You are having dinner at a restaurant.
You order the salmon.
It comes out, and it is undercooked and smelly. It could literally kill you if you eat it. Are you not allowed to criticize the chef because you never went to culinary school?
That is how athletes sound when they criticize media using the you never played the game card. You should indeed know your profession more than the average person, but that doesn’t mean that someone else can’t critique your work honestly and objectively.
If Jeff Garcia just wanted to say Kimes was wrong with her take, that is perfectly fine, but don’t use the “you never played the game card.”
“Who the hell is Mina Kimes and when is the last time she threw a touchdown pass in a game?” Garcia asked. “Never! Ever! has she taken a snap or can truly understand the ability, the mindset, the physical and mental toughness, that it takes to play the QB position or any position in the NFL.
“The fact that there are people out there given a platform to talk about something that they have never done is hilarious and that’s how you have to look at her, she’s a joke! So let’s just laugh at her and support Jimmy, root on our Niners to go out and beat the living f–k out of one more team. That’s what it takes. She will never know that feeling. Can I get an amen? Peace.”
Kimes wasn’t tripping and laughed it off. If you get people to react to your takes in sports media, you are winning.
I want to point out two other things.
One, since athletes love to say that media people shouldn’t talk about a sport they never played, I want all the athletes in media without a journalism degree to give up their cushy jobs. They never trained to be in media or journalists, so why should they be allowed to have those positions (see how dumb it sounds when you put it that way).
Secondly, I have been keeping track of this for years, but every person Terrell Owens called out over his career has turned out to be a little suspect, so maybe TO was right, and the media was wrong in how they portrayed him.
Just some food for thought.
Flip the pages for Kimes’ take and Jeff Garcia losing his mind over it.