Xenophon Strategies

Super Bowl Media Day: The Blindside Question

Blake Rhodes

How many people receive marriage proposals during media interviews?  From my experience, not many. But I bet Tom Brady might tell you that he would have rather taken a hit from an unblocked linebacker than be blindsided by a marriage proposal from a wedding-dress-wearing Ines Gomez Mont, an entertainment reporter from Mexico-based TV Azteca during Super Bowl XLII’s media day in 2008.

You see, Brady, like most quarterbacks, mentally prepares himself to take vicious hits in a football game.  However, he probably doesn’t prepare the same way for media sessions.  I give Brady credit; he deftly avoided the “rush” from Ms. Mont.

I will watch today’s Super Bowl media day in Dallas with great interest, not only to see if there is a marriage proposal, but to also watch how players deal with both pointed and off-the-wall questions.  Here are some of the strangest questions players have received:

• "What is your purpose in life?" (Patriots QB Tom Brady, XLII)
• "Is it your mother who's blind, and your father who's deaf, or the other way around?" (Raiders QB Jim Plunkett, XV).

Two of the most sought after interviews will likely be the quarterbacks, Ben Roethlisberger from the Steelers and Aaron Rodgers from the Packers.  Each of them have had issues they have dealt with recently and probably won’t want to go over again: for Roethlisberger, his sexual assault allegations; and for Rodgers, being Brett Favre’s heir to the quarterback throne in Green Bay.

Both of them will be prepared to answer those questions, since they’ve dealt with them all season, but they need to try and handle the off-the-wall questions like Brady did with tact.  His use of humor and playing along with the answer made him out to be a classy guy who didn’t get dragged into the fray.

The moral of the story for the Super Bowl interviewees, as well as anyone doing an interview: be prepared to answer the questions you know are coming, but be relaxed enough to handle the “out there” questions with humor and grace before trying to steer the interview back into topics you want to cover.  

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