In a recent appearance on Barstool Sports' signature show Pardon My Take, Thursday night football panelist Charissa Thompson said that early in her career she would "make up the report sometimes" when acting as a sideline reporter. The most surprising part of the story is how upset (or fake upset) so many people acted when they heard about it.
After halftime of every NFL football game, whether it's on Thursday, Sunday, or Monday, the reporter working the sideline for that game tells us about something that somebody said going into or coming out of the locker room. It could be a player, but it's almost always a coach. Are there actually people out there who believe the reporters were talking to somebody every single time?
I'm a New England Patriots fan. I have seen and or heard almost every Bill Belichick press conference over the last 20 years. It does not matter whether he is winning or losing. His answers can be summed up as one of three things. An evil stare, a grunt, or a one-word answer. Yet when I watch Patriots games on television, after halftime, I will hear something like this:
I spoke to Coach Belichick as he was coming out of the locker room, and I asked him what he needed to do to get the team to turn things around. He said they need to focus more on selling the run, so the play action works more effectively. He went on to say he feels the offensive line is doing a great job, and if they can build off the running plays they had in the first quarter, they feel they can win this game.
Are there people who believe that the most reserved and stoic head coach in the history of the National Football League becomes as loquacious as Winston Churchill when asked a question by an up-and-coming TV personality? If you truly find that plausible, I do have the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge, and can make you quite an offer.
Charissa Thompson's admission shouldn't surprise sports fans
The reality is that the fabrication of these halftime stories has been going on since the game was first televised. Charissa Thompson is not the first person to fill the dead air after a commercial with a tall tale. She will not be the last.
The real disappointment of the story is not her admission of something that deep down we all knew was going on. It's the fake outrage of people who, until this story broke, honestly did not care what the coaches said at halftime. It is the finger-pointing from the holier-than-thou sports personalities, perched high atop their pedestal, who did the exact same thing to get to where they are now.
For those pretending to be angry about this and shouting from the rooftops about ethics and morality, 5 minutes of make-believe is enough time for you to spend on this. Direct that energy towards something that you actually do care about, and maybe you can make a small difference.
For those who actually did believe that these reporters were getting paragraphs of information from coaches who were losing at halftime of NFL football games, I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but cartoons aren't real people. They are just drawings.
