Cameras in sports dressing rooms? Spare us, please….

The head of BT Sport is having a moan about the fact that cameras are not allowed in football dressing rooms. According to yesterday’s London Times, Simon Green says that “football has an arrogance. It’s not a logical business in any way, shape or form, it’s an irrational business”.

Apparently, being logical, by his definition, is doing things the way they go them in the US. Cameras in the dressing rooms, comments from managers during games and all manner of other bright, shiny ways of applying TV viagra to revive waning attention spans.

Well yes, interesting things do go on in dressing rooms, don’t they? Or so we hear. What would we have given to have witnessed Alex Ferguson nearly decapitating David Beckham with a random boot? Or Donald Trump having a good laugh with his golfing buddies about pussy-grabbing?

On second thoughts, perhaps they’re best avoided. Do we really want to see a bunch of sweaty guys in jock-straps sitting around picking their noses, or slumped trance-like with their Bose headphones clamped over their ears?

And how would the occupants feel about constantly having to be on their best behaviour? No frolics in communal baths, sweary rants about the referee, or insults hurled in Spanish or Croatian about the nutter who got sent off after thirty minutes.

I suppose there would be some side benefits – for the players, bigger endorsement fees for aftershave and shampoo, photo opportunities in Calvin Klein underpants. And at half-time, we viewers would be spared a few minutes of droning analysis from the commentary box.

If the practice extended to rugby, perhaps we would be treated to graphic demonstrations of the effects of body-building on the human torso. And yet more commercial opportunities, such as beer sponsorship.

On balance, I think that dressing rooms are best avoided. There will, however, be voyeurs amongst us who would argue that if the cameras are allowed in male dressing rooms, it would be entirely sexist if they weren’t also installed in female ones. And if we can get an eyeful of footballers and rugby players, why not at Wimbledon, or even better, at the Olympics?

Full-marks for trying, Mr Green, but I suspect that once the novelty wore off, being a fly on the wall of most dressing rooms would be no more exciting than watching one of BT’s call centres fending off streams of angry customers complaining about the quality of their broadband service.