Football coach throws a tantrum

One of the high school football coaches in our coverage area threw a tantrum directed at one of my reporters after his team lost to a league rival and subsequently lost the league championship. He accused us of not covering his team and not writing a story previewing the big game. Mind you, it was the start of girls volleyball playoffs, tennis playoffs, golf playoffs, and two league cross country finals. It was a busy week, and like most newspapers, we have limited staff and space. Plus we covered five of his team's 10 games, including the past three in a row. The coach took out his frustrations on one of my reporters. Aside from being completely unprofessional, it was an incredible display of disrespect. How would you handle this?

 

1) A Come to Jesus with his AD
or
2) Borrow Lucille from Negan...

 

How huge is girls volleyball, tennis and golf in your coverage area compared to football in your coverage area? If it's not, then a short preview should have been done and the other sports get covered later in the playoffs.

Part of this could be accomplished from your reporter in the last game. Have them ask the coach about the upcoming rivalry game, then putting that quote in the preview. Just a nuts-and-bolts, Local Team A is playing Archrival B at Bumfuck Field on Friday night. Local Team A is led by quarterback Johnny Fartball, while Archrival B is led by Tommy Touchdown, and a quote from Coach Rod Munch should suffice.

 

One of the volleyball teams is the second seed in its division. One of the goflers reached the Southern California individual championship tournament. It was also the first week of playoffs, so a ton of teams playing. The newspaper covers 17 high schools, four leagues and two CIF divisions. There was a lot going on. Football is big too. But football dominates the coverage for three months in our area. The teams will get even more coverage when the playoff pairings are announced tomorrow. At least that was my thinking going into this week.

 

How to handle this? Professionally. Do your job and cover them the same way as if he bought your guy a beer had they won. He my apologize, and he may not, but you aren't covering the game for anyone but your subscribers.

I used to have a guy who would bless me out and offer me a Dr Pepper without taking a breath in between the two.

 

Don't even think about writing about it outside of this forum. Nobody else cares. Repeat after me, everyone: "We are not the story, we are the story tellers."

 

That wasn't even one of my options. I tried calling the coach today. Went straight to voicemail. I want to talk to him, mainly to tell him he can't talk to my reporters that way. It's high school football, not a pro wrestling match. Too bad your team lost, try not to take it out on my reporters. They are not the reason your players can't tackle.

 

Give it the weekend. Maybe by Monday he'll be cooled down.

 

What difference would an advance have made?

 

I don't know. The coach is feeling slighted, I guess, because we didn't write a story about how his team is playing for a league title. The team won four in a row. The other team won its first league title in 11 years, but they weren't complaining about lack of coverage. Then again, we wrote a big piece on the team that won at the beginning of the year because it was their 100th football season.

 

Seems there is a growing amount of football coaches who are experts on what newspapers should do.

I hope I got the right color for sarcasm.

 

How much have you covered them along the way this season? Were they the only playoff participant you didn't write a preview for this week?