Dawn Staley's approach with local media

The best case scenario for the WNBA is Clark is out of this world, every bit as great as anyone imagined, and the team is, too, and the league's players are like "OK, she's amazing" and the league's coaches and GMs adjust roster management and play style accordingly. And the WNBA takes off.

But she could be really good - like top ten in the league good - and average, say, 18 points a game, and people who don't know anything about the WNBA don't know that 18 points a game is really, really good in a league built for size, physicality and defense. And then you'd have a "well, whose fault is it that she's just really good" kind of thing, and that wouldn't be good.

 

How much interest is there going to be at 80% of the teams that exist basically as farm teams for the P5, with their best players all entering the portal ASAP after a good season?

Microville Tech has had an outstanding WBB program for the past 15 years. Has made a FF, several Elite 8s, averages between 5-6 K in attendance, sells out big games, players are adored by the old geezer fan base. Made the Elite 8 this year, only four points down to South Carolina in the regional final with three minutes left.

After the season, 8 players enter the portal, supposedly because with the demise of the Pac-12 they were too good for the WCC. Canisius finally has a winning season this year, coach gets hired at EMU and the top five players all follow her.

Hard to sustain interest over the long haul in the portal era when your best players are bailing each year.

 

I've long held the belief that the access benefits the teams/players more than the media. If you really want to cover/write about something, you don't need the access to do it. Happens in the SEC all the time.

The thing that Staley and her SID seem to understand is that media coverage is free marketing. The Cowboys have also leaned in to this approach and are still wildly profitable despite being inept for the last three decades.

 

Good news: The mid-majors still have really good SIDs who are eager to sell those stories, even if they are increasingly unappreciated by their ADs and fighting the losing battle with the shrinking coverage provided by their local outlets.

Bad news: The worst SID I've ever dealt with--by miles and miles and miles, she was so bad she ranks right up there with the worst PR people I've ever dealt with--parlayed not doing her job at a mid-major into a gig on a WBB staff at a P5 school. She flopped there and landed as the head MBB SID. So the best way to move up as an SID still appears to be by doing nothing at all.

 

I know people like Seth Davis and Dan Wetzel are pooh-poohing fan concerns, but I think it's a real issue. If you're a fan at most schools - even power 4 - you see a freshman playing well and wonder "Where is he going to be next year?" That's not healthy, especially for schools outside the power 4. Fans love getting to know a player and watch him grow. I think something important is being taken away.

 

Sethie is the most prime example of being born on third base and thinking he hit a triple. Offers nothing but he went to Duke and his Dad is famous so we are stuck with him. His bleatings on the portal DERRRR IT'S NOT HURTING MID-MAJORS are the dumbest things being written by any undeservingly famous pundit not named Nate Silver.

 

Back in my reporting days I referred to them as Sports Information Deflectors. With rare exception, I feel the description is extremely accurate. …

 

I get it, but was blessed to meet many terrific men and women who were not. Like myself, those folks had an interest in history.
I offer as an example the legendary Langston Rogers at the University of Mississippi. Yes, you were not a part of the fraternity until Langston jumped your ass.
Yet, every single time I asked Langston for assistance ... including dating back to his Delta State days with the great Lucia Harris ... the man seemed to bend over backward to help. Same with Van Chancellor.
Guess it's about developing a relationship.

 

I was extremely fortunate to work with fantastic SIDs -- Tim Tessalone at USC, Marc Dellins at UCLA, Mike Zapolski at Pepperdine, Barry Zepel at Loyola Marymount. Tessalone and I were classmates briefly, I think I was a senior when he was a freshman. Dellins and I were the same age, same class and there was a lot of interaction between the USC and UCLA student newspapers back then. But those guys spoiled me. Every year at the Rose Bowl or an NCAA basketball tournament, whichever Big Ten teams were there, the SIDs were pathetic. Same with other East Coast schools. One time, as I was being stonewalled arranging an interview with a local kid, the SID said he had to leave to drive the coach to a TV station. I said, "Are you here to help the media or be the coach's chauffeur?"

 

Overall, I worked with three SIDs. None at power conferences, one was D-II. The D-II school is now D-I. One of the SIDs is still there almost 20 years later. One got forced out and that SID and AD is not really awesome anymore. And one department went through a huge overhaul and who knows what their SID situation even looks like any more.

Anyway, I worked well with all of them and two of them were fantastic. One I tried to get a job with and the other he tried to get me a job (I was mostly stringing at the time), which I found out after the fact, but they didn't have the budget.

So I have good experiences, but the local one now I think leaves a lot to be desired. I have done a good deal of mentoring work for student media and they keep having the hardest time getting access. If student media can't, how does anyone else?