Tell me again why journos interview sportspeople??

Why on earth do TV journos bother shoving a microphone into a sports-person’s mouth?

There’s only two stock standard responses:

We’ve got a good chance in this match/tournament, and we’ll give it our best shot.

We didn’t have the best match/team on the day, but we’ve learned some valuable lessons, so next time…

For goodness sakes, why waste a journalist’s time (and mine watching the telly) telling me what I don’t already know. Sports journalism is sort of an oxymoron really, given that most sportspeople are frigging neanderthals anyway who can’t string more than two words together, but when they DO, they’re asked moronic questions by the journalist that makes any response bloody doomed.

Please: do not interview sports-people, unless they are interesting and/or about to retire from their sport, with a full confessional forthcoming. :smiley:

Oh, I agree completely. But look at it this way: Next time you’re on the train/bus/tram or having lunch in public, have a look at all the people actually reading the sports section of the paper. It’s frightening, especially when you see how many of them go straight to the sports section and skip the (what passes for) actual news at the front.

That’s why when I go into a TAB (betting shop) I always believe I have a decent chance of winning. You see all the people there betting on lucky numbers or journalists selections and you have to think you have a better chance than them.

Oh- and every football team will have someone who has to “Stand up and be counted”.

You forgot, “I kicked the ball the first time and there it was in the back of the net.”

You used “journos” as if it were an actual word, and you have the unmitigated gall to sneer at anyone else?
:rolleyes:

Come on: “journos” is a real word. Even journos will call each other “journos”, especially if they’re off work and having a drink or two at a pub.

Oh God- you are really something else.

Sports are two things: ritual and entertainment.

Interviewing ritual participants reinforces things that the followers of the ritual believe, or want to. Sports’ ritual beliefs touch on very important things: the individual, work, gender, society itself. What they say helps reinforce the meaning of the ritual.

Interviewing entertainers satisfies public demand to “see inside” in some way, or at least “get close.” What they say isn’t important as entertainment, except now and then when it’s outrageous.

I always like this one:

From Bull Durham:

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.

Caroline Wozniacki agrees with you, it appears.

I can see another reason why sports personalities are interviewed - it gives nice long shots of the backdrop with a whole bunch of sponsors’ logos in plain sight.

Because people watch sports and they want to hear what the players say. Most of the time they just respond with boring cliches because they don’t care about the interview, but sometimes you get something more interesting. I do think on-field interviews could go away because even if the player has something to say, he usually hasn’t had a second to think about it.

I thought I was the only one who was sick and tired of “in the second half we’re going to come back rested and play for the full 30/45/24 mins” crap. Seriously? Go for an ad break…it’s much more informative!
Rant over. Thank you :slight_smile:

I wish I were enlightened enough not to like sports.

Not everybody appreciates the finer things, PSXer.

If by “journos” you mean “journalists,” they don’t interview sports figures; sportswriters do.

And they do it so they can pretend that they’re journalists. :smiley:

What I hate is the “in-game interview.”

Generally a feature of important, much-hyped games (playoffs, tournaments, championships), it’s when they cut away from a game in-progress to talk to someone either in the press booth (NFL) or in the stands (NBA) that almost always has nothing to do with the actual game being played, and you end up missing several minutes of the game so the announcers can bullshit with Bill Russell or a coach from another team that’s already been eliminated. I don’t care! Just show the fucking game!

That’s just one of the many reasons that “Bull Durham” is one of the best sports movies ever made. :slight_smile:

I’m not sure why they interview players, either; yeah, he just did something pretty amazing (in the world of sports), but that doesn’t mean that he has anything interesting to say about it. “Well, the puck came to me, and I shot it like I’ve practiced a billion times, and this time it went in the net instead of the goalie.” You could basically accomplish the same thing by just holding the camera on the player, having him smile and wave, and then getting onto the next thing.

Yes, yes, there is a lot of slogging through oceans of cliches, but when the journalist has successfully baited the poor, dumb bastard into a mouth-foaming, howling, apoplectic fit of rage suitable for being rerun on television and the Internet until the heat death of the universe, it’s really worth it, isn’t it?

That’s how I feel about it, too. Then again, if I was Supreme Editor And Arbiter Of What Was And Wasn’t Newsworthy For The Entire Universe there would be almost nothing sports related that would be permitted in the mainstream media, with exceptions for stuff like the Olympics or Commonwealth Games.