Brett Favre doesn’t exactly agree with Naomi Osaka not wanting to talk to the media.
On his podcast, “Bolling with Favre,” on Wednesday, the Hall of Fame NFL quarterback addressed Osaka withdrawing from the French Open after she got fined for skipping a press conference.
“We should talk to the media. I’m not saying you have to; you chose to be fined or not,” Favre said, later adding, “I do think athletes are held to a different level and a different standard, and rightfully so, because of the money we make.”
Favre knows a little something about not speaking to the media as the disgruntled quarterback was so frustrated after a lost to the Detroit Lions in 1998 that he told the Packers’ public-relations team that he wouldn’t do his regular postgame conference. But he said he regretted that decision.
“They said, ‘You’ve got to do it,’ and I said, ‘I’m not doing it,'” Favre said, later adding: “I should have done the press conference and just owned up. It was one of those things where I said, ‘If I don’t have anything good to say, I’m not saying anything at all’ – well, go in there and say that!”
Favre said that he was fined $25,000.
“At the time, there was nothing written into the quote-unquote rule book for media. In other words, I was not required,” Favre said, adding: “There wasn’t anything that if I chose not to speak I would be fined, so I chose not to speak and was fined $25,000, and then that was written into the rule book after that.”
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Osaka had been fined $15,000 for skipping her media session and would later state her decision was driven by mental-health concerns.
She also said in a previous statement: “We’re often sat there and asked questions that we’ve been asked multiple times before or asked questions that bring doubt into our minds and I’m just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me.”
