Ep 48 How Should Athletes Like Cam Newton Handle the News Media Feb 17 16

How should athletes deal with the news media?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Heading right to the listener and viewer mail. This one comes from Pete Burden down in New Zealand. Says TJ media training for sports people. What advice would you give them that's different from business leaders? Now, I want to combine that question with perhaps the most common question I've received recently is what I think of Cam Newton, the quarterback for the Carolina Panthers, and how he behaved at the recent press conference after the super bowl where his team did frankly, a horrible job. So my first question or the first answer to Pete is for the most part, athletes shouldn't do anything different from what business people do because athletes are business people. They're in the entertainment business. They are in for the most part the television business because that's where they make their money, advertising revenue. So part of it is you got to realize sports is just another business. Now. Every individual in every business or if they're in government or nonprofits, they need to do some things that are unique to them for their media interview. They need to figure out how they want to come across. They need to figure out what their message is, what quotes they want and the overall message they want to send. So everyone is different in every industry and every sports team, but everyone's the same, I find. And that everyone I work with, and I do work with, Cam Newton's not a client of mine, but I have worked with super bowl winners and I found that everyone in every industry ultimately wants the same thing. They want to come across comfortable, confident, relaxed, authoritative in their own style, number one. Number two, they want to have a message. Number three, they want to strategy for answering questions effectively. Number four, they want to get the exact quotes they want in the stories and beyond that, number five, the big picture long term. They want a positive image associated with who they are and what they do. So Pete, to that extent, every athlete should behave exactly the same as any other business figure. Now what's a little different though is that athletes, certainly elite athletes in professional sports are in the television business. Now they don't like me saying that. I don't mean to knock them, I don't mean to say they're the same as a sitcom character. But Cam Newton, for example, has a hundred million plus contract over a several year period. That's not coming from people buying tickets to the game. That's a very small portion of it. It's coming from the advertising revenue from tv. TV shows and it's coming from the subscription revenue that goes to ESPN that people pay on their cable bills. So it is a media business, and rightly so. Major sports franchises, whether it's baseball, basketball, you name it, require their athletes to give post game interviews. Now, there's a lot of controversy about Cam Newton. Some people love him. They certainly most people have a respect, tremendous respect for his athletic prowess, although he didn't have a great super bowl game. And forgive me, those of you listening and watching outside the US When I'm saying football, I don't mean what we Americans call soccer. I mean the game where people jump around and break a lot of bones with the non round ball. And I realize it seems like an odd, weird game. You don't know anyone who watches it and I'm not a big watcher of it, although I did watch the Super Bowl. Cam Newton is a great athlete. There's a lot of controversy surrounding it. Many people do not like how he talks, how he celebrates after victories, after touchdowns. They find him distasteful, too flamboyant. There are also many who believe that he is a victim of racism. That many, many white football fans who have no problems with a coach like a Bobby Bowden of FSU spouting off on his belief in religions and conservative politicians, they have no problem someone giving their opinions on one thing. But because here an African American has different opinions or different styles, suddenly they're upset about him mouthing off. So I do happen to believe that there is a bit of a double standard and that Cam Newton is sometimes criticized unfairly from a racist intent. However, and I guess this is where I upset everyone, just as OJ Was the victim of racist co cops who set him up, OJ in fact was a murderer. And even though there may be some unfair racist criticism of Cam Newton, he actually did a horrible job at his post interview, his post super bowl media meetings, and rightly deserves to be criticized. For those of you who didn't see it, he put a hood over his head, gave one word answers, just did not say anything interesting. He looked like a spoiled little baby. And folks, if you, if you're being paid $100 million over a handful of years, if you are not the top 1% but the top 0.01% in income and a part of your job is to talk to the media well, do the job well. Don't act like a brat. Now I would certainly call any white quarterback or any player of any race who acted that way a little baby. So I'm not being disparaging in any racial sense. Let's break it down point by point here.

Body language.

