Growing up in the Bronx, Willie Colon was a New York Giants fan and then would later go on to spend the last three seasons of his career with the New York Jets. He was able to read coverage of the Giants as a kid and then experience firsthand what it was like to handle the media when he was a Jet.
The now co-host of The Carton Show was a guest on The Ryen Russillo Podcast this week and he said when was with the Jets, he thought the media was more trying to see what he was like off the field rather than talk about what he did on the field.
“I think being on the professional side, playing for the Jets, I realized talking to the media when I had a helmet on, a lot of what I was reading as a kid is what they are still seeking. We know what the tape says, but who are you really? Outside of a holding call or a sack or being able to run the ball, who are you really?”
“There’s a constant pursuit to really find out the DNA of each player that plays in that market because that has more of a ripple effect to the headlines and identity of the franchise,” Colon said.
I realized being around the beat writers when I was with the Jets, they didn’t really care how I was playing. They really just wanted to know who was Willie Colon and what was I like off the field. I feel like there’s always an inside pursuit to try to dissect each player in that locker room.”
Before he was a Jet, Colon spent the first six years of his career with the Pittsburgh Steelers (4th-round draft pick in 2006). He thought the difference between Pittsburgh and New York in terms of media coverage was night and day.
“When I was in Pittsburgh, we never talked about the media. It wasn’t even thought about because there was always a sense that the organization itself, the Rooneys on down, had a hard grasp of what was coming out of that locker room. It was like suppressed. When I was in New York, it seemed like the media was very much a part of our team, which was stressful.”
While Willie Colon loved playing in New York under head coach Rex Ryan at the time, he felt that the media had such a presence in the locker room that it was tough to control.
“We saw them before walkthroughs, we saw them after practice, and we ended up developing this personal relationship with certain beat writers and characters on the staff. There’s no controlling these guys. There’s a whole entity that this team can’t control. They are everywhere,” he continued.
“Rex, who I love, by the way, would bring them up ad nauseam. We have the Bills this week. Why are we talking about the media? They had such a presence in our locker room because they mattered so much to the overall theme of the New York Jets that they had a place on our team and I hated that.”
