NorCal high school announces coverage rules

This from a school near Santa Rosa, California. And a deflection. Wow!

 

Most of those are standard requests from schools. I glanced at it so I may have missed something truly out of line.

The only stuff that bothers me is having to go through someone outside the athletic department for interviews. How bout you let me and the baseball coach figure out what time works for a season preview. I think they can handle that just fine.

 

None of this seems unreasonable to me, especially as school safety is paramount.

 

Yeah, there doesn't appear to be anything outrageous there. Those guidelines are pretty similar to what we go through to talk to college coaches and athletes.

 

Unless I missed it, there didn't seem to be anything in that relating to postgame interviews. I spent a decade covering preps, and grabbing coaches and players after a game was always a scramble. If someone is there to make that easier, great.

 

As long as the school officials are cooperative, most of this sounds a bit unnecessary but manageable. The last line about being unable to sell photos without consent could be the most troublesome aspect. Those are a good revenue stream for a lot of outlets that invest in high school sports coverage.

 

I think this is pretty much the unwritten SOP for HS/media interaction around here. And a couple of particularly anal-retentive coaches will insist on having a member of the coaching staff present for ANY player interview to take place.

 

That's what jumped out at me: I can't just call or text a coach myself. I'm about to run through a whole list of 'em to finish previews.

I already emailed the ADs of the coaches who haven't responded... but would that constitute an interview request under this policy? Methinks not.

Oddly, there's no mention of non-practice, non-game interviews in that policy at all. So I guess we can freely torture whoever we want outside of the season?!?

(Aside: Why can't these coaches just send back the dang form!)

 

I find this whole thing vaguely unsettling in a trying-to-control-the-message way. I don't want Sierra or Monica, do-nothing PR wonks hired by the administration, lurking near my interview with Coach Meathead. Fuck off.

The part about the locker rooms being closed is wholly unsettling. For the love of Christ, you're not a fucking professional sport. Coaches can handle talking in their office and figuring out which kids can handle an interview. Though this would allow the 2023 version of college stringer me (j/k, there are no more stringers #CrossThread) to avoid having to interview the football team captain who was butt naked and absent-mindedly scratching his balls a few years after he and I were shopping for baseball cards together.

 

And here's the "missing" piece: The coaches like this because they generally DGAF whether y'all cover them or not. Many of them prefer not giving out their "trade secrets." Paranoia has always been their default mode. Now there's nothing stopping them from being paranoid.

Honestly, you don't hear the readership screaming bloody murder when their game doesn't get covered on Friday night. They care even less if anyone gets to interview the team captain.

It's a different landscape. And if I'm saying that from one of the hotbeds of high school football, imagine how it's playing in South Dakota ... or in the vicinity of any major city.

 

If I hadn't covered high school football, I never would have believed these guys were just as paranoid as their professional brethren. But we had one local rivalry where the coach from Team A would barely talk to the writer who covered Team B. I can assure you, Team A coach, that the writer covering Team B gives and gave two shits who won one way or the other.

That said, I covered Team A, and after a few weeks he began warming up to me. I had a car issue one Saturday (no paper Sunday so the story wasn't going to appear until Monday) and I told him after the game I'd missed much of the first half. He invited me to his office the next morning to watch the game film and fill in my PBP. I suspect he appreciated it when I showed up. A few weeks after that, I got the run of the place one weekday morning as they prepared for their Thanksgiving morning game against Team B. I was there at 5:30 AM watching them practice and then I #TyingThisAllTogether went into the locker room with them and observed as the captain did a live phone interview with the local radio station as his teammates sang "Friends In Low Places" behind him. That was a good feature Slapdick Sierra would never greenlight, built by trust that would never be established with Slapdick Sierra lurking.

 

I follow my alma mater since getting out of newspapers. The football coach is a very cool guy ... with a healthy bit of paranoia mixed in.

His upcoming sophomore QB1 is the son of the town's college coach and generally assumed to be "the guy" for the next three years. And sure enough, in the local paper's preview, the coach allows that he has "a junior and a sophomore" fighting it out for the QB start. Mentions neither name. He's done this before while everyone rolls their eyes and chuckles.