[chitowneats]

I don't watch sports nearly as much as many other people in my life, though I am interested enough to watch with them when I'm spending time with them.

Serious question for sports fans: do you find the athlete interviews before and after the game all that compelling? Many athletes don't seem interested in doing them and often times they offer a nothingburger response that allows them to get through the interview without having to say too much or expend much emotional energy.

I support Naomi and her decision to call B.S. on this.

[rsj_hn]

One of the reasons why I stopped watching sports was the annoying reporters, broadcasters, and announcers, as well as ridiculous chyrons, graphical effects and general ADD style eye candy constantly thrown at you and also interrupting the flow of the game.

The worst is in the olympics, where they have maybe 100 hours of coverage of which maybe 10 is showing the sport and the rest are various life stories, replete with mood music and weeping parents holding up handwritten signs with clenched fists as Tammy begins her first uneven bar routine.

I might get into sports again if they just showed live sports with zero commentary but good camera work. And I still ocassionally go to a live sports game to, you know, watch the sport without anyone buzzing in my ear.

[sircastor]

I have a friend who has explicitly traveled to Canada to watch the Olympics with her sister because the coverage is so much better than in the US - which is to say it’s mostly just the actual competition.

[csa]

They may also want to consider using a VPN. It makes for a much better Olympic viewing experience, and it can be done with a variety of devices.

[fridif]

Right? Jesus christ! It's like upending your entire life to watch Thai TV in Thailand-- someone will happily beam that data to you anywhere in the world for a fee.

[user-the-name]

Please call this kind of thing "ADD style". ADD is a condition where people find focusing on things extremely hard and are easily distracted. The kind of programming you refer to makes thing much, much harder to watch for people with ADD.

[bsagdiyev]

Anecdote, diagnosed pretty bad adult ADHD. Call it whatever you want, ignore people trying to police your language. Not everyone is offended all the time.

[akudha]

No, I find those interviews shitty and insulting to players. There is no value add.

It is a bit different in combat sports. People like Conor have made this an art form - constantly insulting others, shit talking, talking about money etc. None of this makes any sense, or is useful to elevate sports. It is just disgusting. Just like other shit things in life, there seems to be a market for this.

[rapsey]

This is a very idealistic point of view. At the end of the day sports for viewers is entertainment. Athletes make their money by entertaining the audience. They can do this with their skill only and many do. That however is not a path of making the most out of their career financially.

Fighters are literally going against the clock of getting permanent severe brain damage before they retire need to make as much money as fast as possible. What Connor did is the best move a fighter could do. Be as entertaining as possible, outside the ring and inside. Retire with hundreds of millions.

[akudha]

I agree with everything you said. But we have different opinions about what entertainment is. To me, constantly insulting your opponents is not entertainment.

There is a huge market for this kind of “manufactured drama” junk. As evidenced by Conor like behavior. I guess fans are to blame as they eat it up and encourage it.

To me, the actual sport is the entertainment - whether it is MMA or Scrabble or something in between.

[lovemenot]

Ironically, Osaka is providing the same drama. Rather than shit-talking opponents, she goes up against institutions.

She has also declared a nuanced rejection of IOC's decision to plough-on with Tokyo Olympics, despite +70% of Japanese people being against it.

She's a remarkable person who, if her athletic success continues, will be good for her sport since it will bring in people who care little for tennis but love the attitude.

[chitowneats]

Sure but the drama is over if/when she or the league relents. She's not making drama for entertainment. She's trying to improve her life and the lives of other athletes who are sick of this particular ritual.

[MrMember]

He was one of the highest paid athletes in the world last year and almost none of it (percentage wise anyway) came from fighting.

[dagw]

His last win against an actual decent opponent was in 2016! He's a celebrity and showman now and hasn't taken fighting seriously for years.

[brokenmachine]

He fought Poirier in January and fighting him again on July 10th. Poirier is absolutely top level competition and Conor had him wobbled early.

Also he fought a guy called Nurmagomedov in Oct 2018 who is a sorta ok fighter, good enough to have never lost in 29 fights.

There must be a lot of fighters out there that you don't like if you expect wins over guys of that calibre.

[dagw]

If you go back and check he lost both those fights. He also looked kind of terrible against Poirier, and nothing like the Conor who gave a fuck and took the belt from Eddie Alvarez.

Is he a top 10 fighter in his weight class. Absolutely. Is his paycheck in any way in proportion to a skill as an athlete. Not even close.

[jnsie]

No. Interviews are almost always useless. Best case you get an interviewer asking benign questions and an interviewee provide fluff responses (“it was a team effort”, “we’re ignoring the trophy - we only ever concentrate on the next game”, that kind of thing). Worst case you get malevolent questions aimed at riling then interviewee and resulting in a sound bite. These might be more interesting but are not beneficial to the sport or audience IMHO. In some sports mid game interviews with coaches (during play) and players (at breaks) are becoming a thing. It’s a complete and utter waste and gets my dander up. I watch a ton of sport and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an insightful response to an interview question. Nobody is going to give away their tactics, preparation processes or any other insight that might act as a competitive advantage.

