I mean, like, you know, just stop talking.

The BBQ Pit
1

There is nothing, nothing at all, that is more painful than listening to professional athletes doing an interview. I can live with the cliches, I can live with the fact that they have learned how to say absolutely nothing while making people think that they said something, I can even live with the fact that most of these guys are dumber than a bag of hammers and likely have trouble signing their names.

What I cannot take, though, is the way they talk when they get in front of a microphone.

Interviewer: So, Snerdley, how do you think the team will do this year?

Snerdley: Well, you know, it’s like, you know, we have some great players, I mean, you know, it’s like we’ve got all our guys back, you know, like, from last year, you know, and it’s like we’ll be, you know, just as good as last year. You know what I mean?

All that just to say that the same players are coming back and they’re great players. Not that any player would dare disparage his teammates unless he wanted to get traded, because that just isn’t done. So it took our example 30 seconds to spit out absolutely nothing, not even answering the question he was asked. And this sort of thing is typically considered to be a good interview.

Why do we listen to this? What is the fascination with hearing an athlete talk? The host is almost universally more articulate. I’d much rather hear him talk. At least he’s will to hang it out and say something controversial. If I could trust an athlete to say something shocking it might be worth my time to hear him struggle with 2nd grade English, but since he won’t he should just shut up on the principle that it is far better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.

2

There are a lot of smart articulate athletes that say interesting things. Think Steve Nash, Charles Barkely, Chad Ochocinco, etc. You might not like what they say, but they aren’t dumb cliche repeaters.

However, for everyone of them, it does seem like there are ten mouth breathers. My current favorite is Colby Rasmus of the Cardinals. Turning into a nice outfielder for us, but boy, don’t put him in front of a camera. Before he answers most questions there is a pause where you can see him mentally trying to flip through the index cards of pat answers.

3

I loves me a Ron Artest interview. It’s like a press release from North Korea - you never know what is gonna happen next.

4

My husband loves to watch COPS. Sometimes I suspect that part of the reason he loves it so is because the cops who give interviews are so stupid that he feels like a genius in comparison.

5

Speaking of Chas Barkley…the absolute best ‘athlete quote’ ever made (imho) was when the USA first had pro players in Olympic basketball (~early 90’s?). At a post-game team interview (most of the USA players sitting along a big table), a reporter asked how the USA-team felt about the other teams/countries complaining about being beaten by such huge margins or the US players ‘showboating’ against the opposition or such. Barkley kind of snickered and said that those teams just needed to “take their ass-whippins and go home”. Or words very similar, and I am pretty sure he emphasized the “ass whoopings” part. Pure unadulterated Barkley in both attitude and content.

I wish I had recorded that! I think the other USA players choked back their guffaws pretty hard while Barkley just stared down the reporter, like he wanted him to ask for some elaboration about it.

6

Years ago I had a friend who could do a great parody of a sports interview.

“Just gotta put some points on the board,” he’d say over and over.

7

Sure, just stop talking. The athletes are just champing at the bit to do sideline interviews; all they need to do is stop seeking out those inane questions all the time, right?

How many live interviews have you done after you’ve just finished doing your job, by the way?

8

I’m pretty sure that the NFL player on Jim Rome this afternoon wasn’t even remotely close to a football field today given that the NFL isn’t in season yet.

So what’s his excuse?

9

While i can, like, sort of get on board with your rant, i actually, you know, think that more of the blame rests on the shoulders of sports “journalists.” And, to some extent, on the fans.

Athletes are paid to play. That’s what they’re good at. And despite NCAA propaganda about GPA and the value of education, no-one really gives a flying fuck whether a professional ballplayer can put together a coherent sentence, as long as he can drop a three-pointer, run a route, hit a double, or forecheck. Some athletes are very smart, and have interesting things to say, but that’s not what they’ve been hired to do.

Journalists, on the other hand, are paid to use words, to report on sports in ways that are interesting and informative. But half of these fucking chumps have no idea what constitutes interesting and informative writing, or what constitutes a good question. To be quite honest, i think a good sports reporter should be able to report on the game without ever talking to a player. Most pro sports are complex and varied enough to support a high level of analysis and discussion, without even requiring the input of an athlete who would probably prefer to be taking a shower or heading home than answering the inane questions that constitute the bulk of sports reporters’ repertoires.

I’m far more interested in reading or hearing a smart analysis of a game or a team by a good analyst than i am in watching a post-match locker room scrum or a news conference.

10

I’d break it down just a bit more, because I typically see two situations they find themselves in, and I give them more leeway in one.

Arranged Interviews with magazines, talk shows, or just your standard press conference; practice, people! I’m sure most professional teams have some sort of press director. Make up a list of sample questions, pass them out, and take a day or two to think up some basic answers before you’re on TV.

Post-Game is where I cut them slack. They’ve been on the court/field for an hour or more, pouring their hearts out, and you wanna ask them questions? Sure, “how was your defense this game” may not seem like rocket science, but go to your local gym and grab someone who’s been on the treadmill for 45 min and ask them what they think of their boss. Normally, I could answer that straight away…but when my heart and lungs are red lining just keeping me upright, it’s not going to be too pithy.

Heck, after an hour at the gym, I probably can’t even spell “pithy.”

11

I am totally on board with the OP.

And I am tickled to death to find that Youtube has preserved a beautifully relevant clip from the movie Bedazzled, in which Brendan Fraser’s character makes a set of deals with the Devil in order to try to impress a girl he likes. One of the people he wishes he was was a professional athlete, and the Devil turns him into this guy:

It was the first thing that popped into my mind when I read the OP.

12

I am always stunned when a professional athlete says something in an interview that isn’t retarded. I am significantly less stunned when they end up flat broke and working at a car wash in Hoboken.

It’s not just athletes. Coaches are equally bad- and arguably worse, since post-game interviews are more a part of their jobs.

13

In football, it’s because they never interview the offensive line. Those guys are smart. They always interview the dumb positions (I mean, uh, the “skill positions”).

14

If you want to watch / listen to intelligent and engaging people why would you watch sports? There’s your problem.

15

Crash Davis: It’s time to work on your interviews.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: My interviews? What do I gotta do?
Crash Davis: You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: “We gotta play it one day at a time.”
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: Got to play… it’s pretty boring.
Crash Davis: 'Course it’s boring, that’s the point. Write it down.

16

I’ll join in on putting a lot of the blame on the sports journalists asking the questions - half the time, they aren’t even asking a question, just putting something out there like, “That was a heckuva second half you played out there.” and then turning the mike over to the athlete. But I agree, one of my least favourite things is watching interviews with professional athletes. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything in a post-game interview that gave me any insight at all into anything going on in the sport.

17

My favorite sports interview response of all time was said by Marv Levy, coach of the Buffalo Bills. He was asked if the upcoming game was a “must-win”. He said, “No, World War II was a must-win. This is just a football game.”

18

Without the interviews, how would we know their thoughts on the importance of giving 110 percent?

19

While I agree about athlete/coach interviews, I take issue with the claim that there is nothing more painful to listen to. Try being trapped in a city bus for 30 minutes with two 20-something women blathering endlessly on about every mundane detail of their sad little lives, liberally punctuated with “and, like, I was all like ‘whatever’, and she was just all like ‘as if’ and I just said like ‘what-ev-er, bitch’ and so we went to Starbucks and like talked about our kids and stuff.”

I was violently jerked between homicidal and suicidal urges by the time one of them finally, like, you know, got off the bus and stuff.

20

Maybe he’s not articulate. So what! And maybe he should stop doing interviews.

But his job is to play football. Not be an equal to Jim Rome during an interview.