Rory McIlroy refused to talk to the press at the PGA Championship last month.Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
At last week’s PGA Championship, Rory McIlroy got angry at reporters because they were reporting.
The source of his irritation was a leaked story that the driver he intended to use in competition was ruled ineligible. He used another driver instead. Someone told that to the media, and the media ran it.
In retaliation, McIlroy refused to speak to the press after any of his rounds, robbing humanity of a bunch of quotes about how sure he was that he would be better tomorrow (McIlroy finished tied for 47th). He waited until he’d arrived at the Canadian Open to address it.
“If we all wanted to, we could all bypass [the media], and we could go on social media and we could talk about our round and do it our own way,” McIlroy told (probably the same bunch of) reporters. “We understand that that’s not ideal for you guys, and there’s a bigger dynamic at play here.”
Really? What is it?
McIlroy misunderstands the system in which he exists in the same way most modern athletes do. He thinks it’s set up against him. Maybe that’s the dynamic he’s referring to.
Cathal Kelly: Clumsily, perfectly, Rory McIlroy rewrites the story of his golfing life
In actuality, it’s been carefully designed to service him. It’s purpose built to make him monstrously rich and famous, while also shielding him from criticism.
A week ago, I watched a YouTube clip of a 1985 CBC report on what’s gone wrong with the Toronto Maple Leafs (cue laugh track). The host is Dave Hodge. He looks about 17 years old in it.
Nothing about the Leafs has changed, but everything about sports journalism has.
In the piece, defenceman Jim Korn – a minor cog on that team – explains how Toronto captain Rick Vaive freaked out on a couple of guys because they threw their jerseys on the ground after a game. Then Vaive comes on and rips them all over again, calling several unnamed (but not hard to figure out) teammates “lazy” and “not mature.”
This is what it used to be like – athletes who wanted people to know what was going on; athletes who were interesting to listen to. They were salesmen of the game when that still mattered.
In the following decades, sports franchises ballooned from successful local concerns to global conglomerates, so that had to stop. The answer – more access, but less useful access.
Sitting around chatting with people one on one would be discouraged. Instead, the players would appear at regular intervals and address a group.
Imagine yourself gabbing with a guy sitting next to you at a bar, and then imagine yourself addressing a half-dozen cameras. That’s the difference.
The scrum killed off the charismatic athlete, but it created a protected habitat for the rest of them.
McIlroy addressed his refusal to speak with media at the Canadian Open.Peter Power/The Canadian Press
Everybody knows what to say in a scrum. Anybody who’s watched a few could recite the lines by heart. Many of the players do exactly that. You can see them mentally cycling through their Rolodex of go-to lines, and usually landing on, “It is what it is.”
Once in a blue moon, a rhetorical crumb will fall (e.g. Auston Matthews and “too many passengers”), so you can’t skip them altogether.
Scrums and pressers make everyone tame – the players, the media, the conversation that follows. They blanket the entire operation in banality. Same guys, same questions, same stories. The point is that the content should never stop being produced. Hollywood wishes it had come up with this model. Bank presidents ought to copy it.
Simply appearing on TV endears you to people. It’s hard to dislike someone you’ve met a few times. In today’s world, where everyone’s afraid of strangers, a friendship mediated by a screen can feel real.
Another benefit of doing it this way is that it gives the impression that the athletes are being held to account. The fans are angry. They paid very little money to watch this at home on their couch and their team did not succeed, so someone should suffer. That suffering comes on the other side of, “So what happened out there tonight?”
The answer is almost never revealing. The idea that you’d get a Jim Korn offering up hot clubhouse goss because someone bothered to ask him is unthinkable today.
Canada’s go-to guy for PGA-level golf course renovations likes to reward boldness
The point is to kill them with repetition. Discourage originality. Bring everyone into the hive. We are all here trying to achieve the same goal – making the PGA/NHL/NBA etc. a ubiquitous media presence and increase its reach.
If McIlroy thinks this can be waved away by the players whenever they like, he’s not as smart as I’d thought. You could remove all the reporters working for independent outlets from that room and they’d be replaced by twice as many hired by the PGA and its broadcast partners. The daily churn is eternal.
So when McIlory refuses to do media, that’s a story – a far more interesting one than whatever he intended to say in the presser that never was. When he says he doesn’t need the media, that’s a story.
He could try telling these stories himself, but it’s a big hassle. Once you start, you can’t stop because today’s story isn’t one you feel like telling. Because then that’s a story.
Once he’s pushed the media outside the big tent, they go from his fair-weather friend to his legitimate enemy.
Occasionally, politicians will try to blockade the press. It never works. Only Donald Trump gets it – that the more you talk to the press, the less dangerous they become.
There is a world in which McIlroy and his colleagues never have to be bothered by the media. It’s the one where they’ve aged or injured themselves out of the game and been replaced by a younger model.
Just about every athlete gets there eventually. No one buttonholes them any more. No one’s interested in what they have to say. Those are the guys that make the best interviews.