The Olympics are in many ways a flag-heavy, win-the-gold-for-the-nation-that-spawned-me tediomercial, and besides, if Simone Biles isn't talking, we're walking.
But this has been the case forever—the Olympics are the country's most persistent infomercial at a time when we as a nation couldn't sell ice cream to kindergartners. The narrative is purest jingoism, and NBC in particular can barely get its announcers to mention the names of competitors from other countries even while they're competing.
There is, however, one thing that the Olympics and international sport in general have all over sports in the U.S., and that is this: Nobody gets to talk to the competitors during the competition in which they are competing. One, because they're trying to concentrate on the thing they've worked their lives to attain, and two, no useful remark has ever come from an in-game interview.
We bring this up because the NFL has just announced its latest rank stupidity—making the head coaches talk to sideline reporters during the game. The NFL was the last holdout in this avenue of uselessness, to its credit, but suddenly it is vital that we know what Dennis Allen's view of the third quarter is.
Worse, it was introduced during the DirecTV trial in which the league is trying to avoid getting dinged for billions because of their usual predatory media practices, which means that they've thought about this for awhile and are going to introduce it as a new feature in every game, the malignant clots.
The person who introduced this abomination was Cathy Yancy, the exotically titled vice president of broadcast rights, policies, and compliance whom we have never heard of before this, and while it may not be her idea (and it isn't), she's getting paid to act like its author, so she'll be today's target.
Here's what she said, according to NBC's football pathologist Mike Florio:
This year, we have a new policy going into effect where all of the clubs are going to have to make a head coach available live for an interview during the game. Each team has to provide a head coach; one in the first half, one in the second half. And that’s for all teams, and it’s available for all TV partners.
OK, those are the details. Here's the quote that convinces us that either she is a dolt or works for one:
Because it’s good for the broadcast, it’s good for the fans. Fans want to be closer to the game, they want to get to know the players and the coaches. It’s very important that they kind of have that relationship, and they want to hear. It’s really good sound. If you’re a football fan or even if you’re a casual fan, it’s great to hear from the coaches. There’s a lot of emotion.
The first claim—good for the broadcast, good for the fans—is a tautology, and a richly stupid one that leads directly to the rest of this wiki-up of bullshit. Fans don't want to get to know the players and the coaches, especially during the game, because the coaches and players never say anything worth hearing during the game unless it's to other players, coaches, or officials. There is no relationship being created here, because it is actually the job of the coaches and players to say absolutely nothing, or as close to it as they can possibly manage. And they're good at it because it doesn't take much talent to lie to fans or reporters—they learn it in elementary school. If it was difficult for them to prevaricate to us, they wouldn't do it so often and so easily. Put simply, they're better at lying to us than we are at pulling the truth out of them, and the only skill involved is in making the bullshit taste a bit more like custard tart.
Why this is a hill upon which the NFL is willing to charge you to die upon is, frankly, their own fetish—the illusion of valuable information that you think you can use to place a league-endorsed wager in the second half that you will surely lose because you still don't know anything after the interview that you thought you knew before it. We don't care what Mike McCarthy, or Mike McDaniel, or Mike Macdonald is about to tell us, because we know that everything they tell us touches on one of two themes: We're going to try to better in the second half, and, Go away, you malignant little termite. They don't say anything that matters, and you're in the restroom anyway matching their wisdom with your own.
But hey, Cathy Yancy is being paid a healthy chunk of money to wield this particular manure spreader, and we are sure she is proud of her work, on the 15th and 30th of the month. We are only sad that they didn't introduce this steamer of an idea while Bill Belichick was still on the job. That, we would have paid for, once, just to see if he would tell Lisa Salters to take off, shove off, or piss off. Actually, he probably would have named Matt Patricia the acting head coach for that one minute per game and dared the league to do something about it, which it wouldn't. Salters deserves better, of course, but she knew the gig was awful when she took it, and so did Yancy. Everyone has a price. It's how the league stays the league.
