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The Problem is on The Field, Not The Locker Room
Oct 22, 2008, 9:52:52 AM by Rufus Dawes - FAQ

The word “distraction,” one bandied about these last couple of weeks to describe the mindset of the Chiefs locker room, is one of those puffy dumplings of words that tumble together in jumbles of blather when media, confronted by events and the need to put something on paper or find an hour of talk, turn on their spigots of sententiousness.

Columnist Jonathan Rand’s funny scene-setting of an everyday workplace suddenly infested with prying-like sports media strikes the right tone. (See Another Day at the Office) While I have never frequented a single professional locker room and it’s doubtful many in our reading audience have either, I still wonder if it is even half as raucous or openly emotional as has been depicted by some of the local Kansas City media in the past week. I mean, the players are free to talk to reporters without, ahem, “preconditions” aren’t they, so show us some of that distraction won’t you? But seriously, with the losses piling up, would any Chiefs player feel anything other than numbness at this point? To my mind, and no doubt to those who occupy the many lockers of the Chiefs new locker room, the word “distraction” is absurdly hyperbolic and suggest that the media are trying to talk themselves into a pitch of passion that even they must know is disproportionate.

While we can be sure that there is plenty to distract the Kansas City media from what is going on when the team takes the actual playing field – player misconduct, a superstar’s displeasure - we cannot be sure that it in any way effects what takes place when the local scribes enter the room of towels and steamy showers. The camera distorts and more often the daily news follows a storyline that while familiar to anyone who even peruses a newspaper or is so foolish to watch a certain news reader on television may not necessarily be entirely truthful at the time of reporting.

I say this not to dismiss some of the issues that surround this Chiefs team. Indeed, some are troubling and do no favors for a franchise already experiencing more than its share of troubles on the field. But Rand and fellow columnist Bob Gretz have been in plenty of locker rooms as long-time reporters and if they find the tailspin the Chiefs are currently in to have little carry-over to what takes place there, that’s good enough for me. While they both work for this Web site, one sponsored by the Chiefs organization, that does not mean they are somehow lacking in integrity. In short, they know exaggeration when they see it. Besides, they haven’t been exactly bashful in telling the grim story of the 2008 season so far but it doesn’t have anything to do with locker room upheaval. (Gretz wrote that as of the latest loss to Tennessee, “the Chiefs have no redeeming quality as a team.”)

But even if we were to believe that those players in the locker room are in as much disarray as some – mind you, not all — media contend, do you suppose they would show it? Nevertheless, the media bring it to you anyway convinced, no doubt, that the players are merely hiding their emotions and all the towel-slapping, kidding around and boisterous laughing and heckling Gretz* reported in his missive of a year ago when similar stories were implied, are all just a front for what they are really “feeling.”

The media’s willingness to believe that a losing football team engenders an angry, upset locker room has much to do with the foundations of a contemporary media culture that is represented in such frivolous and ridiculous television series’ as ESPN’s Playmakers. It fits perfectly the paradigm of losing begets upheaval which it is the media’s job to expose. It helps to sell their stories, as if they are in a position to mine the real feelings that lie beneath the increasingly bland and featureless landscape of public utterances coming from players as they go about fulfilling their league required interviews while they’re pulling off their pants.

Just as there is no such thing as true objectivity in the media, so there is no such thing as a true feeling in public, since the act of making it public is a distortion. While the truth about the condition of a team’s locker room ought to be a proper journalistic exercise, those intoxicated with their belief in the authenticity are terribly credulous in assuming that the glimpses of a player’s outlook on anything as he dresses and undresses is reality. Quite the contrary, it is a “distraction” from reality. The true “reality,” sad to say and far from a good one, is what is taking place on the field of play not the locker room.