Cam Newton sulked and gave one-word answers during a less than three-minute post-game press conference following the Panthers 24-10 loss to the Broncos in Super Bowl 50. Newton side stepped important questions like, "can you put into words the disappointment you feel right now?" Cam was uncharacteristically stone cold. And he will probably be criticized for it.For whatever reason, sports reporters, and by extension sports fans, require athletes to lay themselves bare when things go wrong. The Good Athlete is supposed to stand in front of reporters and answer stupid questions as penance for a bad performance. Seriously, the only reasonable answer to "put into words the disappointment you feel" is "disappointed." Put into words the specific feeling you have that I just told you you have.The scolding started as soon as Cam left the press conference room. Chris Berman and Tom Jackson burped their way through a discussion about how a real man, a leader, stands in front of the cameras in good times and in bad, and that's fine. Cam could have handled it better; others certainly have. But the dude just lost the biggest game of his life, and the first thing he's supposed to do is dance for a bunch of clowns asking him inane questions. I'm gonna hold off on making any judgments on a guy in that moment.It's an easy argument to win, though, to point out how his attitude changed when he faced adversity, but it also belies the problem with narratives. Didn't Cam mature this year? Didn't he grow as a player and student of the game like we heard and read all season, or did everyone just say all that shit because he was virtually unstoppable and the Panthers kept winning? Has Cam always been immature and his true self came out tonight?It's neither, obviously. Human beings are complex creatures that don't fit neatly into character traits at all times. Which is why these angles are the very definition of hackery. The deck is artificially stacked against the player in this situation. Cam can't dance and celebrate without pissing people off and he can't be grumpy in defeat without pissing those same people off. This is probably the reason why Cam's dad is skeptical of the media.Sometimes life throws you a curveball and it fucks you up. Sometimes people react poorly to a situation and learn from it. Other people might just be very good at hiding the fact that they're assholes. The exact wrong time to decide where a person fits on this sliding scale is when that person is in front of a room full of reporters and feels like a loser.[ESPN]
Advertisement