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Commentary: Obsession to Hear From Marshawn Lynch Is Silly

Seattle Seahawks RB continues to play a boorish song and dance with sports media.

Marshawn Lynch is right: The media don’t get it. They pile deep around Lynch inside the Seattle Seahawks locker, shove cameras in his face during the run-up to Super Bowl XLIX and wait for him to say something provocative.

He never does.

Day after day, the media’s song and dance with Lynch ends the same way: no insight gained, nothing new to report. Lynch can’t be clearer that he doesn’t want to talk to journalists, almost defying the NFL mandate that he must talk.

"I don't know what story y'all trying to get out of me,” Lynch told the army of journalists who gathered around him Thursday. “I don't know what image y'all trying to portray of me. It don't matter what y'all think, what y'all say about me, ’cause when I go home at night, the same people that I look in the face, my family, that I love, that's all that really matters to me."

Trying to get inside his head to figure out his deeper thoughts is a wasted effort. Lynch has remained steadfast in his refusal to share his thoughts on the biggest game of the NFL season.

Yet his boorish behavior has become a story of its own, a story that has trumped storylines of NFL athletes who do want to talk. He’s become a media obsession, which speaks more to the silliness of sports journalists than it does to the loutish, unscripted behavior of Lynch.

If they were to wait around a minute – when do the ever media wait? – they could get an interview with somebody who won’t clown them. They’d have a storyline – from the Seattle Seahawks’ side of it – about a Black quarterback who’s trying to make NFL history, and quarterback Russell Wilson will make history if he can win a second Super Bowl.

The spotlight should be on Wilson. The media’s obsession should be to get as much insight as possible from him and ignore Lynch altogether.

But to expect that to happen is to believe the media are looking for the best story and not the most controversial one. They have called on football fans to boycott “Skittles,” candy that Lynch markets.

For while they’ve focused on the Lynch sideshow the past week, they’ve diverted their attention from Wilson and on the history he’s poised to make. That fact alone risks cheapening all this game Sunday is.

How this Super Bowl plays out will, of course, be based a lot more on Wilson’s performance than on Lynch’s. So the media’s best use of their time would be to invest it in Wilson, who has more to say than Lynch ever would.

But up until kickoff Sunday night, the media will chase that elusive sound byte from Lynch. They will camp near his locker stall, hopeful he will say more in one day than he has in a full season.

Lynch won’t, even if his silent act brings him a fine. He’ll sidestep questions and let Wilson talk for the team. Wilson will oblige, which he does willingly. Why the media don’t understand that might be the reason Lynch is so adamant he won’t give them anything interesting to write about – ever. 

So isn’t it best the media leave Lynch alone?

The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of BET Networks. 

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(Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

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