AFL: Jack Ginnivan criticism highlights a hot take epidemic

While not at epidemic proportions, there certainly has been a high-level of hot air in Australian sports media lately. In fact, they're probably constructing a metric for it as we speak.

Perhaps it has more to do with Australia shifting closer to an American-style media consumption where 'hot take' shows are the norm and nuance is a word consigned to an unread dictionary.

Although, at least in America, they don't pretend to dress up their hot takes as anything other than what they are.

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Soundbites designed to capture someone's attention, ideally to invoke their outrage, for a day until they rinse and repeat with the newest, hottest, most outrageous take.

If you scratch beneath the surface, the takes usually have about as much substance and credibility as a politician in an election cycle, but that is the point.

In fact, in many ways, that is the goal.

The perfect hot take combines the perfect use of vagueness and pathos in equal measure.

If we take that as the perfect formula for the Australian media's tool of the trade, Kane Cornes is one of it's most pre-eminent exponents.

Watching Cornes' hot takes have become increasingly monotonous.

One week, it was telling Jack Ginnivan to pull his head in after "carrying on" when the Magpies beat St Kilda earlier this season.

"You don't see Geelong carrying on like that. You don't see Richmond and dynasty teams carry on like that. Earn some respect before you start carrying on like that ... there's a thing about winning in a humble way," the media pundit said on The Sunday Footy Show.

What was Ginnivan's crime? Celebrating Collingwood's win with a few tongue-in-cheek remarks like "the first of many" and "light work".

It should be noted that a few weeks later, after Ginnivan inspired Collingwood to an Anzac Day victory over Essendon and claimed the Anzac Medal, Cornes was quite taken with the rookie forward.

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To the extent the former Port Adelaide midfielder debuted a new hairstyle as an ode to the Collingwood sensation.

"I was wrong, he kicked five (goals) on Anzac Day on the big stage. There is something about this kid I like and I need an edge, so I want the edge," he said.

"There is an edge about him and I'm on board. I love it."

It is hard to conjure the words to describe Cornes' about-face. Perhaps that it had all the deftness and subtlety of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal.

This week, there was Cornes' criticism of Chad Wingard for his celebration after a goal against the Gold Coast.

Cornes is far from the only exponent with a few other pundits coming close with their assessment that North Melbourne should head to Tasmania on current form.

It is an unfortunate, and often over-looked, element of sport that someone has to lose. That for every winner there must be a loser.

Currently, that misfortune belongs to North Melbourne but if you did a straw poll at Mount Buller circa-2012-13, Melbourne fans would have lamented that same existence in between mouthfuls from their charcuterie boards.

Now pundits are all aboard the Demons as the pre-eminent example of how football should be played, while their fans party like it's the 1960's all over again.

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On the horizon we have a gamut of hot takes headed our way when the AFL's trade season flows into full swing. Stay tuned for former, read failed, AFL list managers giving their take on Reg from Riverside's hypothetical trade of Dustin Martin for a packet of chips and second round pick.

It seem strange that in a time when media personalities have access to an ever-increasing metrics which can measure everything from expected score to cartoonish looking pressure gauges, those pundits have chosen less substance rather than more as their weapon of choice.

Overseas, media companies are creating new publications and verticals which aim to take the reader inside the game to get a greater understanding.

Meanwhile, we're sat in front of the television watching grown men debate how or how much someone celebrated.

Maybe they can get Champion Data to make a metric for it to save us all some time.

What is conspicuously absent from the media discourse is that they are making their own bed to an extent.

They are the first people to point and shout that Australian players are closer to flagellant monks wandering through the streets of Roman occupied Judea then the uber-cool personalities that reside in the American sporting landscape.

Pie Jesu domine, dona eis requiem as they say in the Life of Brian.

Australian media may be the only place on earth where you can criticise someone one week and be modelling your hairstyle after them the next.

The current landscape has left us with highly-paid pundits with more interest in updating us with every player who has walked the halls of a private school than breaking down a game with any shred of analysis.

But that is what happens in the epidemic of the hot take.

Media pundits can have their cake and eat it too while everyone else watches on with an audible groan.

May the hot air continue to rage against the muting of our TV channels.

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