There is no question that media has helped sports. Fans today can connect with their favorite athletes in ways previous generations could never have imagined. We don’t just watch athletes play anymore. We hear from them after games, follow them on social media, watch their workouts, learn about their personalities and sometimes even interact with them directly.
For athletes, that exposure can be incredibly valuable. Players can build their own brands, market themselves directly to millions of people and turn their popularity into endorsement and marketing deals worth ridiculous amounts of money. You no longer necessarily have to be the biggest superstar in your sport to build a valuable personal brand.
Sports are more accessible. Athletes are more marketable. Fans are more connected.
But has all of that exposure become a double-edged sword?
While today’s athletes benefit tremendously from constant media coverage, they also live under a level of scrutiny that previous generations never experienced. Everything gets seen, everything gets discussed and almost nothing gets forgotten.
Did Older Athletes Benefit From Less Coverage?
Let’s not pretend athletes from previous generations weren’t getting into their fair share of foolishness. We all know things happened after games, inside locker rooms and away from the stadium that probably wouldn’t survive today’s media environment. That isn’t exactly a secret.
The difference is that much of it stayed there. There wasn’t a camera in everyone’s pocket. Social media didn’t exist. There weren’t millions of people capable of recording something and putting it online within seconds. Sports weren’t surrounded by a 24-hour content machine constantly looking for the next story.
Imagine some of the greatest athletes in history playing under today’s level of coverage. Every terrible playoff performance would immediately be clipped and shared everywhere. Every losing streak would generate days of debate. Every controversial interview could live online permanently, and every rumor could become a trending topic before anyone even knew whether it was true.
Today’s athletes live in a completely different world. Almost every aspect of their lives can become content. Their relationships become headlines. The birth of a child becomes news. The death of a family member can become part of the public conversation. Where they spend their offseason, who they’re seen with, what they wear and sometimes even something as small as which social-media post they liked can become a story.
Older athletes were certainly criticized. Newspapers, radio and television weren’t afraid to go after players. But they didn’t have millions of people conducting a daily referendum on their greatness while cameras documented almost every aspect of their lives.
At some point, we have to ask: How much access to an athlete are fans actually entitled to?
What happens on the field is obviously fair game. These are professional athletes performing in front of millions of people, and their performances are going to be discussed and criticized. But somewhere along the way, following sports began turning into following every aspect of the people who play them.
Older athletes didn’t necessarily behave better, nor were they immune from criticism. They simply had more opportunities to be human without every mistake, bad performance or questionable moment becoming permanent public evidence.
That should at least be considered when we compare athletes and their reputations across generations.
When Talking to the Media Becomes Part of the Job
There is another part of modern sports coverage that can easily be forgotten: players don’t always get to decide when they want to talk.
Professional leagues have media-access requirements. Players can be required to make themselves available to reporters and potentially face fines when they refuse to participate. Think about how strange that can be. You could have one of the worst performances of your career, your team could lose a heartbreaking game or you could be dealing with something difficult in your personal life. Then shortly afterward, microphones and cameras are in your face asking you to explain everything.
Perhaps nobody captured the absurdity of that relationship better than Marshawn Lynch. Before Super Bowl XLIX, Lynch appeared at media availability and repeatedly gave essentially the same explanation: “I’m just here so I won’t get fined.”
It became one of the most recognizable sports memes of its era, and people still reference it today. It was hilarious, but underneath the joke was a legitimate point. Lynch clearly wasn’t interested in participating in the media circus. He was there because it was required of him, so he fulfilled the obligation in perhaps the most Marshawn Lynch way imaginable.
It raises an interesting question: Athletes signed up to play professional sports. How much media access should automatically come with that?
There is obviously a reasonable amount. Media coverage helps generate the enormous interest that ultimately helps athletes earn the money they do. But there should still be a line between covering someone’s career and feeling entitled to constant access to the person behind it.
The Never-Ending Sports Debate
Then we get to something EST itself participates in: sports debate.
There have always been fans arguing about sports. That’s part of what makes being a fan so much fun. But the scale today is completely different. We have television shows, websites, podcasts, YouTube channels and social-media accounts constantly discussing who the five best players are, who the GOAT is, how someone performed last night, whether a quarterback is elite, whose legacy was hurt by a loss and who deserves the blame.
There is always another question to answer. And to be completely fair, we do it here too. EST ranks players, evaluates performances and gives opinions. I obviously enjoy sports debate or this website wouldn’t exist.
The problem isn’t discussing sports. The problem can be how quickly discussion turns into overreaction.
A superstar can play terribly on Tuesday night and by Wednesday morning there can be television segments, articles, podcasts, videos and thousands of social-media posts discussing what one performance supposedly means for his entire career. Then he dominates two nights later and suddenly the entire conversation changes again.
We have reached a point where seemingly every game needs to tell us something bigger. A loss can’t simply be a loss; someone’s legacy has to be damaged. A great game can’t simply be a great game; someone has to become the best player in the world. Every victory needs someone to crown and every defeat needs someone to blame.
Sometimes we analyze sports so much that we forget to enjoy sports.
So, Has Media Helped or Hurt Sports?
Overall, I think the answer has to be helped. The benefits are simply too enormous to ignore. Media has helped turn sports into the global entertainment industry we have today. Fans can follow teams from the other side of the world, athletes can communicate directly with their audiences, and players can build personal brands worth millions of dollars. We have access to games, highlights, statistics, interviews and analysis whenever we want them.
I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to a world where following your favorite team meant waiting until tomorrow morning to read about the game in a newspaper. But while I believe media has helped sports, I also believe certain aspects of the coverage need to be toned down.
There should still be parts of an athlete’s life that don’t automatically become public information simply because that person happens to play professional sports. An athlete is visibly upset walking out of the stadium after a loss. Do we really need a story analyzing his mood? An athlete becomes a parent. Is that something the entire sports world needs to know about unless the athlete chooses to share it? Someone experiences the death of a family member or another difficult moment in their personal life. Does that automatically need to become sports content?
At some point, there has to be a distinction between covering an athlete and invading an athlete’s life.
What happens on the field should absolutely be discussed. If someone plays terribly, fans and media are going to criticize the performance. If someone plays incredibly, we’re going to celebrate it. That’s sports. But athletes are still people, and being famous shouldn’t mean that every moment of their lives suddenly belongs to the public.
The same goes for the endless analysis of their performances. Debate is part of what makes sports fun — this website wouldn’t exist if I didn’t believe that. But we don’t need every bad game to become a discussion about someone’s legacy or every facial expression after a loss to become evidence that something is wrong. Sometimes a player had a bad game. Sometimes they’re frustrated. Sometimes something happening in their personal life simply isn’t our business.
So yes, media has helped sports tremendously. I wouldn’t want sports without it. But I also think we’ve reached a point where less access in certain areas might actually be better.
Cover the games. Debate the players. Tell the stories. Give fans access. But every once in a while, put the camera down and let athletes be human.
Media has undoubtedly helped sports.
Maybe now we just need to get better at knowing when enough coverage is enough.
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