Last summer, determined to write a profile of press-shy Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch, freelance reporter Kevin Fixler showed up at the football camp that Lynch runs each summer for disadvantaged urban youth. Yet for the many hours he spent in Lynch’s presence, most of the Lynch quotes in the piece are things he said to other people.
“It was a hard thing to go through,” Fixler said of finally realizing that he was not going to extract much from his subject, whom he had periodically tried to pin down since 2010. “But I found a way to make it work. I just kind of hung out there until I had what I needed to tell a really good story.”
And it is: The piece incisively unpacks Lynch’s contrasting personas, the “Oakland hardass” who has been arrested twice since joining the NFL in 2007, and the “selfless community steward” who genuinely wants to help kids overcome the same problems he faced in childhood.
Reporters looking for similar insights when Lynch appeared at Super Bowl Media Day earlier this week were sure to be sorely disappointed.
“I’m here so I won’t get fined,” Lynch said repeatedly at the annual event, to which the NFL sells tickets. (He was fined as recently as November for avoiding reporters, a violation of the standard NFL contract.) That refrain has received far more coverage since Media Day than any of the stories told by the many players and coaches who did talk. That suggests, as Deadspin’s Tom Ley wrote to me, that Lynch’s critics are merely upset that he wouldn’t “go through the motions with them.”
“Nobody at Media Day is having their in-depth column about the intricacies of the Seahawks’ running game torpedoed because Lynch won’t answer complicated questions about blocking schemes,” Ley said. “The fact that this week is when these reporters have decided to really get outraged is proof of just how disingenuous that outrage is.”
Marcus Hayes of the Philadelphia Daily News is one such writer. “It is part of his job, part of his duty,” Hayes wrote in his column, one of many on the topic from journalists across the country. “Duty should not be served. It is part of being a professional. It’s part of being an adult. Marshawn Lynch is neither.” Most arguments criticizing Lynch share the same gist: Players should talk to the media because it lets fans hear what they have to say and media coverage is partly responsible for their wealth and popularity. Given that it’s an ongoing story, it’s not surprising that Lynch’s Media Day performance triggered an array of rebukes.
Lynch’s critics, both in this case and in general, do partly have a point. He is a star who features in almost every game he plays in, meaning that journalists have no choice but to write about him. Most players are willing to shed some light on their perspective and their quotes, for better or worse, usually make up the meat of much sports writing. Lynch deprives reporters of a usually dependable resource.
“Our opinion is that there are 52 other players, all of whom are happy to speak to how great a player Lynch is,” said Gregg Bell, a Seahawks beat writer for the News Tribune of Tacoma, WA. “He’s made [his aversion to interviews] clear, in very cordial ways, repeatedly to the local media in Seattle. The only time it becomes an issue is when a writer who never covers him or covers him rarely is affronted by the fact that he doesn’t speak.”
But it’s lazy to be affronted without exploring why Lynch might not like talking to the media, especially those helicoptering in for artificial press events. Last year, he explained to NFL.com’s Mike Silver that speaking to journalists wouldn’t help his team win and might result in him stealing credit from his teammates, whereas, in 2013 the reporting of ESPN’s Jeffri Chadiha suggested that the aversion stems from a mistrust sowed by his father’s infrequent presence. (In another press conference on Thursday, Lynch again expressed his frustration with reporters for continuing to ignore his wish to be left alone so that he could prepare for Sunday’s game.)
But a lot of that nuance is lost at a made-for-soundbites marketing event, which may be hard for reporters charged with finding color for their Super Bowl coverage to stomach.
“This is not a debatable subject,” Hayes wrote about Lynch’s Media Day reticence in an email. “He has been disciplined for these actions in the past. He is simply wrong. And anyone who supports his ‘choice’ is wrong, too.”
Players have been punished by the NFL for infractions as petty as wearing the wrong hat (a crime for which Lynch himself may be fined) without inspiring mass indignation. But it also underscores the point that this week’s criticisms of Lynch are less about protecting quality journalism than about trying to force a circus to be a venue for the sort of stories that, as Fixler can attest, require dogged pursuit.
Because, if Media Day were a venue for good journalism, then why aren’t we discussing all the interesting things that were said? Or, as Grantland’s Andrew Sharp put it, “Does anyone remember a word Tom Brady said this week?”
Christopher Massie is a CJR contributing editor.