Media Training Outliers

As most of you know, Abbie was recently featured on ESPN!

Her insight was brilliant – focused on how those “boring” sound bites from athletes are really just them hitting their message points in sometimes-emotional moments. If you missed it, click here.

Anyhow, I agree with her concepts wholeheartedly, especially today with morality and social media clauses in many of the athletes’ contracts. However, as Malcolm Gladwell taught us – there are always Outliers.

Case in point – over the weekend, I happened to click to a special on the Houston Texans superstar Arian Foster. As I believe them to be the most overrated team of the year, I started to turn the channel to the Real Housewives.

But then something happened.

Foster went off script.

In a clip from a seemingly run-of-the-mill press conference about his HUGE $43.5 million contract extension in 2012, he was moved to tears talking about his mother and her struggles to raise her children in poverty. I was as overcome with emotion as Foster was as he talked about how she pawned her wedding ring so she could buy a couple weeks’ worth of food for the kids. By the time the special cut to his mother, now well taken care of by her loving son, I was considering buying a Foster jersey.

(I even briefly considered cheering for him to beat Tom Brady this weekend, but eventually came to my senses.)

So, while sticking to key points to ensure you don’t look like this in an interview is a wise move, there are always those times when real emotion translates.

What examples of outliers can you think of when it comes to this sort of thing?