The most important facet of the Charissa Thompson semi-scandal is the one being talked about least.
The Fox Sports host admitted on a recent podcast that, as an NFL sideline reporter in the late 2000s, she sometimes made up quotes when the head coach or player she was supposed to interview blew her off or was late. Her admission brought on gales of criticism, especially from female reporters who were concerned that her lack of journalistic integrity would reverse gains they had made in a male-dominated profession.
Fair enough. No one who calls themselves a reporter would condone what Thompson claimed she did.
But what didn’t happen after she fabricated the quotes says everything you need to know about the painfully predictable interviews the networks keep shoving down our throats. Apparently, no one noticed.
Not the head coaches or players who had words put in their mouths.
Not the NFL, which only cares about ratings.
And certainly not those viewers who were used to getting very little meaningful information from sideline reporters. Which is to say most viewers.
All of this might seem odd if you were looking at the situation from a distance. No matter the circumstances, a reporter making up quotes is outrageous. Surely an NFL head coach, the maximum leader of a not-insignificant fiefdom, would be furious, right? But closer inspection reveals the unspoken agreement between professional sports leagues and the networks that televise their games:
The coaches and players will pretend they’re saying something of substance, and the reporters will relay that ‘‘information’’ as though it were 1971 and they just had gotten hold of the Pentagon Papers.
The truth is that the person being interviewed usually says nothing that resembles news or requires brain activity.
That’s how Thompson could get away with making up quotes.
‘‘No coach is gonna get mad if I say, ‘Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves, we need to be better on third down, we need to stop turning the ball over and do a better job of getting off the field,’ ’’ she said on the ‘‘Pardon My Take’’ podcast. ‘‘Like, they’re not gonna correct me on that. I’m like, ‘It’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.’ ’’
The faux quotes she offered in the podcast are exactly the type of things we hear coaches say when they talk with sideline reporters at halftime. The type of things that make a coma sound inviting to a viewer.
What we never hear coaches say to a reporter on the way to the locker room:
‘‘About 100 pounds of lard apparently has settled in our left tackle’s butt. He’s going to get our quarterback killed.’’
‘‘Hard to be a genius when you don’t have Tom Brady, isn’t it, Bill?’’
‘‘We’re going to run the ball right down their throats in the second half. Extensive scouting has revealed that they don’t know how to tackle.’’’
The say-nothing approach to interviews is not the NFL’s exclusive property. The in-game Q&A’s with NBA coaches are just as excruciating. The only exception is Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who enjoys being a jerk to whichever poor soul is given the task of interviewing him. That passes as entertainment these days.
The concept of coaches imparting wisdom during games sounds good in theory, but it was doomed from the start. Coaches, from time immemorial, have looked at opening their mouths publicly as a trap. They don’t want to say anything that gives the other team an advantage or motivation. They don’t want to say anything that can get them in trouble. So they whisper bland, unsweetened nothings. And they tell their players to follow suit.
That’s how a sideline reporter can make up a lifeless quote about the need to reduce mistakes without anyone blinking. I hear Bears coach Matt Eberflus say that sort of thing in my sleep.
There’s no high horse here. It’s not just sideline reporters; it’s all of us. News conferences have become exercises in coaches and players saying as little as possible, with public-relations staffs working hard to make sure the sessions are as short as possible. But at least there’s a chance for reporters to press coaches and athletes when they give non-answers.
Sideline reporters nod their heads when coaches tell them at halftime that ‘‘we need to pay more attention to detail.’’ Then the reporters say, ‘‘And now back to Joe and Troy in the booth.’’
The humane thing (for us) would be for these interviews to go away. The only purpose they serve is to prove that, thanks to paying billions of dollars, the networks have access that most reporters don’t. A sideline reporter gets to tell the audience that a coach or player ‘‘told me,’’ as though the act of communicating — and not the information — were the whole ballgame.
Breaking news: It isn’t.
