Everyone knows that Marshawn Lynch of the Seattle Seahawks doesn’t like speaking to the media. His ‘Thanks for asking’ and ‘I appreciate it’ act of defiance wasn’t clever or funny. It was simply an example of someone who forgot there’s more to the NFL than just scoring touchdowns and actually playing.
It’s hard to have just one strong opinion about Marshawn Lynch and his abstinence (or attempted one) from speaking to the media. On one hand it’s great to see a player focus solely on delivering on the field, who doesn’t care about making promises or having his face plastered on every screen and newspaper. He wants to win, score touchdowns and get paid at the end of the day for doing his job, not talking about it.
This was written about Lynch before the Super Bowl: Here is a guy who focuses on playing the game, nothing else; a true, 100% professional who is here to play football and treats it with complete respect and focus. But he isn’t playing “the game”, even though there are plenty of other guys completely happy to speak for him. The world can live without Lynch speaking about things he doesn’t want to talk about, and Goodell should focus on other things, far more important.
But there is a balance which Lynch needs to understand, and that in order for him to have that big pay day he wants so badly and which might eventually land him on a different team, there’s a game he has to play which isn’t football. Part of why NFL players get paid so much money is because of media exposure and dollars flowing into the league from TV contracts. In order to keep fueling the fire, players need to be more than just machines on the field. Showing a human aspect doesn’t hurt.
Richard Sherman is making the most, maybe too much, of every second of media time he can invade. While it is annoying because of the over exposure, it does serve a purpose. For himself, making him a bigger household name because of his personality, not just his football achievements, and for the NFL. Sherman doesn’t preach humility, but it’s better than the type of issues the NFL has to deal with due to players like Aaron Hernandez and Ray McDonald.
Lynch shows blatant disrespect and sneer towards the media with his repeating of the same answer again and again. There’s a pyramid that’s stable, but isn’t impregnable or indestructible. If he wants to completely ignore that part of the business he’s in, I guess he wouldn’t mind paying a little bit less for not doing his part. It might be a cynical way of looking at things, but it’s reality and the truth about what the NFL is about, or at least one aspect of it.