The reason is that Collingwood is football's equivalent of a black hole; it sucks the football media into its vortex and lets almost no light escape to shine on the comps other clubs. Even the media outlets that claim to be "national" (in particular the Fox Footy smorgasbord) are in its thrall.
The sad and really stupid thing is that most of the wider football world (i.e. us punters) really aren't all that interested in them.
Are they, Mr Roy Morgan? According to Roy, and he can work a spreadsheet that bloke, of the 7,993,000 people who support an AFL club, only 9.1% of them follow Collingwood. They aren't even the most followed club.
Spreading the argument further, the football media is completely dominated by the rises and, especially, falls of the Big Four Traditional Melbourne Clubs - Collingwood, Essendon, Richmond and Carlton. You watch any footy show or nationally syndicated column, and they will lead and dominate the coverage, almost without exception.
Yet between them, they only command 28.2% of football support. Meanwhile, the "big four" interstate clubs, Sydney, West Coast, Brisbane and Adelaide have a 38% following; Sydney alone has 13.2% of football's supporters.
In a year like this, when three of the big four are languishing in 12, 13 and 17th spots (and the other is limping along in 7th) while teams like the Bullies, Melbourne and Port are setting the benchmark for exciting footy, it means that the football media is wallowing in failure and mediocrity - and concentrating on clubs that three-quarters of us don't give a rat's about.