[MrMember]

They're awful. 95% of the time it's stock questions and stock answers. The only time they're entertaining is when it's someone like the Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick. He very clearly hates stupid questions but rarely he'll be asked a good one and have a chance to launch into a detailed discussion on punting in the NFL or some other lesser discussed aspect of the game. Ask him good questions and he'll happily give thoughtful, detailed responses, it just almost never happens.

[paganel]

> do you find the athlete interviews before and after the game all that compelling?

I completely ignore them. I used to find them relatively interesting about 30 years ago, when I first started following sports, but as the time has passed I've begun to realise that the only thing that matters is what happens on the playing field. That's also why I'm really not interested in the private life of athletes.

[edoceo]

My favourite interview quote, about winning: "the secret is to get more points than the other team".

Since hearing that pearl of wisdom in like 1997 I've no more need for these. What could one possibly add?

[wumpus]

The famous comic along those lines: http://vectorbelly.com/electrical177.html

[glandium]

Fun fact: in tennis, you can actually win a match with less points overall.

[hyperbovine]

Ok sets then.

[aidenn0]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KeVca9MwDX8

[approxim8ion]

I'm very deeply invested in football (soccer for my freedom-loving friends). I don't particularly care for athlete interviews, but manager interviews can often be pretty interesting. For example, Marcelo Bielsa can do very interesting tactical deep-dives in pre and post-match interviews. That said, the majority of these interviews are pretty bad. Vacuous reporters chasing headlines or expecting a particular answer and working backwards from that to frame questions. There has been some pushback from players and managers.

An example of this is the UEFA Champions League Final this weekend. The player who scored the winning goal was the club's record signing but he hasn't had a very prolific season in terms of goals and assists (long story, he caught COVID and had a tough recovery, the managers and tactics changed multiple times this season, etc.). Moments after the final whistle, the entire team is celebrating and a journo decides this is a good time to ask "there were questions about your performance and your price tag, do you feel like you have paid it off in full with tonight's goal?" The guy just said "Right now I don't give a fuck, we won the fucking Champions' League."

[paxys]

Sports broadcasting has been going down the gutter over the last couple of decades. The game itself has become an afterthought. Commentators have been replaced by dull celebrities. Analysts only want to create outrage. ESPN and every other network is solely interested in drama between players and pushing a certain narrative.

[robryan]

Mostly useless, same questions and same answers every time. The media is trying to spin some narrative and the players/ coaches just throw out the same old lines.

F1 for example is loaded with media that the drivers are required to participate in. The only real memorable stuff is when something funny happens at the interview or the media drag out some team/ driver conflicts.

[stordoff]

I've watched a fair amount of live cricket and swimming, and it's _very_ rare for me to find the interviews interesting. I might leave them on as background noise or if I'm waiting to see something after them, but I'm not going to seek them out. They feel like a way to fill air time more than anything.

[hellotomyrars]

While it is exceedingly rare (2-5% I would guess, at least in the motorsports I watch), the times when it goes beyond a simple canned response it can be incredibly interesting and compelling. Though I think the dynamic of Motorsports is different than most other sports as you're not going to get the same situations where a driver is being interviewed as they return to the garage from crashing out of the race.

I think ultimately though it's pretty simple math. If you don't have them, you'll never get something good out of them so the small number of them that break the mold justify the whole operation. When you do get something meaningful out of them it usually serves to create drama or fuel whatever narrative is going on in the season.

[wccrawford]

My wife and I watch Sumo wrestling, and I often understand what the wrestler is replying because it's almost always incredibly simple, like, "I was really happy." The questions are almost inevitably like, "How do you feel about winning the whole tournament?"

They add nothing to the sport, except that I get to laugh that they say the same things as every other competitor.

Reading the comments here, I understand why. If they say anything else, they risk saying something that offends accidentally and it could hurt their career.

So I've got a lot of sympathy for the players here, and not much at all for the industry.

[maybelsyrup]

I've long said to anyone who'll listen that there should be an alternate audio channel a la "En espanol en SAP", but instead of another pair of announcers calling the game in another language, it's no announcers at all, and it's just the sounds of the game and the crowd. No commentary. Sports-spectacle is atrocious and ruins most games.

[bsder]

> Serious question for sports fans: do you find the athlete interviews before and after the game all that compelling? Many athletes don't seem interested in doing them and often times they offer a nothingburger response that allows them to get through the interview without having to say too much or expend much emotional energy.

Reference: Bull Durham

[gorgoiler]

The pitch side TV 1:1s are good. The press conferences are universally abysmal. I would not be surprised if an enormous part of it is just to get an athlete head-and-shoulders shot with the Gazprom logo in the background.

[JackFr]

95 times out of 100 the interview is simply robotic repetition of the same cliches. You watch the interview for the other 5 times when you sometimes do gain greater exposure or understanding through an emotional or unguarded moment.

This is not BS. This is part and parcel of the job she has signed on for. Apparently she finds it very unpleasant, but that doesn’t make it any less an obligation of her job.

[riffraff]

They're mostly useless, but sometimes something interesting happens.

This is generally true of sports commentary too.

[kaczordon]

Or maybe she should have responded when they reached out to see what they could do to accommodate her. Throwing a tantrum should absolutely be punished.