 Wysłany: Pon 4:18, 21 Mar 2011 Temat postu: and that cost is control |
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| Jets, Braylon Edwards Jersey can't complain about media coverage
No receiver could have beaten the coverage Braylon Edwards Jersey faced. Not on Tuesday morning when he left a courthouse in Lower Manhattan after being arraigned on a charge of driving while intoxicated and was greeted by a throng of reporters. And that was nothing compared to the crush of coverage that followed. Photographs of Braylon Edwards Jersey with two drinks in front of him in the hours before his arrest while attending a teammate's charity benefit,MLB Jerseys, footage of Braylon Edwards Jersey leaving the courthouse after he was released without bail and then a steady stream of condemnations from the Jets owner on down the franchise's food chain. To say the coverage is overkill is to minimize what Braylon Edwards Jersey is accused of doing. Drunken driving is a serious social problem, and Braylon Edwards Jersey' decision to drive is all the more abominable because of his readily available alternatives. The Jets offer their players a free, anonymous car service. The DWI charge — while serious — is not unprecedented in modern sports. The coverage that followed the arrest, though, was extraordinary even in a time when TMZ is giving everyone TMI. Some of that is because it's New York, which might as well have an amendment in the city charter that this metropolis should be accorded more attention than the rest of the country combined. Some of it is because Braylon Edwards Jersey is a former first-round pick with a truly formidable beard. But some of the attention comes because the Jets have gone out of their way to make people notice them. They want people to stand up and take notice, whether it's coach Rex Ryan's big talk, starting quarterback Mark Sanchez modeling in GQ last year or opening up training camp to HBO's cameras for a "Hard Knocks" documentary. But now, people are noticing the Jets for different reasons. Before the season opener, it was the boorish behavior in the Jets' locker room in front of a credentialed female reporter. Now, it's Braylon Edwards Jersey' arrest, and suddenly this 1-1 team coming off an important division victory over the Patriots is behaving like a straight-to-DVD release: Jets Gone Wild. It is a cautionary tale for those NFL teams and players who preen for cameras and covet an audience. There's a cost to creating a spectacle, and that cost is control, because while you can attract attention, you can't always dictate where that attention will end up being focused. To put it in performing terms, if you put yourself on stage, your fly better not be undone. It's the reason that Terrell Owens' complaints about ESPN's coverage and criticism of him is so laughable. It takes a special kind of narcissist to do everything possible to get the world to look at you, then complain the gazes aren't focusing on the right features. There are coaches like Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick who would just as soon no one paid attention to anything their team does other than those three hours it is on the field every Sunday, and then there are franchises that don't mind making a production of things. There's a coach in Seattle now who doesn't mind attention whether it's writing a book, speaking in public or posting on Twitter. None of those things are bad. It's just that making yourself — and by extension your team — visible creates a vulnerability, too. Once you tell people to look at you, you can't tell them to stop because you don't like what they're looking at. Just ask Braylon Edwards Jersey after what everyone saw this week. |
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