John Riordan: Welcome to the woes of the Players' Tribune tribute tours
This month, Netflix launched their Untold series of sports scandals with a deep and impressive recap of how the double blow suffered by Manti Te’o (pictured) the day before their shock early season victory over Michigan State - the death of his grandmother and his girlfriend - was only half true because the girlfriend never existed.
The American College Football season kicks off this weekend with three inconsequential games in the US and one slightly less inconsequential clash in Dublin's Aviva Stadium. It “kicks off” in a manner of speaking, depending on which branding you read.
In a decision which I suspect is aimed at preserving the integrity of the more real kickoff (next week's "Week 1"), the four games being played on Saturday will make up a slate of contests affectionately known as "Week 0".
So there you have it, my dear well-meaning promoters of the Aer Lingus Classic between a pair of Big Ten Conference rivals, the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Northwestern Wildcats: your nicely packaged spur for Tourism Ireland and the economy of Dublin and a few golf courses is really only a quarter of Week Zero.
What happens this weekend will all be forgotten almost immediately next week when the football teams of countless college towns take to the gridiron in earnest, allowing their students and dedicated alumni to celebrate the lengthening of autumn shadows, stretching out into another American Fall.
It's a home game for the Northwestern Wildcats, a proud almost 200-year-old institution situated just north of Chicago. And as heavy as Northwestern gets about their football, it’s nothing compared to the extremism of Lincoln, Nebraska where the Huskers exist on an even more desperate plateau.
Dave Hannigan laid out brilliantly last week in the Irish Times how weirded out we should all be by the power centre which rules the roost of the Nebraska setup, Coach Scott Frost. And while his character should definitely give us pause, I do hope the event overall is a success.
And that it paves the way as much as the organsers hope for this weekend next year when a more recognisable match-up pairs ancient foes Notre Dame and Navy, with the Fighting Irish always a surefire producer of big spending Irish-Americans keen to enjoy one more excuse to trample around the old sod.
Ten years ago, storytelling and branding of a whole other hue gripped Notre Dame's season and the US media at large. An unexpectedly unbeaten regular season which rode the coattails of the personal tragedy suffered by their totemic defensive star, Manti Te’o, became a national story.
This month, Netflix launched their Untold series of sports scandals with a deep and impressive recap of how the double blow suffered by Te’o the day before their shock early season victory over Michigan State - the death of his grandmother and his girlfriend - was only half true because the girlfriend never existed.
Before anyone knew the existence of the verb ‘to catfish’ (using social media to create a fake identity and draw in unsuspecting victims to a fake relationship), the fourth-year student athlete - a man about campus at the time - was dedicating his every spare moment to Lennay Kekua, the carefully managed creation of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a male pretending to be female while using the photographs of a random California student.
This documentary is Te’o’s opportunity to painfully revisit how the catfish happened, why it happened, how it got exposed so memorably by Deadspin and how the scandal ultimately damaged what had been a promising career.
Deadspin’s Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey got the tip that Te’o’s girlfriend did not exist and did what so many other outlets neglected to do during the sugar high of a sports drama that had all the ingredients, not the least of which was the fact that it was taking place in the heart of an academic institution which is no stranger to the Hollywood treatment.
The vast sums of money at stake for every character in this farce ensured the crash to reality was all the more divisive and bitter. After dropping like a stone to the second round of the 2013 NFL Draft, Te’o went on to have a pretty average seven-year pro career at the San Diego Chargers, the New Orleans Saints and the Chicago Bears; an admirable feat considering the mental health obstacles thrown so dramatically in his path.
Tuiasosopo, who has since transitioned to female, explains in the documentary that she concocted Kekua because she was struggling with her identity. “It was a black hole that consumed my life,” she said. “I didn’t care who I was hurting.”
It felt odd that the only truly honest figures I saw in this recounting were the journalists and this troubled perpetrator of a terrible act. A protracted sequence about forgiveness ends the story in a slightly eerie way which is a heavy nod to Te’o’s deep Mormon faith.
Maybe I was lured into a stupor by the tragic central figure who by this stage seemed about as authentic as the girlfriend he believed existed ten years ago but I knew we were doomed from the start when I saw The Players' Tribune appearing high in the production credits.
You will have come across The Players' Tribune often over the years since it was founded as a quasi in-house PR agency for all manner of professional athletes. The pitch is simple: sports stars don’t need professional journalists poking around their story so let’s use our own words and then hand them to handpicked skillful writers and editors who can manicure the angle into a nicely presented but glorified press release. Crucially, the athlete gets final approval of the finished product.
And although the core value of the Te’o episode of Untold was its chronicling of one of the most incredible US sports of the 2010s, I was a little concerned that the producers had sprinkled in a subtle smattering of poison to turn the viewer against independent-minded sports media.
The documentary doesn’t overtly criticise the brilliant journalism of Burke and Dickey but there is a detectable yearning for a situation whereby the lack of a dead girlfriend could have been swept under the carpet. There are dark undertones of wonder as to why the player couldn’t have been let focus on his football and earn a higher contract when he was ultimately drafted a few months later?
“The opportunity to make ESPN look stupid?” Dickey said in the documentary. “That’s what we were there for.”
He’s filmed a little less flatteringly than the star and he comes across as a little less polished. And the implication is that their prioritisation of the story above the career of Te’o was tantamount to malpractice.
While I was home in Cork earlier this month, a friend who works at this paper suggested to me that I write an entire column about another Players’ Tribune produced documentary, this time a six-part series on ESPN about Derek Jeter, the baseball icon who actually founded the publication, not long after his storied career at the New York Yankees ended.
The Captain had won all there was to win. All he ever dreamed about and focused manically on was one day becoming the shortstop for the New York Yankees. He achieved it and some. He was the most eligible bachelor in Manhattan, beloved by a fanbase in love with itself and hated intensely by every other club’s followers.
And again, the hotly anticipated documentary series in his honour had some great moments but just like the fodder fed to us in 2020 by the makers of the Michael Jordan documentary, the star we came to see had the final say.
Another penetrating sports series started Wednesday in the US. I don’t know how Welcome To Wrexham will be received in the UK and Ireland (where it followed suit on Disney Plus on Thursday) but given that it’s produced and starred in by the owners that famously took over the club in 2020, Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds and American actor Rob McElhenney, the question is going to always have to be, what are we watching?
We need and love these sports people to keep us distracted from the daily grind. And I've personally enjoyed the Wrexham story as a self-confessed sucker for the marketing that ushered the whole project in. Not just the Hollywood aspect on a superficial level but the way they've used their stardom baggage to lift a town and a community built around such an iconic football club that had fallen so far.
If it comes with a shiny FX / Hulu / Disney Plus combo PR-campaign documentary series, then so be it. But the knock-on effect of the likes of Jeter and Jordan getting final approval is a necessary evil that leads us to an uncertain place.
Ultimately, the vast majority of the sporting public could end up choosing the window which glimpses into their hero without shining a light on the fascinating flaws.
If the Players Tribune and other athlete-controlled platforms bobble to the surface of our choppy media waters, we will miss out on so much of the edge and humanity which sets them apart as truly great.
