Covering winless teams

I covered a junior-college football team that went through an 0-24 stretch about a decade or so ago. This team was terrible in every aspect. There were a few close games, one they lost by a touchdown about halfway into it that looked good. But otherwise, they were historically bad. Games with negative rushing totals and not because of sacks. Games with less than 100 yards in total offense. Giving up 60 or more points 2, 3 weeks in a row. Running backs used as punters and offensive linemen used as kickers. And the only real interesting thing about it was the head coach's seeming obliviousness to the situation.

Games 5 through 22 of the streak were his entire tenure (two 0-9 seasons; in those days Kansas jucos played eight regular-season games and every team played in the first round of the playoffs). He was fired right as he got off the bus at the end of the second season.

 

High school football is an interesting cover. For the most part, coaches can't really do anything to improve the talent level of the team.

We had a team that made it to state last year for the first time in decades. They moved down a level this year but because of all the seniors they lost, they went 0-9 this year.
Another team of ours broke a 30-game losing streak and won 3 games last year, they moved down a level and have their most wins since 2005 at 7-2 right now.

 

The program I covered was six years removed from a state final appearance and four years removed from winning seven or eight games. But soccer made a big dent in that area and by the winless season, they didn't even have enough kids for a two-deep chart.

 

Ha, I’ve got so many anecdotes.

We had a team lose in the state championship game, then lose every game for the ensuing two years. I always loved that their streak started at the top.

They were hard to cover and some of our frustrations probably bled into stories at times. That’s less than ideal.

A little older and wiser now (and with less staff) I simply try not to cover bad teams as often. I’ll put the extra time into, for instance, the state-contending cross country program instead. I’ll still go to games, preview and whatnot, but try to make sure it’s not leading the section, that it’ll be ok as a shorter story than something we need to play big.

We had a girls BB team go winless last year. I wrote a nice season preview and a few good gamers early in the year. I wrote short recaps through most of the season — score, stats, what happened, one or two quotes, if even — then came back late in the year for a “why are these girls still trying? What motivates them? Do they regret signing up?” feature. That all played fairly well. No one in town gives a shit about the details of an ugly game, but parents still want something to cut out or point to.

We have another BB team that’s winless in its last two years. (We only cover three schools... last BB season was rough...) The coach has promised he’d shave his head when the team wins, so has been bringing clippers to every game for two years. That’ll be a good story someday...

At the college level, I’d be damn sure I was covering my bases, digging in about what’s going wrong and what could possibly fix it, tracking the hilarious signs of futility, then I’d look for more fun stuff. Who the F shows up to watch this team? Has the program ever been worse? What was the turning point that started this slide?

Then I’d take some of the time I used to devote to some intense pre-game analysis and find an interesting story somewhere else in the area.

 

A team with a really weak high school program is usually due to reasons such as being much smaller than the other schools in the conference or changing demographics. I read a book by Bill Walsh and he talked about how his first year as a high school coach he won the conference. Then they opened a new high school in the district and he went two and eight.

But I did cover bad high school teams for a short while. You do realize that high school coaches are frequently not really smart, though.

 

Why, because if they were any good they would be at a college or in the NFL? That's like saying if a reporter at a weekly or small daily was any good, he'd be at a big metro paper. Many times, there's reasons why someone is where he is, and it doesn't always have to do with how smart he is either.

 

I think that's a really good point.

I know of several occurrences over the years where a coach tries to get something going at a bad football schoool and can't move the needle. Then he gets out of this situation and maybe moves up the ladder at a good football school, like spending a few years as an assistant. And when he becomes head coach, it turns out he wasn't a bad coach at all. He had the ability to maintain a program. There are just some places where that isn't going to happen.

 

Totally agree, but in many smaller schools the athletics coaches are whoever’s willing to take it on, not so much some selected for having the best resume or coaching potential.

The AD for a school I cover had to coach the football team a few years ago when a coach backed out in July.

 

Here's how I got into the field of sports coverage (which has led to covering most anything else there is to write about) nearly 40 years ago.
I took on the role as the boys' basketball correspondent for your high school team as a 15-year-old Sophomore. The team was coming off a regional runner-up finish and a 21-4 record with the #2 scorer and point guard returning. A phenom off the junior varsity was to be added to the team as well.
I took on this role in the spring of my freshman year eagerly anticipating the start of the season in December. Plus, I got to get into the games without having to pay!
Quite naturally, I wasn't aware until a week before the first game that the #2 scorer and the point guard were academically ineligible and would never regained their playing status. So all they had was this freshman phenom who it turned out only had one more year of eligibility due to his age!
That team went 1-19. Try coming up with something to write every week (ours is/was a weekly newspaper) as a 15-year old!
Five years later, the program earned its first state tournament bid and I was still covering them.

 

I agree where you work does not necessarily mean you are smart. But I found some of the coaches to be very dogmatic and strategically lost. They lacked talent but did things like playing smashmouth and running off-tackle when their tackle was 190 pounds and was playing against a guy who got a D-1 scholarship and then played 11 years in the NFL.

 

My sons went to a school that had fallen on hard times, It was either the smallest or second smallest school in Fairfax County Virginia and had to play schools twice its size. Another handicap is the student body contained more than 10% Hispanic, Asian and Central Americans, These kids were generally not playing a lot of youth league football. So the team sucked.

I read the school newspaper, and the student reporter, wrote the following lead in a 46-6 loss:

The game started out well for the team when Danny Gonzales ran the opening kickoff back 26 yards.