Need to Know

My name is Mark, and I'm an ESPN addict.  I turn Sportscenter on in the morning when I'm eating breakfast and drinking coffee, I turn it on in the afternoon while I'm making dinner for Around the Horn and PTI.  My wife laughs at me because I will sometimes sit through the same story twice, and then I kind of have to admit that I'm not actually paying that much attention to it, it's just on in the background, because I kind of feel comforted, and very sporadically interested in what's going on.  I mean some of the stuff is interesting, and the highlights are cool, but I could really care less if he Milwaukee Brewers just signed their shortstop to a contract worth more money than I will ever even see in my lifetime.
I would like to tell you that, as a practitioner of organized religion, I'm just studying the competition, but the cold fact of it is, I'm probably as soothed and comforted by listening to muscled men and surly coaches mumble platitudes to grovelling reporters as any Joe Football Fan out there.
And then came Marshawn Lynch, an Isrealite in whom there is no deceit.  Lynch is the running back for the Super Bowl Champion and two time NFC Champion Seattle Seahawks.  He is by all accounts, a really great teammate and he is an absolutely phenomenal athlete, but Marshawn doesn't like to talk to reporters, and Marshawn has never liked to talk to reporters, and Marshawn has been fined by the No Fun League on several occasions for not talking to reporters.  Depending on who you are, Marshawn's defiance of the NFLs media policy, either rubs you the wrong way or it makes you like the big guy even more.
It's his job to play football, and of course, if you want to get paid millions of dollars to play a game, you need to recognize that TV is the big reason why that's a possibility.  Before TV, football players had to have regular jobs during the week.  But there are plenty of guys who will do just about anything to get themselves on the screen, like Richard Sherman, who is articulate and funny and not at all shy, who can give us out there in TV land something to talk about.
Then you have others, like Bill Belichick who will stand in front of reporters for the required interval, but actually not say anything.  This is the large majority of player and coach interview content: "yeah, we're doing our best, yeah we just need to focus, yeah it's going to be a tough game, yeah we need to put the past behind us....blah, blah, blah."
And this is why I appreciate what Marshawn is up to this week.  He shows up for his required media time and says nothing but, "I'm just here so I won't get fined," and the next day, "You all know why I'm here."  In response to every question.  And to be honest he tells me every bit as much about the drama of sports as many of the more sincere, but quite frankly dull, interviewees.
He's shining a light, and I suspect it may be at least a bit consciously, on the theater of the absurd that major sports have become in this country.  He clearly thinks that his job is to carry a football down the field, to run over defenders and help his team win, and all of the other stuff is ancillary and unnecessary trappings of becoming a public figure, which he has little desire to do.
Some people thought Marshawn was somehow disabled at first, that he was painfully shy or had some expression of autism, but it turns out, that's not really the case, he is able to speak and even appear in commercials that mock his stoic media persona.  It turns out that he just finds the questions that reporters ask to be stupid and empty and a waste of time, and let's face it journalism in general is kind of on a low ebb, thanks in large part to the nature of the television medium and the evolution of an audience that craves soundbites and disdains nuance.
I'm inclined to see Marshawn Lynch as social commentary.  The fact that he probably doesn't want that is actually part of the point.  Our culture fixates on heroes and extraordinary feats, which leads us inevitably to idolatry.  Heck, we even flat out call these top athletes of ours idols and icons.  It actually does my heart good to see one of them resist the machine that wants to make him into golden calf.  It's as much his defiance of the system, which has proven to be a bit corrupt of late, as it is his calm but comical methodology that makes me want to cheer for Marshawn.
I need to cheer for something, I mean, it's the Seahawks versus the Patriots in the Superbowl.  I think Marshawn versus the NFL and their Media hordes is much more compelling.