The decision of tennis player Naomi Osaka to withdraw from the French Open after she was rebuked by the tennis establishment for refusing to fulfill her media obligations during the tournament hit me in a different way than I imagine it hit most people. Instead of thinking of Osaka’s specific decision — which I respect — it had me thinking a lot about a football player, and a game that happened a long time ago.
— NaomiOsaka大坂なおみ (@naomiosaka) May 31, 2021
FFT president Gilles Moretton made a statement in French about Naomi Osaka's withdrawal, then repeated it in English, then left without taking questions. #RG21
— Ben Rothenberg (@BenRothenberg) May 31, 2021
This probably wouldn’t have turned my head as much as it did, but I happened to be in New York City and New Jersey covering the week of Super Bowl XLVIII, pitting the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos against each other, and I therefore saw the underbelly of Seattle running back Marshawn Lynch’s refusal to speak to the media that week. “I’m just here so I won’t get fined” was the top story, but the stuff that happened among some of the NFL’s most prominent writers was pretty worrisome, and it changed forever the ways in which I considered what athletes “owe” to the media, and how that all plays out.
I don’t know why Lynch went silent that week. I did know that he was the kind of person who would stand up at a podium or sit at his locker and take every question if he’d made a crucial mistake, or cost his team a potential victory in some way. What seemed to make him uncomfortable was the spotlight moment after career-defining plays. I was on the sideline for “Beastquake,” and I distinctly remember that Lynch seemed uncomfortable when everybody wanted to ask him about it in the locker room after the game. Lynch thought of it as a team game, and appeared to be befuddled by all the attention he was getting.
In the week leading up to Super Bowl XLVIII, there were highly prominent members of the football media who insisted that Lynch should fulfill his obligations — not to the game, not to the fans, but to them. That was the distinct aftertaste of the week, and it was not a pleasant experience. Around midweek, when it was clear that Lynch would not do what the media wanted, there was talk of a cabal of writers who would present their case to the league as to why Lynch must speak to them. At one point, I was told that I was thought to be on this panel (a “responsibility” I would have refused), but in the end, the guy talking to me about it decided that there should be more writers of color on the panel so that Lynch would find them more “relatable.”
Yeah.
None of this was about making the jobs of writers easier. Between the 2013 Seahawks and the 2013 Broncos, there were more than enough stories for the week. Marquee names all over the place, and a Super Bowl that had one of the best offenses in NFL history (Denver’s) against one of the best defenses in NFL history (Seattle’s). We didn’t need Marshawn Lynch saying anything to hit a deadline. This was about Lynch being made to come to heel. It tarnished my view of my profession, and some of the colleagues I had respected before this debacle. It also made me realize that we (the “royal we” in this case) had refused to see Marshawn Lynch as a human being. We had reduced him to fodder for our jobs, and our elevated sense of our own importance in the process.
Lynch wasn’t comfortable with it — in fact, the whole process made him distinctly uncomfortable. For all his aggression on the field, and as quip-fantastic as he can be when the moment is right, it was clear in those particular moments that Lynch had been hoisted on a petard not of his own making, and it was easy to see the circus for what it had become — more about a bunch of overprivileged, butt-hurt writers who were not handed everything they wanted because one player in over 100 had an internal need to step away from the microphone.
NFL.com’s Jim Trotter, one of the most respected in his field and someone who was distinctly not a part of that performative outrage, has a legitimate question about it all. It’s a question to which I believe there is an unfortunate answer.
Really interested to see if we in the media – as an industry – do a self examination during the @naomiosaka discussion.
— Jim Trotter (@JimTrotter_NFL) June 1, 2021
If this seems normal to you — if this seems okay to you — maybe put yourself in Naomi Osaka’s shoes now, or Marshawn Lynch’s shoes then, That was Lynch’s first Super Bowl, and for most players, their first Super Bowl is their last. You never know if you’re going to get another shot at that biggest moment, and it’s why you can’t get most players to shut up about it when they’re in that arena. Justifiably so. Perhaps the fact that Lynch needed to keep to his own counsel in that moment, or the fact that Osaka needs to keep to hers, should be a sign that not all athletes are the same, and that not all responsibilities are absolute.
These are human beings, after all. Whether that’s convenient or not.