Covering winless teams

The closest I came to covering a winless team was as a senior in college, when our basketball team started 7-2 -- then lost 18 in a row. I didn't want the team to lose, but from a young reporter's standpoint, the experience was quite valuable, even fun. As the losses piled up, there was never a shortage of stories to chase -- about the head coach's job being in jeopardy, disgruntled players who wanted to transfer, potential coaching candidates and so forth. There was a constant stream of rumors and news tips, some of which were even true.

As good as the experience was, though, it did cost me in one respect. The head coach, who was forced out at the end of the season, thought my coverage was overly negative -- I never called for his dismissal but did question his tactics and qualifications for coaching at a Division I school (he'd moved there from a Division III job). Unbeknownst to me at the time, his cousin was Dave Smith, who already was making a name for himself as a sports editor and was about to move to the Dallas Morning News and build an all-time-great sports section. After I got a few years of experience, I'd send him resumes periodically and wonder why he never even replied -- until I found out about the family ties.

 

One of the teams won last week! Of course, it happened on the road and I only cover home games because they gutted our travel budget last year.

 

You forgot that you also only cover their games when they lose, and that you must be a graduate of the losing school.
Did the higher-ups at the paper wonder why there wasn't a big bylined story the next day and lots of pics?

 

Nah, they were like "Just second-day it."

 

Our higher-ups know better. But we get those emails from readers quite often.

"Podunk Press had a nice long writeup with pictures, why couldn't you do more than a short paragraph?"
Well, it may have something to do with the fact that the game was 65 miles away, and we mostly stick to games in our coverage area (40 miles) unless it's playoffs or the rare huge game. We gave it the same treatment as all games we don't have a reporter at...if they send us stats, we write up a brief. As for the Podunk Press covering, it was in their town with their main school playing in the game. I would hope they covered it.

 

My football that was cruising for 1-8 got a huge break when a team that beat them 35-0 in September had been using an ineligible kid, so had to forfeit 75% of its season.

So now I have to explain in every story that they finished 2-7, buuuuuuuut not really.

 

I was the sports department for a couple of weekly papers in a previous life. During my first football season, I had three teams finish 10-0 and three teams finish a combined 3-27, with all three wins coming against each other. Which, OK, easy enough to figure out coverage priorities right, except the three bad teams were the three main schools for the much larger of the two publications, while of the undefeateds, one was the only school in the small paper, while the other two were fringe schools for the main paper, so fringe that they weren't covered until I got there because I noticed that we did move papers in both locations, so why the f not. Further, the school with the small paper played its road games like 75 miles away, and it's hard to justify covering them when two of the bad teams for the bigger paper are playing each other. A weird season, but it worked out (those intracounty pillow fights were at least competitive, with an 0-8 vs. 0-8 game ending with a touchdown pass on the last play).

 

One of the schools in my coverage area has lost 34 in a row. It will be a huge story when they eventually win a game. Getting there is the tough part, especially when some of the fan base whines about us mentioning the losing streak. I told the AD it’s news and we can’t ignore it. We’re not going to beat into the ground but we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.

 

I mentioned it earlier, but one of our teams had a 30-game streak snapped last year. This year they advanced to state. The seniors on this team were in 7th grade when that streak started.

 

When I was in high school, I remember our team went to the playoffs my freshman year. The next game they won was toward the end of my senior year. Worse, there was a future second-round NFL draft pick playing quarterback the whole time.
He played receiver in college and was drafted as that, so maybe that had something to do with it.

In my work experience, one of our private schools has struggled in several sports. The girls basketball team was championship-caliber at the start of the 2000s but now is lucky to win two or three games a year, mostly because they schedule a home-and-home with a home school outfit. They played that team a few years ago, and most of the fourth quarter was played as a 5-on-4 because the home school team had two of its six players foul out. Another time, they scheduled another winless team toward the end of the season just so one of them could get a win.
It's sad, but the girls generally do try hard. Those few games a year where they have a chance to win, I try to make sure we cover them to finally write something positive (or anything at all, really; the scores are never called in and I don't think anyone misses them so I don't press it).

 

I had the opposite happen to me at my first weekly newspaper job. Local boys hoops team was undefeated. Problem was, they were the JV, and my publisher had a longstanding policy not to cover JV sports (thankfully).

Which meant I would arrive in time for the varsity game to start and have a whole bunch of JV parents bitch to me about how their team was unbeaten and how they worked hard and all that and why couldn't I arrive at 5 p.m. instead of 7. Pointing out that the paper had never covered JV teams whether they were unbeaten, winless or somewhere in between never satisfied them, nor did pointing out that I had already covered a county board of supervisors meeting in the morning and a house fire in the afternoon in addition to the varsity game that night.

 

"We don't cover JV sports, we're never going to cover JV sports, and here is our publisher's number."

(Of course, just be sure you never run the odd feature on some eighth-grade stud.)