Those who disdain media - Lynch included - do all of us no favors

TO MY OLD college buddies, I describe a normal week in my chosen occupation like this: I write a few papers (columns), take a couple of timed tests (deadline columns) and otherwise hang around with colleagues and friends eating and drinking and complaining about either the big boss, a particular editor, other colleagues who had the misfortune not to be present, and/or the sources needed to write those papers and take those tests.

Substitute a few nouns, and the point is obvious: Work habitwise, I really haven't left college.

Which brings me to the great debate over Marshawn Lynch, the latest of our Super Bowl participants to gain more notoriety by not answering questions asked by the media than if he had. The NFL fines he faces, by the way, can be traced to those reticent fellows who came before him, like that old mummy from the great Dallas teams of the '70s, Duane Thomas.

Back then, Thomas's zipped lips were more novelty than felony, but the overall effect was the same. If you didn't know who Thomas was before that, you knew it then, and, for a large part of the population - OK, pretty much everyone - he was a folk hero.

That's because people are either envious of a job that pays you to go to games and write about them, think we do it irresponsibly, or don't see much value in it. They think we've done an end-around on the old 9-to-5 (we have). They think we are fed for free at those games (not always, but I highly recommend the press-box omelet station at Eagles games). And, yes, at some big events like the Super Bowl, you even get goodie bags, although there are only so many uses for a seat cushion.

OK, it's all of the above. And believe me, their positions are well represented in the beer and bull sessions that follow our latest timed tests, largely because those views are not without merit.

Especially if one or a few of us have the misfortune not to be there.

As required by the NFL, Lynch spoke again yesterday for exactly 5 minutes, during which time he issued a long statement and took no questions. When it was over, he sounded less belligerent than advertised, and maybe a little more paranoid.

"I don't know what story y'all trying to get out of me," he said. "I don't know what image y'all trying to portray of me. But it don't matter what y'all think, what y'all say about me. When I go home at night, the same people that I look in the face - my family that I love. That's all that really matter to me. So y'all can go make up whatever y'all want to make up, because I don't say enough for y'all to go and put anything out on me."

This is true. He does not say enough to create a story one way or another. And his actions are not easily interpreted, either, whether you view him unfavorably for the two on-field obscene gestures that have cost him $31,000 this season, or favorably for his devotion to his Family First charity.

Lynch likes people, say those people, a sentiment echoed this week by a slew of his Seattle teammates.

He just doesn't like you [media] people.

Well get on line, big fella. 'Cause there's a whole bunch of folk who do talk to us that fit that description.

I find it deliciously ironic that Richard Sherman became the talk of last winter's Super Bowl for talking to the media, in particular Erin Andrews, after the NFC Championship win over San Francisco. And that Bill Belichick, of all people, this week expounded on the value and necessity of Super Bowl participants sharing their thoughts with us, after spending most of his career trying to scrape us away like gum on the bottom of his shoe.

So here's my stand on all of this: Go ahead, ignore me. Make my day. Take your serious stand against all the predictable silliness that is Super Bowl week, whether it be those repetitive questions, or the ones that aren't even questions.

(My personal favorite is the one that begins, "Talk about . . . " Just once, I would love for the coach/athlete to respond, "No, you.")

Just understand this: The distrust grows when there is no dialogue, even the stupid kind. Speculation grows like weeds when no one's talking and it often misses the mark badly, as the Eagles' firing of Tom Gamble earlier this month underlines. It leads to more mistakes, more mischaracterizations, more reasons for athletes to distrust us and the public to dislike us.

And, really, that's something none of us wants.

Or needs.

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon