RENTON — An NFL cornerback, receiver and a cardboard cutout of said receiver walk into a room full of reporters …
No, this isn’t the beginning of a joke; it’s what happened on Tuesday when Richard Sherman was scheduled to hold his weekly press conference. Well, maybe it was a joke, or at least it was pretty amusing.
When Richard Sherman, usually one of the most media-friendly players on the Seahawks’ roster, talked to reporters after Sunday’s game, he gave a few terse answers, then cut things off saying his brief interview was the result of Marshawn Lynch being fined $100,000 by the NFL for violating the league’s media policy. Sherman also hinted that more of the same was coming during his weekly media availability, but rather than stand at a podium and give as uninteresting of answers as possible, Sherman, with some help from Baldwin and a cardboard cutout of Baldwin, put on a short skit in which they criticized the league’s “hypocrisy” on everything from the way it limits what they can wear on game day to the practice of playing Thursday games while continuing to preach the importance of player safety.
So if you were hoping to hear Sherman reflect on last year’s NFC championship game, in which he made one of the iconic plays in franchise history, or the postgame rant about Michael Crabtree that followed, you’re out of luck. In fact few, if any, Seahawks were interested in reliving one of the most thrilling games of last year’s Super Bowl winning season, or in playing up the league’s best rivalry this week, instead sticking with the “every week is a championship week” mantra Pete Carroll has instilled in his team for four and a half seasons.
Instead, what we saw was a clever way for two of Seattle’s most vocal players to get a point across to the league.
Sherman could have just stood there and been as vanilla as possible, or even refused his media obligations, risking a fine that almost certainly would not be enforced considering how regularly he is available. But instead Sherman and Baldwin recognized that their and Lynch’s beef is more with the league than the media. Nowhere in Sherman and Baldwin’s skit did they call out the media for Lynch being fined, because they recognize that they are contractually obligated to be available per the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.
And Sherman and Baldwin would both be fools if they didn’t realize that some of their fame, and yes, endorsements, are the result of the fact that they are available and engaging with the media, and in turn they are more likeable from a marketability standpoint. And these two Stanford educated athletes are certainly no fools. In fact it was interviews following Seattle’s last meeting with the 49ers, the aforementioned NFC championship game, that helped Sherman raise his profile on the national level. He knows the attention that came with that, along with his All-Pro caliber play, helped him land numerous endorsement deals, which he plugged Tuesday.
“You know the other day Marshawn Lynch got fined $100,000, did you know that?” Sherman asked the cardboard Baldwin, which was voiced by the real Baldwin standing behind it. “A hundred thousand. It’s like, they wouldn’t have even paid him $100,000 if he had talked. Doug, do you think they would have paid him paid him $100,000?”
“No, they sure wouldn’t have,” Baldwin said.
Sherman: “Geez Louise. But you know who does pay me a lot of money? Beats by Dre, the wonderful headphones that I wear.”
Baldwin: “I like those headphones.”
Sherman: “But the league doesn’t let me say anything about them. Doug, why is that?”
Baldwin: “I don’t know, it sounds kind of hypocritical to me.”
That exchange has to do with the fact that the NFL, which has a sponsorship deal with Bose, told players this year that they can’t wear Beats headphones during pregame warmups or postgame interviews. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who like Sherman has a Beats by Dre endorsement, was fined earlier this season for wearing his headphones around his neck during an interview.
“Yeah, it sounds a little bit hypocritical,” Sherman said. “It seems like we’re in a league where they say, ‘Players, please don’t endorse alcohol, no DUIs please,’ but yet a beer sponsor is their biggest sponsor. Doug, how do you feel about that?”
“Like I said, it sounds very hypocritical,” Baldwin responded.
Sherman then went on to plug a couple of his other sponsors, Neff sunglasses and Campbell’s soup, then set up Baldwin to plug a couple of his — Subway (that’s where the cardboard cutout was from) and Martinelli’s.
The dig that the NFL ought to feel most came when Baldwin set Sherman up by asking, “How do you feel about the NFL making you play two games in five days?”
“Oh my gosh, geez, I almost didn’t realize that, because they’ve been talking about player safety so much, and two games in five days, it doesn’t seem like you care about players safety, it’s a little bit much for me,” Sherman said.
Sherman ended things saying, “It’s fun to use your time in the NFL to use your time to speak about something you care about, right? Then you don’t get fined $100,000, you don’t get fined at all for this. This is how they want us to talk, right? This is what they want us to do, they want us to advertise, right Doug?”
“Sounds about right to me,” Baldwin said.
The whole scene was rather surreal. I mean, really, it was two NFL players and a cardboard cutout acting out a little skit they had thrown together in support of another teammate who was fined for not talking to the media. It was also a pretty clever and humorous way to make a point. Expect Sherman and Baldwin to go back to normal in their media interactions after Thursday game and next week. After all, their sponsor name-dropping routine shows they understand the business side of the game.
Theoretically the NFL could react to this and try to punish Sherman and Baldwin — fining a cardboard cutout may prove tricky — for conduct detrimental to the league or something along those lines. However, the best play would be do what the rest of us did on Tuesday: shake their heads, chuckle and hope this was the end of a strange few days in Seahawks land.
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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