Bryant Incident Blown Out of Proportion
The media has often taken minor news stories and blown them out of proportion. After all, it’s a self serving cycle. To get interested readers, there must be interesting news. If there is no interesting news, it becomes necessary to make available news seem important.
Numerous sports media outlets wrote huge pieces regarding an incident in which rookie wide receiver Dez Bryant decided to not carry veteran receiver Roy Williams’s shoulder pads after a Dallas Cowboys practice. The practice is simply an old-school show of solidarity amongst younger players and older ones, yet when Bryant chose to not follow it, everyone made it seem as if he had walked out on the team.
The Dallas Morning News stated that Bryant was wrong in his behaviour. A columnist at the Orlando Sentinel wrote that Bryant’s actions “soun[d] like the signs of a locker room cancer," though Bryant had actually never set foot in the Cowboys locker room at the time.
While the media feeding frenzy on a tiny incident increased and increased, no one seemed to bother asking the Dallas Cowboys or the supposedly scorned Williams regarding the incident.
Contrary to what was presented throughout the day, when the Cowboys had a Monday meeting and discussed the pad incident, they quickly dismissed it as a non-issue. After practice, Williams spoke to reporters while carrying his own pads.
He humorously dismissed any notion of insult behind Bryant’s actions and joked about running up a large dinner bill on Bryant’s account instead. "If he doesn't want to take the pads, he doesn't have to take the pads," Williams said. "It's not a big deal. We'll just move on.
"We talked about it. He wants to concentrate on football. We're going to let him concentrate on football. But, when we go out to eat, I'm gonna be a little bit more hungry and a little bit more thirsty."
While the pad carrying, and other activities, is a tradition it is by no means mandatory and it is shameful that news outlets covered the incident as if Bryant had skipped out on training camp or done something that actually affects the Cowboys team.
Coach Wade Phillips noted: "I don't believe that you need to initiate anybody. They need to come out and play football and be a part of the team." The entire thing would have been a non-issue, but Phillips was forced to address reporters after the media attention directed onto the matter.
"It's really a non-issue," Phillips reaffirmed. "It's not a problem for either of them or our football team. I'd like to cut it off now and say we're not going to talk about it, but that's not the case for the Dallas Cowboys."
Several other players weighed in similarly on the bizarre attention devoted to such a minor incident. One of the Cowboys’ captains, linebacker Bradie James reinforced Phillips’s point.
James said: "It's nothing. I mean, you guys have got to talk about it, so you guys talk about it. For us, it's nothing. Think about it — it's nothing. It just so happened to be Dez Bryant."
Since Bryant entered the NFL Draft after being declared ineligible to play again for Oklahoma State University due to violating an NCAA by-law, the media has considered him to be trouble.
In reality, Bryant is only 21-years-old and has yet to even play a true professional game of football. Perhaps it would be more prudent to wait and report on his on-field performance rather than villainising a rookie for wanting to focus more on football rather than ceremony.
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