#18 How Sports Podcasts Ruined American Sports
I want to detail how podcasts have been impacting the American sports world.
This article might seem negative but it has to be said. Sports are a big part of American culture the same way content is. With that being said, here’s a breakdown of how podcasts have ruined American Sports.
Regular Season Don’t Matter
First of all, we don't talk about regular seasons like they matter anymore. Whether you look at football players or basketball players, we don't talk about what they do in the season, like if they don't perform in the playoffs, we trash 'em. But if this player is really, really well and he's efficient, needs productive during the regular season, we just ignore that completely.
And I don't think that that makes any sense. And I think the problem is we have a lot of people that are creating content on podcasts and stuff that don't know what it takes to put in that work to be in a season. Not even at the high school level or the college level. Like a lot of these people that create this content, that push these narratives about these players have never once themselves been on a court or a field.
It is true that you can talk about sports if you've never played a sport, but your perspective will be vastly different if you've played a sport. And I believe this to be true at any level, whether you've been on a team in high school, or you played in college. I don't care if you play D3 in college, you still understand what it's like to be in a locker room to go through injuries, to deal with good coaches, bad coaches, the culture of sports and travel, everything that comes with being on a team, in a team setting. And I believe that most of the people creating this kind of content now have never been in that setting. So they lack perspective. And if you've had that experience, you have a different perspective. That's my point.
Sports Individualism
Every debate and conversation you see is about who's a top player and who's not. I can speak for every sports fan out there. I'm sure we are tired of the LeBron versus Jordan debate. At this point it is dead. Y'all have talked about it nonstop for so long.
I was producing and hosting a sports podcast in like 2015, right back when sports podcasts were really starting to take off. And during that time we did have those conversations, but me and my shows, I really focused on more of the sports and the teams and stuff, the togetherness.
Now, if you look at First Take and all these different platforms, all they talk about is the individual inside of a team sport. And it doesn't make any sense because we're not highlighting the actual team. We don't talk about the other players and other people that contribute to these sports.
I know this is gonna sound crazy to a lot of people. This is like a controversial opinion. So brace yourself.
I think we should give more spotlight to offensive linemen, not just the quarterback or the running back, because without the O linemen, can anybody else on offense do anything? No, they cannot.
So I think offensive linemen need more respect. Let's be honest, they don't get enough highlights. Name five offensive linemen right now. I bet you couldn't. But you can name five quarterbacks.
That's my point is we need to give more of the right people the spotlight if we're gonna go to an individual path and we have to stop with the repetitive arguments.
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The AAU Problem
I saw a video a couple of weeks ago where it was like an AAU tournament, and it was these kids that were like eight and nine years old, and they got the kids mic’d up and the kids are celebrating every bucket with the head tops and flexing on people after every bucket.
Now, don't get me wrong, is celebration okay? Yes. In modesty. Do you need to walk around celebrating after every move you do? No. You do not. And it's just sad to see that that's what sports have come to. Well, if you look at a lot of the 7-on-7 tournaments in football, it's the same energy from these young kids where kids aren't even focusing on getting better at the sport.
They want to get a highlight and then get attention. And I know I sound like the crazy old head with “get off my porch” energy. I know. But again, look at how many of these kids go viral, get mix tapes, get all of this spotlight, get all of these followers and then disappear. I wrote about this in about 2016, that AAU culture was just negative for sports overall.
And this is what it's turning into it's more of a show. It's not about you building the skills, building the habits to become a professional at what you do. It's about getting the most attention. And I do blame ball is life and those other platforms because they literally go to these kids to highlight them and put 'em on these platforms and stuff and give 'em attention. And they say, “we're helping 'em get recruited.” Then they go and make really good money from them, from the YouTube ads, and sell 'em the products and all that stuff.
They blow a kid’s head up and make him extremely confident without having learned anything. Then when that kid gets to college and he has to follow some structure, and I'm not saying every college coach is good, but you have to follow that structure for at least a year to get to the NBA really.
We don't even put any emphasis on the right selection of schools for the kids. It's just about what, what's gonna get you the most attention? What's gonna get you the biggest look? And because you pumped this kid's head up for years, he gets to college and he gotta sit down and listen to somebody.
Then what happens? He wants to transfer. Next thing you know, the kid is going to three or four different schools and he's trying to go and, get in the draft and he goes undrafted. Then he ends up overseas. Now, five years later, after you put him on your YouTube channel so he can blow up, this kid is in LA Fitness killing people ready to fight everybody because he is mad at the world.
How do we fix it?
We have to change priorities. The content we create can’t be centered around getting clicks. And we have to be conscious of the content and how it will impact someone else. Criticism is great and important but there are certain lines that can’t be crossed. Let’s be more responsible about the content we’re creating and our long-term impact.
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