From Netflix to the NFL to widespread online fakery, sports became full-on phony in 2024

As every year comes to an end, reflection becomes inevitable.

“Let’s go back. Back in time . . .” To 2017, when Time magazine asked a simple question on one of its covers: Is Truth Dead? At the time, the target of the recreation of one of the magazine’s most famous covers (1966’s “Is God Dead?”) was then-President Donald Trump (sound familiar?). But that three-word iconic typography could extend today to a much larger target: society. And, more specifically, to the world we call sports, without which society seems incapable of caring for itself.

In 2024, sports seemed to be the exact place truth came to die. To rest its soul.

The fakeness of it all. Provocativeness in pursuit of being provocative. Being untruthful, inauthentic, straight-up fake for the exact same reasons. And no consequence for it because the people who are being fed the fake are accepting it simply for the sake of accepting it.

This is what happens when Netflix, a company that just happens to have 282 million global subscribers, can enter the sports space and stage an event that becomes one of the biggest, most discussed, most watched spectacles of the year (65 million viewers), get called out for the whole thing being a bunch of B.S., do a horrible job of delivering on its visual experience promise, get dragged mercilessly on social media and then be forgiven a month later in time for its next live sporting-event experience (two NFL games and a live Beyonce halftime performance) as if nothing ever happened.

Not that the Jake Paul/Mike Tyson circus was the top story of 2024 (it was close), but it led the charge with a fakeness (Paul not having previously fought any real boxers, a fake script of the fight’s sequencing leaking beforehand, a lack of punches both thrown and connecting) that has become the dominant culture in sports.

From there, it’s a laundry list:

The fake authen-ticity of the “Oh, let’s just try something new” that the NFL tried to use to explain its “decision” to use its new “relationship” with (again) Netflix to stream games on Christmas. It was a gangsta move if there ever was one against the NBA,
purposely impeding on a once-sacred basketball holiday.

The fake feel-good attempt by the NBA and the Lakers to get us to buy into the Bronny James/LeBron James father-son play-together movement that backfired because the controlled obviousness of the entire escapade became too impossible to ignore.

The continued rise of everything WWE.

The fake hot takes that overtake our sports programming every morning. “Anonymous/unnamed sources” becoming the new standard in journalism. The Sports Illustrated AI scandal, in which the once-venerable publication confessed to using artificial intelligence to do the writing for journalists they wanted the public to believe had heartbeats and independent thought. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s spurious “Golden At-Bat” proposal. The Russian group Storm-1679’s Paris Olympics disinformation campaign alarming the world about possible terrorist attacks during the Games — never a reality, just a strategy believed to be used to influence American and European elections.

The overall fraudulence of Aaron Rodgers, who over the last few years has seemed to unmask himself with every “Pat McAfee Show” appearance. This year, it reached an apex that drove former football player, analyst and “The Pivot” co-host Ryan Clark to verbally call out Rodgers for what he and millions believe Rodgers is: a fraud.

The WNBA allowing the Liberty to win their first championship on the bogus ending of the ring-or-nothing Game 5 of the Finals. The “fake person” running @NFL_DovKleiman’s X account, which called ESPN’s Mina Kimes a “DEI hire” — a national story. FS1’s Emmanuel Acho having to admit on X that he posted fake news to “garner traction which would increase followers. More followers = larger brand deals.” Fake NFL insiders such as Wesley Steinberg and parody NBA insiders such as NBA Centel (not NBA Central) becoming more mainstream.

The well-constructed, systematized loss of the integrity game while winning the clout, money and popularity game.

What can be done when no one seems
to care?

As much as this new norm has been fueled by social media and is a part of social media’s overall growth, journalists, athletes, owners, organizations and outlets all participated to some degree in giving it life. The Onion-ing of sports. Impersonator/impersonation podcasts, parody and troll accounts, false narratives, inconvenient truth infringements, misappropriation of information. Expected possession value in betting is more important than actual, real possessions in games. Sports itself is creating headlines and attention for every fake reason imaginable. The death of the real.

As Zevia would say, it’s time to get the fake outta here. But it’s the end of 2024, and we all know that’s not going to happen, that things are going to continue going in their current direction and it will get a lot worse before it begins to get any better.

Noam Chomsky, among his other gems of wisdom, once affectionately said: “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose the lies.” I ain’t saying I’m at all close to being the smartest or wisest writer of sports out here, but like Morpheus, a brotha had to expose the fake s---.