Music to listen to: Eunuch Provocateur by The Mars Volta
I’m a sucker for celebrity gossip. I usually go to two or three Web sites daily to check up on the latest actions in the Hollywood. I make sure to watch the TMZ television show every evening at 7:30 pm or if I miss it, I go online the next day to catch it. I know that I should be watching the news or learning something informative but I like the distractions after a long day.
I also enjoy morning news shows. Whether it’s the Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, Daily Buzz, it doesn’t matter. If I’m in the house on a weekday morning, I like to get my fill of the latest happenings in the world as well as know how to save my money, check my health and learn how to make an apple pie, all on one show. You can’t beat that.
However, I also enjoy sports. There’s a winner, a loser and the spirit of competition. Sure there are back stories about the participants that adds more drama to the event but in the end, it’s a game with a tangible result.
So why am I intrigued by the Brett Farve/Jenn Sterger situation?
For those of you who are outside of the loop, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Farve has been accused of sending inappropriate voice mails and photos to several New York Jets employees while he was on that team two years ago. One of those employees was Jenn Sterger, who worked for the Jets in a media capacity and is currently on a national television sports show on Versus.
Sports media Web site Deadspin broke the story and the link to the story is here. On that site, you can play the video with the voicemails and the photos which has nudity. Just fair warning.
This isn’t the first or last time that an athlete or any public figure will be accused of this type of behavior but there are six circumstances that come into play.
1) Farve has become one of the most iconic figures in all of sports. He’s broken numerous career passing records, won a Super Bowl, showed tremendous grit over the years, overcame a drug addiction that nearly derailed his career and will go down as one of the greatest players ever in his position. However…
2) He’s a polarizing figure. The sports media’s over-analysis of his career moves, particularly his continual “retirements” and returns to action each of the past three years has made many fans either tired of hearing about him or respect the now 41-year old for continuing to play. Its hard to find someone who is neutral on him.
3) Farve’s been presented as a family man who you can trust. His wife is a known figure and she has even published a book about their relationship that sold very well, I believe even becoming a New York Times best seller. I’ve heard of some stuff that Farve may have gotten into off the field women-wise because I work in the sports industry and things are said but I haven’t had any proof of it or really sought it. The point is that the majority of people know Farve as the married man who loves football and his family.
4) The other person in the situation isn’t an unknown office employee for a sports team. Sterger first came to fame as a spectator at Florida State football games and ultimately has turned that into writing positions over the years at various sports vehicles including Sports Illustrated and now Versus. Furthermore, she has posed for Playboy and is attractive. Which brings us to…
5) People don’t know how to view Sterger, similar to the way that some had questions about Erin Andrews last year when she had her issue of being videotaped nude in her private hotel room. Both of those women have high profile sports media positions that includes the attribute of looking attractive to the mostly male viewers. Some, including female sports journalists, have stated that Sterger and Andrews put themselves in their current positions because of how they look and approach their jobs.
So when you add all of that together, you have situations like me viewing Good Morning America on Monday and the lead story being Brett Farve.
While I stated that I like celebrity gossip, morning news shows and sports, if they cross paths, that’s not usually a good sign.
Farve’s name is big enough to garner the lead story on all three of the major networks morning shows. I went to NBC, CBS and ABC at the same time and saw the same coverage. I already knew of the Farve story and neither of the shows were shedding any new information.
The story was that the story was a story to get national coverage, which brings me to my final circumstance…
6) The NFL, particularly commissioner Roger Goddell, has taken a major stance against negative player conduct in the past few years. Some of the players that have been suspended for getting in trouble off the field have been Adam Jones, Tank Williams, Mike Vick and recently Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who just finished serving his four-game suspension for this season.
No disrespect to those guys but Farve is a bigger name than all of them individually, maybe combined, at least for on the field accomplishments. Vick may be just as known because of dog fighting but I can argue that Farve is even larger than him, name-wise.
The NFL doesn’t want to make the celebrity gossip sites or the morning news shows for something like this. Most non-sports fans already seem to have a preconceived negative perception of athletes and situations like this doesn’t help.
We don’t know what the league is going to do with Farve but this whole story reminds me of a Thanksgiving that I spent with my sister-in-law’s family a few years ago.
It was back in the early 2000’s and the Packers were playing that day and I’m pretty sure it was John Madden who was gushing over Farve’s play that day and over-complimenting his play as many of us who watch the NFL have become accustomed to.
One of the older gentlemen in the room starting on a ten-minute rant of how the sports media was reaching worship status of Farve and that we should be skeptical of buying into all of it. He than proceeded to make a racial statement in essence saying that Farve wouldn’t get as much praise if he was Black but that’s an argument for another day.
What the gentleman was ultimately trying to tell us is that we can’t trust the lifestyle that athletes try to present to us because there’s a difference between their public life and their private life.
I heard that statement than and think that its just as true now and that’s why I’m fascinated by the story.
We are attracted to learning about the private live of a public figure. I know that this is a natural instinct we have, the act of voyeurism. However I do feel dirty when this crosses over to sports.
It’s like George Costanza’s theory of the worlds colliding from the television show, Seinfeld. I don’t want my TMZ world to cross with my NFL world. I would rather not see my Good Morning America world invaded with my NBA world. There is no need for me to hit up one of my gossip Blogs and see a MLB player at a bar.
However, that’s the world we live in and I’m contributing to it myself.
I’ve just spend nearly 40 minutes writing about this stuff when I wanted to write about the on the field activities of this past week in the NFL.
My conclusion is that I’m intrigued because similar to watching the gossip shows, this is an escape from writing about just the stuff that happens during the game. You’re still going to get my analysis of the NFL on Friday with my picks for this week but that honestly gets boring at times.
There are only so many ways I can call the Cowboys frauds or sing my praises about the Colts or critique the cluster mess that is the San Francisco 49ers.
So those are my thoughts, what about yours?
The Sports Inquirer 
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