A college lecturer once told me that when it came to sports media the US was a good five years ahead of Ireland in terms of the way it covers sports. It was with that in mind that I couldn’t help but, laugh when the phenomena known as “Hot Takes” appeared In the Irish media over the last week.
If you’re unfamiliar with that term American writer Thomas Rios described it as “Writing a hot take is simple. Start with an easy target—any athlete accused of doing anything “bad” will do—channel the aggrieved, paternalistic wails of your least favorite news anchor drunk on paranoia and privilege, dismiss nuance and insight at every opportunity, and close with some nonsensical pap about tradition, or responsibility, or America.
The easy target in Irish sporting circles is Aidan O’Shea and the bad deed he committed was taking selfies with young fans after a meaningless challenge game.
Pundit, Bernard Flynn was so horrified by this act of promoting the game to youngster’s, that he offered this as the reason why O’Shea is the player he is.
“When you’re a big name, marquee player, on the front of newspapers, doing interviews and endorsements, he hasn’t done what he should be doing and can do”.
So, what is O’Shea capable of? multiple all-stars, 3 All Ireland Final appearances to start. He doesn’t have any winners medal but, then again who in Mayo does?
The biggest crime Aidan O’Shea committed here is that he hasn’t turned out to be the player that Flynn and all projected he would be so far.
They were hoping for Michael Jordan and what they got so far is Scottie Pippen. I mean that will all the respect to O’Shea, Scottie had a pretty good career but, he was better suited as the 2nd option on a championship team then being the guy. In danger of going into hot take territory myself maybe O’Shea is better suited to be the same.
Flynn then went onto argue that if O’Shea had played to his ability that Mayo would have won the All Ireland last year, it’s the if my auntie had nuts she would be my uncle theory. A lazy diagnosis of what went wrong for the men out west. If you really wanted to go down that road if only the following didn’t happen Mayo would be champions: Two own goals in the first game, Lee Keegan black card and the bizarre decision to change goalkeepers between the two games.
We live in a world in which the most popular form of communication is snapchat where a message disappears after a few seconds because our attention spans couldn’t take any longer. An era where people find love on an app that makes you make an instantons decision on how someone looks in a filtered picture. I understand nuance is not popular right now but, don’t we deserve more than lazy commentary on a player taking pictures with young fans after a friendly?
