Friday, September 18: Mike Sellers Inspires Fear In Malcolm Kelly
Posted by Matt Terl on September 18, 2009 – 9:29 amhttp://p.castfire.com/Zorhx/video/160077/redskins_2009-09-18-090324.flv
Mike Sellers is a big dude, bigger even than his listed 6-foot-3, 273 pounds. Part of this is because, well, he’s enormous; another part is probably his elaborate goatee; and the final part is his outsized personality. Which, in fact, is often misunderstood.
In his tongue-in-cheek guide to football fandom, author Michael Tunison classifies Sellers using words like snarling, intimidating, naturally terrifying, and oozing quiet intensity [while] coated in an enemy’s blood, and all of that — with the possible exception of the blood coating — is an easy conclusion to reach. That’s why Sellers now has his own segment on NBC-4′s Inside The Redskins show Saturday mornings: not to intimidate and terrify, but, Sellers explains, “For me to be me. I get to let people know who I am and how I am and the type of dude I am on this team.”
The “Mike On Mic” segment is expected to range from Punk’d-esque pranks to more conventional interviews, all conducted by Sellers himself. In the first installment this past Saturday, Sellers scored his first reporting coup by — as Dan Steinberg noted and transcribed — getting wide receiver Malcolm Kelly to freestyle on camera for the first time this season. (That’s the video above.)
Everyone from Lindsay Czarniak to Tanner Cooley has been angling for that story for weeks now, but Kelly’s been putting all of them off until his play on the field warrants celebration. Then, suddenly, Sellers has it. When I ask Kelly just how that came about, the explanation does not exactly roll off his tongue.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Mike is a homeboy, you know? He’s a guy on the team, and he’s an older guy on the team, y’know, so he’s kinda got a little … you know. It’s kinda one of those deals where he’s like, ‘Come on, man, just do it,’ and I say no, and he just LOOKS at me. And I was like, ‘Okay, well, I’ll do it, then.’”
Sellers is more blunt in explaining what inspired his big scoop. “Sheer fear,” Sellers explains. “The fact that if he didn’t freestyle for me, the prank was gonna be pretty ridiculous. He knew what was up.”
(Kelly, meanwhile, is lukewarm on his own performance, and the inspiration for it. “I knew it was in my best interests,” he says, “so I had to do it. I did it, and it turned out … ah, okay. It was so-so-so-so. I’m'a give ‘em somethin’ after that first touchdown, though, and they’re gonna feel it.”)
What’s missing in Tunison’s assessment of Sellers is the puckish, deadpan sense of humor. “I think a lot of people know that I’m playful,” Sellers says, “but during the games I don’t think they can see it because I tend to have a straight face.”
On the other hand, he has a straight face much of the rest of the time, also. During one of Jason Campbell‘s press availabilities this week, Sellers amused himself by pinching the legs of TV cameramen while they were trying to hold still. I asked him if that was a gag for the show, and he gave me some more of that stone-faced glare. “No,” he said. “That’s just me being playful, seeing how long they could concentrate.”
Ultimately, Sellers is pleased to do a little work on the other side of the microphone. “I have no problem talking to people or interviewing people, so… I enjoy it, actually,” he says. “In this league, if you say the wrong thing, it’ll get blown up to ridiculous amounts, so I’d rather ask the questions.”
Tags: Malcolm Kelly, MalcolmKelly, Mike Sellers, MikeSellers, redskins broadcast network, RedskinsBroadcastNetwork
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