The NFL has developed a reputation in recent years for bullying anyone and everyone, on anything and everything. But recent developments in another sport show that the NFL has a long way to go before becoming a full-blown villain when it comes to the media.
As explained by Deadspin, UFC removed Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com from Saturday night’s UFC 199 event after reporting that Brock Lesnar (pro wrestler and failed former NFL player) would be returning for UFC 200 in July. The powers-that-be at UFC apparently were miffed that Helwani stole the organization’s thunder by reporting the news before UFC could officially announce it.
The move is weak and petty and juvenile and shameful -- although there’s a chance that UFC president and carnival barker Dana White (pictured) did it simply for the publicity. Regardless of motive, the UFC deserves to be criticized, and criticized loudly, for attempting in such clumsy fashion to shape and control the coverage of the sport.
Despite its various flaws and warts, the NFL has yet to engage in such openly vindictive behavior against members of the independent media. Jay Glazer of FOX (who covers both the NFL and the UFC . . . for now) points out via Twitter that, after he obtained and televised the Spygate video in 2007, neither "[Roger] Goodell nor [the] Pats ever tried to ban me.” However, Glazer says that the NFL’s director of security “tried making life hard for me.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean the NFL won’t try to exert influence over its in-house, on-the-payroll media staff, as alleged by former NFL Media reporter Albert Breer. In April, Breer said working for the league was “very limiting . . . in a lot of different ways” and that “there are a lot of stories that I haven’t been able to do.”
Breer, who lives in Boston, also said that he was no longer assigned to cover the Patriots after peppering coach Bill Belichick with mildly critical questions after the notorious “on to Cincinnati” Monday night meltdown in Kansas City.
While there have been scattered accounts of individual teams trying to give specific thorn-in-the-side reporters the business over the years, rarely does the NFL or any of its teams get accused of revoking access to credentialed media. Sure, that doesn’t stop the NFL and/or its teams from periodically complaining directly to reporters or their supervisors (I’m not speaking from experience on this, unless I am). But the league hasn’t engaged in such drastic, over-the-top conduct in connection with the growing legion of media covering the sport.
In part, that’s because the NFL understands the value of media coverage. It’s also because the media community surely would rush to attack the NFL for such tactics -- in the same way that many are rushing to attack the UFC for what it did to Helwani.