Jack Del Rio speaks to a Blog?
By Terry OBrien
In what is has to be a first, at least a first that I ever heard of, a head coach of an NFL team spoke at length to a fan site blog. Just so you know how significant that is, we aren’t supposed to exist.
Fan blogs don’t get media credentials. Fan blogs don’t get interviews. Fan blogs are ignored, until now. In what may very well may be an inflection point in web based media, Jack Del Rio spoke for over an hour to SB Nation site Big Cat Country. The site registers over 50,000 hits a month, but that might be changing now. Big Cat Country has credibility.
Why would Jack speak to a blog? Is he afraid of the press? I doubt it. Jack is very media savvy. Perhaps the reason he spoke was because he is media savvy. Here is what I think:
If Jack spoke for an hour to the newspaper, there would be three sentences of his quoted out of context with paragraphs of text explaining his mood, demeanor or hair. In short, the article wouldn’t be about what Jack said but rather about what the reporter thinks.
If Jack speaks to the radio host on talk radio, maybe 3 minutes of his hour long conversation would be played, maybe. During the hour long show callers would call in and comment longer on what Jack said than how long Jack actually spoke.
In short, everyone in the world wants to be heard, no one wants to listen.
But the blog, that is different. Every word Jack spoke is reported. Every sentence and every phrase in it are his. There is no print space or commercial time constraints, no one edits his words. You are required to take it all in just as he meant it to be heard.
In short, Jack gets to be heard for once.
Jack wanted to speak to the fans and tried speaking through the fans only forum to do so. How revolutionary is that? To me it is a recognition that a filter to the fans is no longer needed. Jack can speak for himself and we can learn to listen.
Congratulations to Chris and Big Cat Country and SB nation for an outstanding achievement. Maybe the best advantage fan blogs have is they don’t have media credentials.
Congratulations Jack on breaking the rules again.
Read it for yourself.
– Terry O’Brien