media

In response to the sport and politics white paper Kyle Green and I recently wrote for this site, ThickCulture writer and loyal friend of TSP Andrew Linder emailed to suggest that although Barack Obama is obviously not the first “sports president,” he may be the first “ESPN President” or “SportsCenter President.” Andrew’s point (now up on ThickCulture as a more fleshed out post—jinx!) was that, although ESPN had become a cultural fixture under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama represented the core network demographic in its first two decades of its existence and it seems to have been formative for him. To the extent that ESPN has transformed sporting culture, then, Obama is the first President to be fully fashioned in and through that new culture.

This seemed plausible enough—and was definitely borne out in a recent interview the President gave to the star sportswriter/reporter Bill Simmons. At least two things about the interview should be pointed out. The first is why Obama chose this particular venue and reporter: “Simmons,” as one report put it, “is revered by the under-30 crowd” and “has more than 1 million—1,642, 522 to be exact—Twitter followers.” Indeed, his “B.S. Report” podcast, on which the Obama interview originally appeared, is said to be one of the most downloaded podcasts on the web.  The second point is how this interview and exchange reveals what a great fan of sports and sports talk our President actually is.

Not only is his obsession with ESPN’s SportsCenter evident, Obama shows himself to be an extremely knowledgeable sports fan, gifted in the arts of sports talk and debate. Talking with Simmons, the President riffs on Linsanity (claiming to have been on the bandwagon early) and the joys and challenges of coaching his daughters, argues about the best NBA teams and players of all time (MJ and the Bulls figure prominently), revisits his vision for a college football playoff, and waxes poetic about his philosophies on sportsmanship and scoring in golf. Obama even brags a bit about the “solid” crossover move he threw on NBA All-Star point guard Chris Paul in a summer scrimmage. All this is to say, Obama doesn’t just talk about sports, he’s really talking sports.

Entertaining (and impressive) as I found all of this, I was even more intrigued by a follow-up Washington Post post that explained why the President would take time out of his unbelievably busy schedule to do this interview (as well as other sports related activities such as his sit-down with Matt Lauer during the Superbowl pre-game show in February or his annual NCAA/march madness picks). “Sports,” according to the WSJ, “is a universal language that can bridge ideological, cultural, and socio-economic gaps …you are much more inclined to like people who share that fandom regardless of whether you have anything else in common with them. You feel some sort of connection to them. They speak your (sports) language.”

The piece goes on to speculate that sport may be particularly a particularly important medium (and media outlet) for Obama “whose background—biracial parents, childhood in Hawaii, Harvard Law School, etc.—is somewhat unfamiliar to many of the voters he needs to convince to back him if he wants to win a second term in November.” While talking with sportswriters “isn’t going to convince on-the-fence voters that Obama is one of them,” the writer says, we shouldn’t “forget the connective power that sports holds in the world of politics.” The article concludes: “Obama’s ability to speak the language of sports is a major political plus for him.”

The Society Pages’ wondrous Monte Bute (that’s him, above, flashing the peace sign to the police) was picked by one MPR reporter as his favorite story/interview of the year, and so the reporter has published a quick update from the land-of-Bute: http://oncampus.mpr.org/2011/12/checking-in-with-monte-bute/

If you want to get a little more backstory on this “Backstage Sociologist,” you can check out his TSP blog, his exchange in our last U of M issue of Contexts, or get really modern and just Google him!

Happy new year!

A couple of weeks back, I posted on some of my various dealings with the media as a specialist in sport sociology. I’ve had a few more such experiences over the last few weeks, including two that appeared in Star Tribune stories over the weekend. The first was a fairly somber story in the Sunday Variety section on how sports can provide cover for sexual predators and abusers. That one was a fairly in-depth follow-up on the Penn State interviews I talked about a few weeks back. “Sport in America has always been celebrated for touting high ideals and making great contributions [to society]. Those ideals make it difficult for people in authority to acknowledge and deal with problems that show cracks in their integrity and honor–and that provides a cover for people who are corrupt to take advantage.” I don’t know that I actually said all that in exactly that fashion, but I was gratified to see that the writer had taken our conversation seriously enough not only to quote me but to use my contribution to help situate and frame the entire story.

The other media moment was a much lighter take in the Saturday paper on the challenges of being a fan of a losing team like the Vikings. I’ve had a lot of these kind of interviews in Minnesota over the past few months, so it wasn’t really  hard for me to comment on. But one aspect of the story did remind me of the challenges and risks of being quoted in the public record.

During the interview I told the reporter about a documentary in which I served as a talking head last year. It was called “Skol: The Documentary.” (“Skol, Vikings!” is one of the favorite cheers of fans of the local squad.) I told him how one quote from the documentary ended up being used out of contexts in the publicity materials: “…[Y]ou can change your wife or your religion more easily than you can change your football team.” (To watch the trailer, click the link above)… and, as you might be guessing, here’s how the reporter quoted me in this weekend’s paper: “There have been studies that show it’s easier to change a religion than a football team.”

That line got a lot of laughs from my colleagues and students, and I worried that they were laughing at me more than with me. Indeed, I quickly tried to explain that I thought the quote had been taken out of context–that even in the movie I had really been talking about European football (soccer) and quoting from research and writing out of Europe, and in the paper I was just relating an anecdote about the film.

And about the film, I needn’t have worried. When I finally saw the documentary, the full context of my quote was indeed used. Not only that, my interview was featured prominently throughout the documentary, spliced in to help audiences make sense of the various Vikings fans and fanatics that were the focus of the film. It was actually a fun and rewarding experience. I received great accolades from those in attendance at the “Skol!” premiere (and others since who have seen the film), and I actually feel that the editing of my various quotes and comments gave my thinking more structure, coherence, and focus that I probably exhibited in the interview itself. It just goes to show, you have to put yourself–and your knowledge out there. Occasionally, it won’t work to your advantage, but sometimes it’ll be really gratifying and you’ll feel very much like you’ve done your job.