When a team loses religiously, it affects a lot of people. Of course, the first group that comes to mind is the fans. People pay their hard-earned money to see the alleged best players in the world perform. Then there are the franchise employees. From the front office to the equipment manager, when losses start piling up, people will lose their jobs. I’m here to discuss the often-neglected component in this equation: the media.
Nobody ever talks about what a pain in the ass it is to cover a team that sucks. I’m not talking about a team that’s just not winning. You can be losing games, but still see a vision for the future being executed. I’m talking about an absolute dumpster fire with no apparent light at the end of the tunnel. Imagine that life. You get to the arena two hours before gametime (sometimes earlier), try to find some poignant questions to ask, suffer through a complete shitshow of an athletic contest, stay for postgame, and then try to summarize what you saw without plainly saying, “Wow. These guys stink.” I’ve seen performances worthy of a gold medal in verbal gymnastics in some of these pressers. Then after sitting through a piss poor performance, some team personnel have the nerve to pull that “not making themselves available to media” bullshit. That’s rich. They stipulate credentialed media attend 85% of home games but they can decide whether or not they feel like facing criticism on any given day. If you’re not going to give us a product worth reporting on, at least give us the opportunity to do our jobs.
The only thing worse than devoting your time and energy to a basement-dwelling franchise is devoting your time to a franchise that intentionally put itself in that position. Do me a favor: if you’re going to tank, send every member of the media a Hallmark card that says, “Yeah, we know. Sorry.” Hook us up with steak and lobster for every pregame meal, and let us shoot around on the court during warm-ups. It’s the least you can do. Also, what the hell do we say in these situations? Everybody is lying at this point. You don’t analyze deliberate self-sabotage; you call it what it is. But how fast do you think I’d be tossed out of the arena if I went in the presser, grabbed the mic, and said, “Man, I really hope all this losing on purpose works out”? I’m sure they’d have my picture on the wall with a “Do not admit” sign like I got caught stealing from 7-Eleven. Actually might do this one day. I’ll probably save it for the last game of the season. Maybe the powers that be will forget when it’s time to reup next year.
I’m not alone in this. I speak for the neglected and the downtrodden. Seriously, covering the Bad News Bears will wear on you after a while. And while the front office is waiting for Kelly Leak to show up in the draft, the folks in the media room have to pretend that everything is fine. We need a support group. This will have to settle for therapy in the meantime.