Up With People

I don’t watch much TV, but recently I binge-watched all eight episodes of “Quarterback” on Netflix. Shortly thereafter I watched all eight episodes of “Receiver.” While I’m a football fan, and care about the nuts and bolts of the game, I could not have watched that many hours of gametime back to back to bank, and what that hammered home for me is the importance of people to the popularity to any sport. More audiences care about how and why Justin Jefferson does The Griddy than how to exploit the weaknesses in a Cover 2 defense.  

Football without personalities – even personalities you watch primarily because you dislike them – is a very dry game. Why do you think that the Kelces are so popular and such compelling fodder for TV and the pundits? It’s not just the intersection with Tay Tay – although the cameras eat that up like crazy – but also their backstory and their fan engagement.

Of course fishing fans differ from football fans in one major and meaningful way – most of them still participate in the sport, and therefore care more intensely about the game itself. We want to know what crankbait the pros are using, or what their LiveScope settings might be, or what knot they use to tie their braid to a fluorocarbon leader. Still, if we can isolate the fan portion of the experience, it still comes down to people and personalities. The sport is at its best when we’re watching the vastly different personalities of Roland and Clunn, or the battles between KVD and Skeet, or just wondering what Ike will do next. 

We’ve spent so much time arguing over the rules of the game in recent months, and while I agree that they are critically important, without the development of personalities we care about, varying rules effectively amount to differences without distinction. If nobody cares who wins, they don’t care whether they use FFS, either. 

Part of the problem here is that we now have three leagues. How many professional anglers, even great ones, can you juggle in your brain? I follow this stuff fairly closely, and care about it deeply, and I still can’t tell you much about the bottom dwellers on each tour. With three hundred dudes trying to get it done, they effectively take away from the oxygen available for stardom. 

Think about it – who is the last recognizable major star to emerge since the split? I’m not talking about a KVD- or Clunn-level star, but rather someone on the order of a Gerald Swindle, known for exceptional achievements, as well as marketing skill and personality. The only one I can think of in the past seven or eight years is Jacob Wheeler, who was already on that trajectory. Who else captures the hearts and minds of so many people so widely? Few, if any, come close.

I suppose it’s on the leagues to use their media heft to figure this out, but right now things seem to be in a holding pattern of sorts. There’s so much negativity, and so many varied forces demanding our attention, that it’s harder and harder to stand out. If we don’t start creating new stars for 2030 and 2040 and beyond, we’ll move further and further from being the compelling sport that I know is waiting to emerge.