Why Is Michael Bennett Boycotting the Seattle Times? (Or: The Seattle Times Sports Section Is Usually Great, So Why the Immature Hit Piece?)

Corky Trewin/Seattle Seahawks

As of right now, Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett is no longer speaking to the Seattle Times. Which seems like a ridiculous place to have gotten in the absolute dead zone of the NFL off-season. Really, really ridiculous. But here we are:

Sponsored Port Townsend Film Festival Stream 24/7 - Watch 75 curated films with filmmaker interviews & special events. Support local arts!

@seattletimes @Matt_Calkins I will never talk to seattle times the rest of my career n will encourage my teammates to do the same

— Michael Bennett (@mosesbread72) May 21, 2017

How? Why? Well, for some reason, some bad sports takers set Michael Bennett in their sights this off-season.

First there was ESPN’s human sack of terrible thoughts, Stephen A. Smith, condemning Bennett for saying Colin Kaepernick could fit on the Seahawks despite his non-vote in the presidential election this past November. This is a bad take for a number of reasons. One is that Colin Kaepernick would fit on the Seahawks. Two is that, even though I personally disagree with Kaepernick’s move, you don’t have to turn in your activist card when you abstain in presidential elections while voting in a non-swing state. Three, even if you think that’s an untenable position to hold, citing an abstention as sufficient cause to not employ someone is ludicrous on its face. Is there any private-sector job that demands employees disclose their voting history?

Also unlike Kaepernick and Bennett, Stephen A. Smith has no public history of charitable giving (more on this later), and his politics are a cable news concoction of nihilism and misogyny.

So Bennett called out Smith for his hypocrisy on social media. There was a back and forth that ended with this message from Bennett that is about as on point as you could hope for:

Which is all well and good. Because Michael Bennett is generally great, and has a real charitable foundation that makes a real impact in the community, and is politically active, and is one of the most interesting minds in the game of football, while Stephen A. Smith is a trash person who yells.

Except it wasn’t all well and good for Matt Calkins at the Seattle Times. He penned a very bad op-ed on the matter entitled, “Seahawks’ Michael Bennett does great things, but why the immaturity?”

In this piece, Calkins highlights Bennett’s great play and charity work. Which could be the basis for an interesting column. “Michael Bennett sure does a lot of stuff and is a passionate dude who sometimes gets in trouble.” Mina Kimes wrote a great version of that article for ESPN The Magazine last summer. But Calkins’ praise of Bennett is disingenuous, as if to say, “if he can do these things so well, why can’t he do everything so well?” And that which Calkins claims Bennett is failing to do is “act mature.”

What is the "immaturity" in question? After this season's playoff loss in Atlanta, Michael Bennett yelled at a Q13 reporter Bill Wixey, asking him what adversity he had been through. Wixey happened to be a cancer survivor (something Bennett did not know) and Bennett never publicly apologized. This is obviously bad. In Bennett’s defense, he was being criticized for his performance in a game where he was re-injured by the same player who tore his meniscus on a questionable cut block weeks earlier. So he was hot, and in physical pain, and blew up on a guy in a way that was stupid. This was a bad moment for Bennett, and it was already reported by Calkins months ago and picked up nationally in dozens of outlets. (However, Wixey said that Bennett did reach out to him personally and apologized).

During tirade, Michael Bennett asked Q13 reporter Bill Wixey "What adversity you went through?!" Well, Wixey survived Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

— Matt Calkins (@Matt_Calkins) January 15, 2017

So, what else to lead the Times’ main sports take disher to go after Bennett? Aside from Wixey, not much. A couple bad plays on the field. Nothing that would seem worth rehashing until he cites this exchange with Stephen A. Smith, saying that Bennett was being presumptuous to assume that Smith does not do meaningful charity work in African-American communities. When I read this I thought to myself, “Oh,was Bennett wrong about a reporter again? Does Stephen A. Smith actually contribute to society? That would speak pretty badly for Bennett.” But NOPE! Calkins doesn’t suggest Smith is anything other than what Bennett said he was. He doesn’t even ask the question of what Smith represents. It’s not important to him. And this is where a kind of bad piece of writing devolves into being a truly atrocious slice of non-journalism. In my search for any evidence of Smith’s charity work I found nothing.

While I didn’t go full David Fehrenthold tracking down Trump donations, I looked through a couple databases and found no evidence of a foundation or significant donations to any causes. There was nothing in the FEC database in terms of political contributions for a “Stephen A. Smith” or a “Stephen Smith” in any of the cities in which he’s worked. Given how much Stephen A. Smith makes for yelling on television this all points to what Bennett was saying about him: he’s all talk no action. For all I know, he is making anonymous donations to causes he cares about, but in terms of public giving? Smith lags well behind both Bennett and Kaepernick.

So what exactly did Bennett do wrong aside from his outburst at Wixey? It’s unclear! Is there a pattern of behavior here? Not really! And yet here’s a 1000-word lead column in the Seattle Times coming after Bennett with nothing more than old news and needless tone policing. It sucked, and Bennett, who read the piece hours after it dropped (because he was busy, no joke, raising money for Diabetes research) upon seeing it decided he was done with the Times. Could members of the Seahawks like Bennett and Sherman be more amenable to the press? I guess, but you're talking about players who have found end-arounds to reaching the fans. In Bennett's case, I think of his candid interview with Dave Zirin at Town Hall, that was maybe the most mature press engagement I've seen from an active athlete.

Which makes the boycott unfortunate because the Times has some really great football beat writers in Jayson Jenks and Bob Condotta. Calkins has put his hardest-working colleagues in a really bad situation so he could stir the pot, and maybe gain a little notoriety. This has been a bit of a pattern for Calkins since he’s come to town, and it’s unfortunate. That said, as he’s gotten to know the town better his work has gotten better. He's at his best when he's shining a light on smaller stories, rather than a hot take ray at the city's most interesting stars. This setback though? A real sign of immaturity. Hopefully he can grow up.