They have a race quota to fill, so not always the best person will get the job...
Alex Scott - Question of sport
- Thread starter GIBURROWS
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They have a race quota to fill, so not always the best person will get the job...
Soldato
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Sport, especially football, is full of under qualified white blokes who get jobs in management, punditry, the wider media purely because of who they are rather than any sort of merit. No one says anything. An evidently talented and capable black woman gets a job and all of a sudden people want to attack her credentials and abilities.
Fascinating.
Fascinating.
Soldato
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They are all pathetic, Did you see the Lawro predictions where they had some apparant soul singer called Celeste doing football predictions versus Lawro. And in her summary she said she did not really know a lot about football but used to watch some when her dad did when young.
Basically trying to find someone female and black to insert into basically everything just to diversify it. I mean wtf does Celeste know about football?
To be fair BBC do this with a different celebrity each week and some clearly don't watch football.
They are all pathetic, Did you see the Lawro predictions where they had some apparant soul singer called Celeste doing football predictions versus Lawro. And in her summary she said she did not really know a lot about football but used to watch some when her dad did when young.
Basically trying to find someone female and black to insert into basically everything just to diversify it. I mean wtf does Celeste know about football?
You’re seriously tapped if you aren’t trolling.
This has always been one of the more compelling reasons not to have (racial) diversity hiring practices (with the BBC most definetly employing such practices).
Because any appointment made that aligns with the hiring practices "diversity" aims will always be open to the obvious questions around suitability for the role.
So perhaps you should direct your ire to the organisations that potentially taint some people well qualified for the roles they are in because they happen to align with some diversity target?
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Soldato
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Being a former pro does not warrant them getting those jobs no?
No one has attacked her credentials or abilities, nice strawman
Soldato
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Well, no, it doesn't. Being a manager is a completely different skill set to being a player. Being a pundit is a completely different skill set to being a player. It'd be like giving a hospital porter a job as a surgeon because they'd spent 15 years in the industry, so they must be capable right?
As much as you like to disingenuously pretend otherwise, characterising her appointment as a box ticking exercise is exactly that.
The only thing that gives me hope here is all the people getting upset about Alex Scott were probably equally outraged at the notion of Sue Barker getting the job last time round. Baby steps.
Soldato
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haha what? A hospital porter is never actually doing a surgeons job though is he? So yes you are right in that respect.
A football who has played football for 10+ years is more than capable of discussing the game.
Soldato
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There's is absolutely nothing that qualifies a retired footballer for talking about football. Playing a game and analysing it in a way that is useful for an audience are two completely different abilities. Some players will be able to do it but correlation is not causation.
You've not met many pro footballers I take it?
There is a certain skill set that you need to be able to talk reasonably coherently and consistently on TV, on live TV where you're in a studio with an earpiece that is handing you background information about the show you also have to be able to listen to at times multiple different people issuing instructions and directions and pick out those that are applicable to you ("the clip of Man U vs Man C is running late, we're going with the funny clip of Player X's trousers splitting whilst he takes a penalty kick instead").
I'm not a great Lineker fan, but he started learning how to present whilst he was a professional player, and it took him several years to get reasonable. I met him when he was recording something for the BBC in about '94 and he took multiple attempts to record his bit, but you could see he was paying attention and learning.
It's one of the reasons any professional presenter on live TV tends to be able to get a reasonable wage, let alone if they've got decades of experience and a backing skill/experience that is unusual, as there is a difference between knowing how to do something and being any good at explaining it*, and ideally you want a bit more than "he kick ball good" which is about all some footballers manage
In short just having played professional sports doesn't make you any better commentator than some random fan from the street, all it does give you is (hopefully) an insight into the behind the scenes process and what it is like (and there are some I wouldn't expect to get that from).
If nothing else, if it was so easy I'd expect an awful lot more of the ex footballers to be doing presenting, especially those who didn't make huge sums (or didn't have the sense to put some away), or had no other skill set to fall back on.
*and some people are better at explaining something, or talking about it than they were at doing it.
I miss the days when people didn't feel empowered to share their politics with everyone. I feel like we all got along a lot better. You didn't know how your neighbours voted and didn't care and we were all more tolerant of one another because of it.
What the hell does tapped even mean?!