What flies in the press box nowadays

As I’ve mentioned before, in addition to the Capitals I also cover several other teams and sports for DC Sports Box. Terps football and the Washington Freedom are two such teams, but my primary secondary beat (does that even mean anything, ‘primary secondary’?) is D.C. United and international soccer.

It’s been a good few weeks in the local area in terms of live international soccer. First there was the Gold Cup game between the U.S. and Honduras (not to mention the Haiti v. Grenada undercard) at RFK on July 8th, the Chelsea-AC Milan exhibition on July 24th in Baltimore, and most recently D.C. United taking on Real Madrid Sunday at FedEx.

It’s been a good few weeks for me too—I covered all three.

Sometimes I’ll complain to friends about having to take the Metro down to RFK on a weeknight or joke about the quality of the food in the media room (hint: not good), but really I have a great time every time I cover a game (I shared the beat with my friend and coworker Craig Stone). It’s rare like a Capitals game, in terms of personal interest, but then again the Caps have never put 70k butts in a stadium, so there’s that.

One thing I’ve noticed about these major international soccer events, however, is a difference in terms of the type of media presence in the press box, post-game interviews and mixed zones.

Basically, there are a lot more fans.

This is definitely not to say there are no fans in hockey press boxes, so let’s back up a moment. I don’t mean ‘fan’ in the sense of any person who likes a specific team. Go to the Caps press box, or any other, and you’ll find plenty of people who prefer a specific team.

Any team-specific blogger you may find out there (Storming the Crease, Musings of a Hockey Mom, even TheHogs.net, for example) is most certainly a fan of that team. And most other supposedly-neutral reporters covering teams are fans too- you want someone who likes the sport to cover it, right? They don’t necessarily have to root for the teams they cover—Greg Wyshinski, who lives in DC and is at many Caps games, likes the Devils, while Corey Masisak is a Penguins fan—but they have to love the sport.

No, what I’m talking about is fans being fans in the press box.

The most obvious transgression is cheering the press box. No matter your rooting interests, the press box is supposed to be a neutral atmosphere. That doesn’t mean media members don’t react to things happening in the game, but you gasp or smile instead of shouting and cheering.

At RFK stadium, the press box seating plan always has the same arrangement. The front and back rows on the right side are traditional media, the middle is announcers, statisticians and press staff, and the left back row is bloggers and new media. All of the news media who are in attendance for one game only are seated on the far left on the front row, and coincidentally enough that location, if any, is where cheers will emanate from during a game.

Every credential pass has tons of boilerplate language on the back, telling you all the things you can and can’t do, and there’s always a statement about crossing the line from media member to fan. The credential I got from the Gold Cup has a simple statement: “NO AUTOGRAPHS ARE PERMITTED DURING MEDIA ACCESS PERIODS AND AN ATTEMPT TO OBTAIN AN AUTOGRAPH MAY RESULT IN THE CONFISCATION OF THE CREDENTIAL.”

Yes, it was in all caps.

No brainer, right? I was surprised, but not shocked, when in the post-game mixed zone for United and Madrid, Kyle Sheldon, an underappreciated member of the United media staff, had to repeatedly tell “media members” wearing both credentials and Madrid jerseys that no, they could not stand along the barrier and ask every member of Real Madrid to sign their soccer ball, jersey, or whatever.*

And that’s another thing. At every international soccer game I’ve attended there’s been at least one, usually a few, people in the post-game press conference wearing soccer jerseys (and no, I don’t mean the players). They’re for one of the teams represented, or a previous team of one of the players.

That’s something you would never see in ice hockey, partly because hockey jerseys are unwieldy but also because they cross the line. Everybody knows, to go back to a site I previously cited, that Rob from Storming the Crease roots for the Caps. That’s fine, because he’s in the press box and the locker room not as a fan but as a provider of media content for an extremely technologically-savvy Capitals fanbase.

The jersey-wearers in soccer games are not, as far as I can tell, content providers (maybe they work on the technical side of a media organization, but they certainly aren’t writing, recording, or even paying attention to the press conferences I’ve seen them in) but rather establishing their physical presence as fans.

It fascinates me, as to why people do that. Is it really acceptable in cities outside of DC and sports outside of ice hockey to wear not just your team colors, but your team logo, while serving as a member of a supposedly-neutral press.

That strikes me as something like being an arbitrator and wearing a shirt from one of the parties involved, or wearing apparel from a company while sitting on the jury for a court case in which they’re involved.

Even if you are 100% completely objective in your thoughts and actions, your objectivity is questioned through your apparel. Would you, as a United player, want to take questions from a reporter wearing a Chicago Fire polo shirt? Even if the questions were completely legitimate, you would perceive bias and feel uncomfortable in your own locker room.

This isn’t an argument as much as an observation. Something that makes me respect the atmosphere and community of ice hockey as a sport that much more.

*I have to note that while the D.C. United media staff takes the lead in dealing with on-site press box concerns and the like for some these games, they are not in charge overall and have to follow a different set of guidelines for accessibility and credentials than for MLS matches. For example, I had to go through CONCACAF for my Gold Cup credentials, and the United staff was not involved at all with the Chelsea-AC Milan game.