.50 a head to watch people mill about. There’s commercial free television coverage. Multiple players have former football player talking heads breaking down strategy.
Fittingly, for media covering media, Media Day stars are now, most often, other media members. A player going full Phil McConkey pales compared to the latest Mexican TV correspondent or a given year’s asshole wearing a barrel.
Media Day is a sober bacchanal of boredom. But, it still offers the occasional off the cuff moment. 2025’s league censored Reddit AMA’s will be brutal.
On Emojis: The Instant Historian does not use emojis. The Instant Historian does not have friends that use emojis. The Instant Historian is grateful his parents don’t have the cell phone fluency requisite to find emojis. Yet, like Drake, emojis still perforate the Instant Historian’s antiquated consciousness, especially when trying to make hay of college football recruiting.
History is cyclical. As spelling and grammar standards retrench with each new device and AP style revisiting, The Instant Historian can only conclude the alphabet had a good run. Emojis may mark the transition from writing back to hieroglyphs. No doubt we’ll eventually be reduced to grunts, nods and hand gestures, if we ever look up from the autoplay videos streaming through our neural implants.
[Photo via USAT]