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Credit: The Dan Le Batard Show
Last week, Chris Johnson, a former Pro Bowl running back, appeared on Good Morning America to reveal he has been diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“There’s no history of ALS in my family,” Johnson told co-anchor Michael Strahan, using a speech-to-text device triggered by his eye movements. “My doctors believe my case is what’s called sporadic ALS, which is actually how the vast majority of ALS cases happen.”
The news of the 40-year-old’s prognosis and the speed at which the disease has impacted him sent shockwaves across social media and the NFL world.
Longtime sportswriter Jeff Pearlman watched the GMA interview and came away frustrated and angry at the lack of media conversation about the connection between football and ALS.
“We know by now through studies that there is a correlation between playing football and ALS. A much higher percentage of people who play football, specifically in the NFL, wind up with ALS than the general population. It is a known thing,” said Pearlman in a TikTok video. “The number of times Michael Strahan, a former football player, asks Chris Johnson about this? Zero. The number of times Good Morning America brings this up? Zero. It is so f*cking irresponsible and grotesque.
“… Chris Johnson is dying and he showed up on Good Morning America to tell his story, and Michael Strahan, one of the great cowards on TV in my opinion, sits there and pretends, oh, this is heartbreaking, it’s so sad, I can’t believe this is happening to you, and doesn’t have the courage and the decency and the wherewithal to mention the ties between football and ALS. And that’s because he’s getting paid a sh*tload of money not to. It’s f*cking disgusting.”
The next day, veteran sports host Dan Le Batard backed up Pearlman on his show, saying Strahan, who is also an NFL analyst for Fox, owed it to the audience and the sports world to address the “elephant in the room.”
“Michael Strahan has a responsibility in that instance to ask some sort of football-related question, and he did not do it,” Le Batard said. “It’s just too uncomfortable. You just can’t enjoy that thing the way you do … when these guys are limping through their retirement homes to an early death.
“… The reason Chris Johnson is being interviewed is because this is a former athlete of some name. They’re not interviewing random people with ALS, they’re interviewing this person. And so to neglect that question is an omission that I don’t know why the omission is there. And I’m curious. And if you ask the question, you remove the hole in your interview by just asking a question, if football had something to do with this.”
On Friday, Le Batard had Pearlman on his show, and the two continued the discussion about why they felt it was so important to take the NFL and NFL media to task over this topic.
“Dan, you and I were brought up as journalists in a decreasingly less journalistic age,” said Pearlman. “And to me, if you have a football player who is coming to say he has ALS, and there was a study just a couple years ago from Boston University and Harvard saying that NFL players are 4 times more likely to get ALS than [the] general population, to not ask anything about it. And not just that, Dan, they also had an expert on ALS on the same segment and didn’t ask her about it.
“Number one, it doesn’t make any sense. And number two, it’s just inexcusably bad journalism. And number three, it speaks to the power of the NFL, the power of The Shield. Let’s keep as far away from this connection as we can.”
Le Batard then pressed Pearlman on the criticism that a more stringent journalistic focus on the NFL-ALS connection wasn’t relevant to that interview, which the former Sports Illustrated writer strongly pushed back against.
“I don’t agree with that at all. It actually bothers me,” Pearlman said. “The NFL doesn’t want people to think about the negative impacts. Of football on the human body. They want us to cheer and love the shiny helmets and go to the games and buy our $15 pretzels. They want you to be happy watching football.
“There’s a reason the NFL never has a CTE Awareness Day. Never paints on the end zone: CTE awareness [or] ALS awareness. They don’t want you aware of it. So when people come along and say, ‘how dare you ask these questions, how can you ask these insensitive questions?’ Journalists do ask insensitive questions. It’s sort of part of the job. And number two, to not ask it, to not bring it up, to not even mention it is basically going along with the entire NFL narrative that they want you to do. And neither you nor I are paid by the NFL.”
Le Batard then ran down several criticisms of their stances from social media, in which they were referred to as “ghoulish” for wanting tougher questions and admissions around the Chris Johnson interview.
Pearlman said it would have been fair and reasonable for Strahan to ask Johnson whether he would let his children play football, given his condition and what is known about the connection. He also added that he feels the criticism stems from fans and other media members wanting to enjoy football without having to deal with the ugly consequences that come with it.
“They want to be comfortable watching their sports. All those people on Twitter, they want to be comfortable watching. So I’m going to do the ALS challenge. Look, here’s a bucket on my head. I’m challenging my friend to do it now, my other friend to do it. And the intentions are good … But at some point, someone has to address the ties between this and this. And do I think that would have been enough of a question? No, but at least it would have been a question.
“When did we become so soft of a culture that we’re not allowed to ask questions anymore? That it’s never the right time … it just honestly, again, journalistically, it drives me crazy. And this is why I’m not on Twitter.”
Le Batard agreed with Pearlman, saying that the direction of modern sports journalism breaks his heart.
“People don’t care about this stuff the way that you and I do,” Le Batard said. “They don’t think about the things that go into the vetting of properly asked questions or information or the lawyering of stories. And in that, the distaste for journalism grows and journalism dies. So you and I are fighting what is empirically a losing fight.”
Ultimately, Pearlman returned to the idea that tough questions like the ones he and Le Batard are asking aren’t just something corporate media isn’t interested in; they’re also something many NFL fans aren’t interested in.
“I think people really want to love the NFL,” said Pearlman. “They really want to love their teams. They really want to sit on their couch and watch so-and-so run for so-and-so yards and wear their jersey that they bought at the NFL shop for $120 and wear their hat that they paid $50 for. And feel very, very, very comfortable.
“And the more people are reminded that football takes a significant toll on the lives of these players, the less comfortable they are sitting on their couch wearing their $120 jersey, wearing their $50 hat, drinking their beer, cheering on their team.”
The post Dan Le Batard, Jeff Pearlman push back on critics over NFL journalism demands: ‘They want to be comfortable watching their sports’ appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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