Mark your calendars and hide the chandeliers. This week we will debut of ProPlayerInsiders’ Weekly Podcast, hosted by Dave Zirin, providing access to professional athletes like you’ve never experienced.
For too long, athletes have been written off as millionaires without consciences, jocks without intelligence, and thugs without morals. The biased, sensationalized sports media governed by the 24-hour news cycle is too quick to demonize and ostracize professional athletes, and it so rarely considers the source when publishing suspect reports.
The goal for the weekly show is a simple one: to tell the stories of players, their families and loved ones from a perspective little seen in the current sports media landscape, directly from the source.
We want to get beneath the statistics, beyond the scandals, and try to actually open the public to the three dimensions of the personalities behind the play.
The conversation will acknowledge the contribution to society pro athletes make on those days of the week in which they don’t take the court or field.
We seek to present an accurate message about the humanity of athletes whose words are often discounted based strictly on their profession alone.
We want this to be a place where players and their families feel like they can talk honestly about life in pro athletics as they do when the cameras are turned off.
The show will focus on the NFL and the NBA. Why those leagues? Simply, it’s because the NFL Players are locked out and the NBA players certainly look headed in that direction.
Given the sheer number of sports media outlets that are in financial partnership with the league, the need for a grassroots program unfettered by league control is obvious.
On our debut show, we are going to interview DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association about the challenges players and communities face during the NFL lockout.
While Smith can and will speak about the latest developments in the NFL labor struggle, perhaps more importantly, he can help us understand and appreciate the struggle which many of the players’ families face on a daily basis.
We are also going to speak to former New England Patriot and Philadelphia Eagle Kevin Turner. Kevin Turner is coping with ALS (commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.) He is reckoning with the role that football may have played in connection with his diagnosis.
Turner is digging into his past for answers to not only help his fellow athletes, but for the benefit of the kids lacing up cleats in junior leagues and high schools across the country, all of whom can benefit from his story.
Every week we want to tell these stories because, in our sports saturated culture, they’re just not being told. We want this to be a show that fans and players feel is a must-listen experience.
You can help. Listen to the show next week and then blitz Facebook, Twitter, and or whatever way you prefer to get the word out. We have high hopes for this venture and hope you both enjoy and join the ride.
