#Women sports oops professional

“ obviously need you to say some stuff so they can write their articles,” said Islanders alternate captain Kyle Okposo, wiping his forehead with an already-drenched shirt.

#Women sports oops professional

Still, most professional athletes also realize that allowing journalists into their sanctuary is a part of the job. But it’s the same answers to the same questions.” Brock Nelson, a teammate sitting next to him, chimed in: “They get mad at us for giving the same answers. “It’s basically the same interview, over and over again,” Islanders forward Anders Lee said Monday, taking off his pads in the corner of the locker room. Even in the relatively overlooked NHL, the New York Islanders draw about 30 journalists a game. The Major League Baseball season counts nearly twice as many, while the shorter NFL campaign sees much more focused media attention.

NBA teams play 82 games a year, not including playoffs and preseason contests. The repetitiveness and intensity of the format can be more frustrating. Players mostly accept that strangers will see them au naturel. Or the periodic outbursts by Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook. Take the blanket no-comment dished out by Dallas Cowboys star and alleged domestic abuser Greg Hardy after a game last year. Other interviews are illuminating for the answers they don’t elicit. “I want you guys here when I make the game-winning kicks, and I realize that I got to have you guys here when I miss them. “It’s my fault,” Walsh said, his eyes still glistening. He sobbed at his locker for 15 minutes after the game, as ESPN’s Kevin Seifert wrote, later facing a gaggle of reporters. Two Sundays ago, for example, Minnesota Vikings kicker Blair Walsh missed a last-second chip shot that would have likely advanced his team to the next round of the NFL playoffs. Some of the best locker room reporting comes when the unthinkable happens, reminding us that these gods between the lines are just men and women outside of them. “You get a really honest reaction, and that’s what makes stories good.” “They haven’t had a lot of time to think about what to say, and they’re in a comfortable environment,” Boivin says, differentiating the format from occasional post-game news conferences. And while most nudity is off-camera and doesn’t find its way to audiences, the shirtless, disheveled, or still-sweating sports star, facing an array of microphones in front of his cubby, has become an enduring image in sports coverage. These aren’t your high school gym locker rooms-many are increasingly part of multi-room complexes including lounges and training rooms that media can’t access-but journalists would be hard pressed to find so many sources anywhere else. Like other working people, professional athletes want to leave the office when their shift ends, so they waste no time stripping down to hit the showers. You get a really honest reaction, and that’s what makes stories good.

They haven’t had a lot of time to think about what to say, and they’re in a comfortable environment. Reporters don’t wait for senators in the bathroom after important votes, or quiz the conductor of the New York Philharmonic as he puts on his cummerbund.

“I can’t really think of something else that’s similar to this,” Bailey said. Many dressing rooms don’t have such modicums of privacy, leaving players in the buff in front of reporters fishing for quotes. A small band of media-normal-sized humans-tries to keep out of half-naked players’ way as they dip behind a curtain sporting the team’s logo and into the showers. Those memories don’t come cheap, of course. A collage on the walls above them shows newspaper headlines and media coverage of famous victories, ringing the small dressing room like a halo. Players tear off equipment at wooden cubbies bearing their names and numbers, laughing about how Mel Gibson got ribbed at the Golden Globes. Industrial-size hampers, home to growing mounds of moist practice jerseys, sit on each side of the cramped chamber in its Syosset, New York, training facility. The hockey team’s locker room isn’t as rancid as expected.

Since I watched hockey as a kid, it was always this way.” “It’s all we’ve ever known,” right wing Josh Bailey, wearing a blue Islanders shirt, skin-tight compression shorts, and knee-high athletic socks, told me after a practice last week. The New York Islanders aren’t shy about giving interviews in various stages of undress.