For starters, the idea that Cam Newton would come in covering his head, he had a hood on, as if he were just going to sort of hide. Now when you do this and the TV reporters can't even cover your or see your face, it's really rude, it's disrespectful, it's making all the TV audience sort of question you. Here's the bigger issue. I understand it's emotionally draining and I've never been in a Super Bowl. I'm not a world class athlete, but I can imagine that it would be horribly disappointing to get that far, have that good of a season and then things end up poorly. Fine, but show some amount of professionalism. You don't have to put a big gigantic smile on your face and say, oh, I'm so happy we lost today, but at least be professional. Show up, answer questions, be candid, talk about your frustrations. So here's the thing. We could talk at the societal level about whether there's a double standard with Brady, some of the things he said versus Cam Newton. But I'm looking at this from the individual perspective. If you're Cam Newton and you're 26 years old and you've got an 8 million dollar contract, that's nice, that's great. But look around, look at the sports figures that you might admire and respect. Where do they make most of their money in their career? They don't make most of their money from salaries. A lot of them, they make most of their money in the long term by being on tv, by being spokespersons, by being analysts and folks. This cuts across all races. I mean, look at Deion Sanders, look at Charles Barkley. They've had fabulous, fabulous careers as spokespersons, as commentators, as host. And I haven't added up all their salary. But long term, when you look at their whole life, they'll probably make a lot more off the playing field because of their ability to communicate and to be good with the media. And even look at someone like Tiger Woods. The vast majority of his money has come not from earnings on the Ts on, on the greens. The vast majority of his money has come from him being a spokesperson, driving a Buick around, lending his name to other businesses, appearing in TV commercials, speaking. Now he lost a lot of that with his own scandals. But certainly before that, he really tended to his image in a meticulous way. Kept a great reputation until his whole marital issues a handful of years ago, but even since he still makes most of his money through the media. So that's why if you're an athlete, I think it is ridiculous and absurd not to take every interview seriously. If you're a young person, if you're in high school and College, or a 23 year old professional in any other field, frankly, nobody wants to talk to you. Nobody really cares about your opinion. Nobody was asking my opinion about anything when I was 22 or 23. But if you're an athlete, you have the ability to weigh in on stuff that a lot of people care about. People do care about sports. Every interview you do is a way to build your brand, build your name id, build your reputation as someone thoughtful, intelligent, articulate and able to synthesize information to deliver insights. So it's a tremendous, tremendous opportunity that athletes have. You could argue that it's actually a lot better training about their future careers and what they'll do than anything they do on the playing field or on the court. So to me, it constantly mystifies me that some athletes look at this as a chore. No folks, it is the job. It's actually the primary part of the job. When you get to the highest levels of professional sport. Yeah, I understand you have to win. You can't just be good at doing media interviews. But when it comes to where the real money comes from, it does come from how you communicate to the media. Now, now, not everyone gets the sort of endorsements that Tiger woods does, but even athletes who cap out their careers at the college level, if it's a small town and they were a huge star, they can often milk that by being a spokesperson for the local hardware store or local restaurants and be doing things constantly local TV shows and radio shows where they are using leveraging their name ID and their brand with the media and with the public. So I urge any athlete get media training, number one. Number two, think about something interesting to say after the game. And don't just be the fair weather friend of the media. Don't just be there when you've won. You can actually build better relationships with the news media. Show more credibility, show class by giving just as much time when you've lost, by letting the reporters know I'm here to answer every single question. And maybe my contract says I only have to stay here for 20 minutes. You know what? I'll stay here for the next two hours. Even though I'm tired or even though I want to go to the party or go home and sleep, I'm going to talk to You, I mean, that's what I would do if I were an athlete. And that would be my advice. You need to be just as accessible after the losses as you are the victories. That's the way you really build a long term reputation. Now for someone like a Cam Newton, he's so rich, he's making so much money, he could take the attitude of, you know what, I'm going to do it my way. I don't have to play this game, I don't care what these people think. And I'm not worried about being a spokesperson or a talk show host after my career. I'm going to be so rich it won't matter. Okay, that's fine. But for every Cam Newton, there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of athletes who get to be interviewed in the media on a yearly basis, even if it's at the high school level, who are never going to get the eight figure paydays or seven figure, even six figure paydays for them. These dealings with the media can be something that could open up so many more career opportunities for them. Here's a few more quick tips for athletes. Have something to say other than, well, we just played our game and you know, we weren't feeling good today or everything was on the same old. Delve into some real insights and if you're an athlete, I urge you, listen to the analysts on network TV you respect the most. Really listen to what they're saying and ask yourself, did they make me think, did they say something that wasn't obvious? Do I agree with them? I disagree with them. Start to develop that mindset and then when you're asked questions and you develop a reputation for insight, you get more interview requests and next thing you know, you're asked to substitute host on a show one day and next thing you know, you're asked to be the host and the next thing you know, rather than being local, it's regional tv and then one day from the regional TV network, it's the national network. That's how you work your way up the media food chain. What do you think? I do want to weigh in on you, get you to weigh in. So please answer this.

A question for you.

So my question to you is, what did you think of Cam Newton and how he behaved at the super bowl press conference? If you followed that, a couple of questions a part of this do you think he is unfairly a victim of racism for people criticizing him, whereas they're not criticizing Brady for saying, I want to go have a beer or is he also a victim of racism, but did just a horrible job and deserves to be criticized? Or is he not a victim of racism and he's just horrible with the media and deserves to be criticized? I'd like to hear from you on this. Thanks. So and by the way, send your comments J. Walker on Twitter. You can email them infoediatrainingworldwide.com as always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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