Something significant, perhaps paradigmatic, happened last Sunday during the NFC Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears. Current and former NFL players published spontaneous commentary on Twitter criticizing the character of the Bears’ laconic quarterback Jay Cutler.
“There is no medicine for a guy with no guts and heart,” wrote former star linebacker Derrick Brooks in one of the most quoted tweets of the week.
Most remarkable is that the criticism of Cutler’s performance and courage came not from sports journalists, but from Cutler’s peers, each of whom felt empowered by Twitter to offer an unfettered take in real time.
Sports journalists, who find their access to athletes increasingly hampered by controlling leagues and teams, suddenly are faced with demonstrating to jocks who tweet that opinions can have consequences.
So consequential were the thousand cuts on Cutler that criticism of the quarterback has dominated sports news coverage since the game, when we might have expected more attention on the Super Bowl. Four days after the game, it remained the hottest topic on sports radio.
So what should we make of this? New technologies and new social imperatives have removed the boundaries that marked eyewitness reporting and commentary as the special reserve of an unlicensed group of specialists called “journalists.”
Social networks let Derrick Brooks become writer, editor, commentator, and publisher. He keeps his 21st century printing press in his pocket.
Brooks is one of Florida’s leading citizens, known for his social activism and his leadership of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He is, by all accounts, a good man and a great athlete, but he lacks a few principles that journalists will still recognize as crucial:
- that speed, while important, is not as important as accuracy;
- that verifiable information (in this case a medical report) must inform opinion, especially when it calls into question not just an athlete’s play but his character;
- that the correction of an ill-informed opinion almost never has the same impact as the original indictment;
- and that being right is, in the long run, better than being first.
Haste may lead to inaccuracy. Time is the co-author of good judgment.
Two days after the game, we learned that Cutler sustained a moderately severe injury to his knee. As a result of this news, some critics have softened their stance, while others expressed the opinion that Cutler should have taken “the spike,” that is, pain-numbing injections, whatever it took to lead his team.
The traditional media held a huge magnifying glass above the tweets, perhaps changing the nature of coverage forever. Here’s why:
1. Access to athletes has been over-controlled by management, to the detriment of journalists and fans. Coming of age in an era of instant messaging and social networks, celebrity athletes enjoy having their unfiltered say. The teams and leagues thought they could use the electronic media to circumvent scrutiny by the mainstream press by limiting access and creating their own websites and networks. The athletes’ freedom of expression must be their nightmare — and for journalists poetic justice.
2. We know too well that when athletes have made themselves available to the press, they have tended to speak in clichés. “Players have to step up and make a play and just have fun out there.” Commentary about the other teams usually takes the form of off-field expressions of respect or on-field blasts of smack talk. Using Twitter, players and ex-players feel empowered to criticize their peers in unguarded ways.
3. While beat writers would have a hard time asking locker room questions such as, “Is it true that you (or your team mate) has no heart or guts?” they now have the exact words of criticism leveled by players themselves. The standard defense from players — that their words were sensationalized or taken out of context — loses its juice.
4. While Twitter can be used as a form of live-blogging — reporting what you see when you see it — it also turns out to be the perfect platform for ill-informed opinion without context. It doesn’t take 140 characters (or much character) to launch an attack on another player. Without standards, Twitter encourages the most direct rather than the most nuanced commentary. It invites you to comment, not when all the facts are in, but when the spirit moves you. Like now.
5. As a form of expression for celebrity athletes, Twitter promotes them as individual brands, a bonus to the branding that comes from a team or a league. Teams and leagues can be fickle and careers short, so why shouldn’t players use a platform that focuses attention on them as individuals? There may be no I in team. But there is an M and an E.
The phenomenon of the tweeting athlete will continue to unfold. Teams and leagues may try to batten down the hatches, but when you press down on the flow of anything, it has the tendency to spill out the sides.
Certainly, players will be encouraged not to trash their colleagues with the megaphones of social networks. Meanwhile, reporters will be more alert than ever to newsworthy or colorful expressions by athletes who won’t or can’t govern themselves.
The more enterprising reporters will dig down beneath the surface of superficial insults among players to some deeper and more troubling truths: that athletes exist in a “shame” culture, where the worst thing that can happen is not losing, but being embarrassed; that beneath the propaganda of sportsmanship and safety, your sport may ask you to risk life and limb to get back out on the field.
What injured player would now take himself out of a game for the good of the team, knowing the viral consequences he may have to endure?
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