NFL Reporters Should Have To Get Undressed In Locker Room With Players If They Want To Keep Doing Interviews In There
Michael Zagaris. Getty Images.The Times -- For decades, reporters covering American football have had the right to roam through team locker rooms after games, requesting interviews midway through their ablutions.
Now this long-treasured prerogative may be in danger. The union representing players in the National Football League has called for “immediate changes” to what it now regards as an “outdated policy”.“Players feel that locker-room interviews invade their privacy and are uncomfortable,” its executive committee said in a statement.
The union, the NFL Players Association, called for alterations that would “foster a more respectful and safer workplace for all players”.
The NFL Players Association has been working this year to finally get journalists out of the locker room. Personally, I've never understood the need of getting quotes from the locker room. It always seemed to me like that was what the post game press conferences were for. But these journos love waddling into the locker room after each game because that's what they really get off on. Not necessarily quotes that will have very little to no impact on anything that happened from the game, but just the access itself. If there's one thing journalists truly love, it's access.
The players aren't necessarily pumped about seeing some 65-year-old dude just wandering around aimlessly in the locker room while they're trying to shower after a heartbreaking 41-33 loss. They, like most people with a brain, don't understand the need for journalists to be in the locker room. Especially when some of them are "straight meat watchers".
For me, even the thought of being labeled as a "meat watcher" would make me want to avoid NFL locker rooms like the plague. But public shame and ridicule doesn't work on most journalists, because most journalists are hated enough already. You want to call them a "straight meat watcher"? They'll wear that like a badge of honor.
So there's really only one way to get the change that the NFL Players Association is seeking--if journalists want to conduct interviews in the locker room, then they themselves need to be getting undressed as well. Like, for example, David Njoku shouldn't have to do an interview in his underwear if everyone else around him is dressed in business casual.
You want to conduct this interview with David Njoku? Your ass better be down to your skimpies. It's the only way that's fair. If the journalists are uncomfortable with that, then maybe they could see why the athletes don't love it. Obviously there are going to be a few freaks in the media who wouldn't mind it. Heck, they might even like it even more that way. But fair is fair. You shouldn't be able to interview a dude in his underwear while you're wearing a suit. If you're cut out for the job, you'll get down to your boxers with him. Straight meat watcher or not.
Anyway, that's just a simple solution from your good pal Jordie. I see a problem in the world, I just want to try my best to solve it. It's in my nature, I suppose.