Colin Kaepernick and why sportsmen are boring

SEPTEMBER 3 — Until recently, Colin Kaepernick was in danger of slowly joining the long line of professional sport’s forgotten men.

The American Football quarterback shot to stardom in the 2012 season, his second as a professional, when he gained a starting spot for San Francisco 49ers and promptly led the team to their first Superbowl appearance in nearly two decades.

But since then his fortunes have faded, and after losing his status as starter the last few months have seen his career surrounded by uncertainty, with mounting speculation that the 49ers were preparing to show him the exit door.

Before a pre-season preparation game last Friday, however, Kaepernick propelled himself back into the headlines by refusing to follow the traditional custom of solemnly standing during the pre-game rendition of the national anthem, instead remaining seated in conspicuous silence.

In such a fervently patriotic country as the United States, where unquestioning devotion to the stars and stripes is taken as a given, this was a hugely provocative decision and Kaepernick’s subsequent explanation that he was protesting against the country’s treatment of ethnic minorities created a storm which has not come close to abating.

Throughout the last few days, Kaepernick — who is mixed race — has been alternately hailed as a brave hero of the equal rights movement or decried as a treacherous and ungrateful pampered baby.

I am not going to enter into the rights and wrongs of Kaepernick’s argument and the furore he has unleashed, except to say that it seems rather strange that a country which endlessly emphasises its commitment to liberty and freedom of expression should criticise somebody simply for sitting down during a piece of music.

Kaepernick has not killed or otherwise harmed anyone, and surely the whole ethos of the United States is that he is entitled to express his opinion in a peaceable manner, and that his opinion should be respected whether you agree with it or not. Intolerance of opinions which run contrary to received wisdom is the kind of dogmatic police-state thinking which America habitually claims to be an enemy of.

Anyway, that’s not the main point I would like to make here. The main point, which I will pose as a question, is this: can you now understand why professional sportsmen are so boring?

When discussing my profession as a sports writer, one of the most common observations raised by my acquaintances is that sportsmen never have anything interesting to say.

Interviews and press conferences are nearly always the same: praise for the opposition, who are a tough team to play against; respect for his teammates, among whom there exists a great team spirit; and a commitment to carry on working hard.

That’s basically all you get. Look at any interview or any press conference and, with a slight verbal variation, those are essentially the points which are made. They’re a great team but we’ve got great belief and we’re going to work hard. Etc etc.

You will hardly ever find any player or coach who is prepared to give a detailed tactical analysis, provide an interesting insight into specific players, offer strong criticism of a coach, opponent or teammate, or really say anything else which could be perceived as controversial.

The general inference from this observation, often left unspoken, is that professional athletes are stupid and lacking eloquence, and this allegation contains a small grain of truth due to the fact that most sports require their future stars to leave school and focus entirely on their careers at the age of 16, thus severely limiting their ability to benefit from further education.

That’s only 10 per cent of the explanation, though. The remaining 90 per cent of the reason that sportsmen never say anything interesting is not that they are incapable. It’s that they choose not to.

They choose not to, firstly, because they don’t see speaking to the media as an important part of their job. In fact, they don’t see it as part of their job at all.

That makes sense. To become a top-level professional athlete requires an enormous amount of dedication, focus and commitment. Doing interviews does not come into that formula.

And although leading sports clubs now include media training as part of their training programme, it is really conducted as a token afterthought which is rarely taken at all seriously by the sportsmen, who regard speaking to the media as an irritating distraction, to be completed as easily and as quickly as possible.

Therefore, keeping everything on a surface level and avoiding saying anything which might require further explanation or discussion is an obvious strategy: why bother spending five minutes telling someone what you really think, when you can instead mutter an acceptable platitude in five seconds and then leave?

And then we have what has happened to Colin Kaepernick this week, giving a clear example of why sportsmen vastly prefer to avoid saying anything thought-provoking or interesting: they know that if they do, it will be blown up into a massive controversy which will entirely overshadow their lives for the next few days or even weeks.

If Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, happened to hold a strong belief about the conflict in Syria and expressed that belief in an interview, can you imagine the outcry that would follow? Some would support him, others would condemn him, and nobody would be able to mention his name without referring to whatever he happened to have said.

Kaepernick is in that position right now and, to his credit, he appears not to care, seemingly believing that the cause he is supporting is more important than the personal inconvenience and notoriety he is experiencing.

But the vast majority of sportsmen in the vast majority of cases would simply not bother. In a world of hyperbole and overreaction, it’s far, far easier to just keep your mouth shut, say as little as possible and leave the headlines to somebody else.

Can you really blame them?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

Source : Malay Mail Online | All http://ift.tt/2bJYLVK

Today updated news promoted by Mukah Pages