Interviews in sports are just one of those things that comes with the territory. Even mentioning that all athletes say in interviews are cliches is cliche (and it's an old joke, see Bull Durham). People just go with it. Only when something truly extraordinary happens do athletes give real opinions, and it's usually only the veterans who say something meaningful. Not that announcers and sports commentators say meaningful things either, but I digress.

So given that there's so much of this cliche flinging going on in sports, what's with all of the media interest? They seem to be waiting for the one disasterous quote that blows a "controversy" wide open. Athletes have the media at their disposal so often it's a shame they don't have something more useful/informative/insightful to say. But what the hell would they say? Would sports fans listen? What? Where's the beer?

Yup, that's not entertainment ... sports fans want controversy and car wrecks. We want grown men insulting each other to get under each other's skin. Sports media are the transportation mechanism of sports psychology war. You think the WWE is bad? Modern sports preceeded all of that by 50 years at least; "pro wrestling" is just a more extreme version of it.

Sports are becoming soap operas that are socially acceptable for men to like. It's fun to know the personalities of the people playing the games but what about the game itself? Are the peronalities of the athletes so entrenched that we cannot separate them from the sport? Is it the media's duty to report of the minutia of superstar athletes? Hard to say, but at least I have the power to wade through the personalities to get to the news -- even though it's becoming an increasingly harder job. Reading sports news is like sifting through a spam-ridden email inbox.