Sports Media is Literally 1984

          “Reality exists in the human mind, nowhere else” - George Orwell, 1984

          Last week, Manchester City midfielder Rodrigo “Rodri” Hernandez Castante was awarded the Ballon d’Or, the most coveted individual prize in world football. Rodri’s victory came as a surprise to many. Not because Rodri was seen as undeserving of the award— quite the opposite actually. He was the centerpiece of the City side that won its record-setting 4th consecutive Premier League title and earned the “Player of the Tournament” honor as part of the Spain team that claimed victory in the European Championships over the summer. Rodri’s irreplicable mastery of the “simple” aspects of the game routinely keeps his team in advantageous positions and consistently puts him in “Best Player of the World” conversations.

          The controversy around Rodri’s victory was, of course, caused by the media.

         For over a month before the ceremony, every major journalist reported that Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior was “expected” to win the award, effectively killing any suspense around the
ceremony. Everyone, including Vinicius Junior, thought that he was the heir apparent to the
Ballon d’Or. Thus, when those same journalists revealed— only days before the ceremony— that Rodri was actually in line to win, Vinicius, and the rest of Real Madrid, were outraged. So outraged they boycotted the ceremony altogether. 

          When looking at Vinicius’ stats from the season, the claims that he was robbed of the award become even louder. Vinicius managed to score 28 goals and provide 16 assists across all competitions that he played in last season. His 23 goals and 11 assists in the league were enough to win him the Young Player of the Year Award of his league, and Player of the Year for his team. But Vinicius’ greatness translated to international play as well, as he got a game-winning assist in the semi-final of a major international tournament, and the game-tying goal in the final of that same tournament. Such a resume was more than deserving of the Ballon d’Or. 
         
          Except those actually weren’t Vinicius Junior’s achievements. Instead, those were the achievements of Chelsea midfielder Cole Palmer, who finished 23 spots lower in Ballon d’Or voting despite scoring more goals, providing more assists, and having better International performances than Vinicius.

          I’m not entirely focused on who should have received the Ballon d’Or this past week. Rodri was a worthy winner and, even if I somewhat tore him down in the last paragraph, Vinicius did have a strong case to win it as well. What I am interested in is how much power manufactured narratives hold over our perception of sports. Whether or not they would like to admit it, most sports fans don’t watch enough of their favorite sport to inform most of the statements they make. This is of no real fault of their own; the NBA routinely has 10 separate games happening every night, while soccer fans have countless separate yet concurrently-running leagues to follow if they hope to stay informed. It just isn’t feasible for someone to include that much sports consumption within their daily life. This is why fans often, and logically, turn to sports media to inform their opinions. While the average sports enjoyer has a life outside of their fandom, sports journalists and media personalities’ jobs are centered around sports. If you can’t watch a game you were interested in, the next best thing is hearing someone talking about it on TV while eating breakfast or on the radio during your morning commute. Thus, sports fans put their trust in the Bill Simmonses and Stephen A. Smiths of the world by assuming they have watched the games and that information broadcasted on their outlets are informed by their viewing experiences and shared with the intent of fostering objective sports discussions. But this is rarely the case. These media outlets need to generate revenue after all, and so they focus instead on generating interesting narratives to increase the number of listeners, viewers, and readers. The stories told by many outlets are indeed rooted, at least to an extent, in the results of games and the performances of players in these games. However, a lot of them are equally rooted in the abstract. You hear it all the time: certain players are unrightfully propped up because they have an unquantifiable “clutch gene” or are “just winners”, even when stats or the eye test beg to differ. These constructed opinions, which often lack context and are only created to foster engagement, dictate colloquial sports discourse. The same opinions said on the morning talk shows are regurgitated word for word in social media comment sections by the afternoon.

          What makes it much worse is these same media members are the ones who vote on awards in these leagues us the same stories.  common knowledge that league awards such as Most Valuable Player, Coach of the Year, and the aforementioned Ballon d’Or are narrative-driven awards and, for lack of a better term, are voted on purely by vibes. The common sentiment that “if the MVP truly went to the best player in the league, then LeBron James would win it every year” has been beaten to death at this point, but only because it is true. There are no consistent criteria on how to win an MVP or a Ballon d’Or. Sometimes the Ballon d’Or is the “who had the best international tournament award” and then Luka Modrić, due to his performances at the World Cup that year, wins it in 2018 over Ronaldo, who was the best player on the team that won the UEFA Champions League. But then you look at 2014, where Ronaldo won because he was, again, the best player on the team that won the UEFA Champions League, even though Lionel Messi was the best player at the World Cup. There is little to no consistency, and these awards are most of the time decided based on “who feels right” out of the candidates. Then we, as sports fans, use these media-based awards as Gospel when trying to debate why one player is better than another, and future sports fans look back on past eras they were unable to watch and use these awards, which are arbitrarily decided upon, to inform themselves of who the best players were in those days.

          The people who sports fans turn to for valuable insight and discourse have no incentive to provide such things, instead opting to push narratives and storylines. So what does that say about us
as sports fans, if we hold their opinions so high?