Hard Knocks: Media in the NFL

By:Tyler McDonough

The NFL has been around since 1920, when it was founded on August 20th in Canton, Ohio. The NFL is made up of 32 teams divided equally by the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference. The media has not always had a presence in the NFL. Due to the rise of social medias and television the NFL has started many shows and series to let the viewer get the full experience of their team or favorite organization.

On August 1, 2001 the producers NFL Films and HBO released episode 1 of the Reality Sports documentary called Hard Knocks. Hard Knocks mainly focused in on NFL teams during their pre season camps. Players, Coaches and many other things are caught on footage during the filming of Hard Knocks. The ups the downs all the things that occur in the sport of football and even behind the scenes. The series has survived and thrived for 10 seasons and put out 37 episodes. The show is Rated TV-MA for mature audiences only due to language and references.

Thru the years Hard Knocks has hosted multiple Championship winning teams and has also signed multiple successful actors for the role as narrator, such as Paul Rudd and Liev Shreiber. The way players are highlighted in this series really keys you in on the everyday life of an NFL football player. How they act, how there day is scheduled, how they eat and even how they feel towards the TV and the media.

First season of Hard knocks the show featured the Baltimore Ravens who had won the Super Bowl the year before and followed up in 2002 with Emmitt Smith and the Dallas Cowboys. The series stopped filming and resumed back up in 2007 with the Kansas City Chiefs and continued every year except 2011 due to the NFL's Labor situation. This season that just concluded was featuring the Houston Texans with JJ Watt, Vince Wilfork and Jadeveon Clowney.

Shows range from 50 minutes to an hour and each episode included a lot of cursing. Tempers flare and people crack while under pressure during pre season camps. You as the viewer get to witness how heart breaking it is to watch a coach cut a player or how happy you can be when your team is playing successfully. A lot happens in each episode and season, the team and general manager have to accept to certain regulations before being featured on the series.

The main way media comes into play and affects players is during coach and player meetings and on field practices. Players fight and argue from time to time when tempers flare, in past years the cameramen have caught footage of multiple fights and arguments. Players giving constructive criticism to other players and sometimes pushing came to shoving and thats how fights would occur. Charles James 3 was a cornerback for the Texans trying to make the team this pre season. He was one of the most loved players on the team, he would motivate people to do there jobs and keep there heads up and move on from things. He was unfortunately cut and coach stated that it was going to be the hardest guy on the team to cut. Media and cameramen followed around james to see how he would react and he got aggressive with staff.

He was also seen on multiple episodes fighting with men over playing time and practice reps. He would always fight for his job and it was hard to see him go stated the Texans Head coach at the end of the final episode. Media being around everywhere caused james to react in a certain way. He did not have the personal space he wanted at the time and needed and ended up setting him off. One of the reasons i find reality shows somewhat annoying yet interesting. They invade ones personal space and also continue to film when one is aggressive with them.

No matter how much people complain about media in the NFL they will always be involved, due to contracts and negotiations with the NFL and other major companies such as cbs, espn and abc (1).




Cites:
(1) http://operations.nfl.com/updates/football-ops/2015-nfl-media-access-policy/

(2) http://www.hbo.com/hard-knocks