This is what we have seen with the recent and ongoing
stories of Lance Armstrong, Manti Te’o, and Ray Lewis. These athletes offer an interesting case
study on sports media coverage.
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Lance Armstrong
Armstrong’s fall is one of the biggest falls from grace that
we have ever seen in American sports possibly even the biggest. He was on top of the world and could
seemingly do no wrong. Going out on top
of his cycling career and starting one of the most successful cancer research
foundations may not even overtake the accomplishment of inspiring so many to
continue on through the battle of their lives.
His story was one that nobody could ever pass up. Cancer survivor. Best cyclist on the planet for a sustained
period of time. A clean cyclist in a dirty
sport. Inspiration to many. Raising money to help those he has
inspired. Basically, if you could make
up one of the best sporting stories ever, you may not be able to top what
Armstrong did.
Then it all came crashing down, as we know. The lying.
The doping. The intimidation. The Oprah interview. Amazingly enough, this may not even rock
bottom. There could be lawsuits and lots
of money to be paid.
Armstrong’s fall from grace is so interesting (to me personally at least) because even
with all of the lies and cheating that are now known to be true, some people do
not care. Patients that were battling
cancer during Armstrong’s inspiring run do not care. They know him for what he was to them at the
time of the battle. He helped them and
there is no taking it back.
What could have changed this situation? Hindsight is 20/20, but if you take the halo
off of Armstrong during these times, then things begin to look a little
different. Writers and reporters have
been writing stories based on this since October when he gave up his fight with
the investigation. Things seemed so
perfect at the time because so much was ignored. Even though we cannot turn back time, we can
do something to change the future. If
something does not seem right, then maybe it is not.
Manti Te’o
As details about this incident continue to come out and even
the details that are out are a bit fuzzy, I am baffled. I am baffled at the incident. Sure everybody was caught off-guard with the
findings that Te’o’s “girlfriend” was never real. But was the media coverage of it not a bit excessive?
Of course writers like SportsIllustrated’s Pete Thamel did not have the thought to check on this and
rightfully so. Who would? There has to be some sort of trust between
athletes, the media, and the public. If
writers had to sit around and fact check whether or not girlfriends actually
exist, then writers would be coming out with maybe two stories per year.
The Te’o story should not discourage writers from writing
about human-interest, off-field stories.
As dangerous as it may be, the public wants their athletes to be placed
on the pedestal. They want to worship
these guys. However, now we know what we
get when we worship 21 year old athletes… Fake girlfriends and a good lesson on
how to use apostrophes.
Ray Lewis
Lewis’s story is an interesting one because his falling out
happened before his rise to greatness.
This gives Lewis’s media praise a unique spin: do I feel right openly
rooting for a man that may be connected to a murder?
I understand that some of the public disdain for Lewis and
his antics may be racially charged.
Regardless of race, I find it tough to read about the new and improved
Ray Lewis now about a dozen years after the incident.
This whole deal makes me think of the issue with steroids in
baseball. A guy like Alex Rodriguez
cannot much without his past steroid use coming back to haunt him. Oh, A-Rod is having a great season, so he
must be back on the juice. Oh, A-Rod is
hurt again, so it must be those steroids finally catching up to him.
But do something outside of the sport like Lewis and his
alleged involvement in a murder, and see how quickly many people forget. (I am
generalizing here. I was about 10 years
old when Ray Lewis had his incident and I still remember it, so I’m sure many
others do as well.).
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I liken it all to a relationship if the person you are/were with cheated on you. You trusted them throughout the relationship (in theory at least), then without your knowledge they did something to hurt you. Maybe they start to act differently, maybe the people around them start to act differently, but you don't notice because you blindly trust them. Then it all either hits you one day or they confess. You start to look back at it all and then in hindsight you realize all of the signs. That is what we are all doing now on these three stories.
These stories are stories that require a high duty of care
and attention to detail. They are not
easy stories to cover and report on. The
best thing to do is to take the lessons learned from these stories and use them
to make the future better. Just because a writer was lied to (read: cheated on), does not mean that the writer should never write highly about an athlete again (read: fall in love). But you can be damn sure that that writer will be extra cautious the next time. Great sports
writing makes athletes seem like more than humans, but it is important to
always remember that athletes are in fact humans.
Follow Kevin Rossi on Twitter @kevin_rossi.
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