Dawn Staley's approach with local media

Local reporters who covered South Carolina went viral during the women's tourney for showing how many interviews Dawn Staley and South Carolina does on a regular basis. Front Office Sports has a great look on why Staley has such an open media policy and how much it benefits the program.

Really good stuff.

https://frontofficesports.com/dawn-staley-south-carolina-media/

 

In the story, there's a link to Staley talking to a young girl reporter after the national championship game. That seems like it pretty much sums up Staley's respect for the media. Lots of coaches could take lessons from her.

 

Certainly, her program has earned coverage with the national championships. But many other Power 6 women's programs don't have regular coverage from a newspaper or area TV stations. For many programs, it's the student newspaper and one or two school-focused websites. Wake Forest had a home game last season against North Carolina with no Winston-Salem-area reporters, not even the Wake Forest student newspaper. The wave of heightened media interest in women's basketball has yet to trickle down to some less-prominent programs.

 

Here's the question, however: Would better access produce more interest? That's what makes South Carolina such an interesting case study.

 

Women's basketball in 2024 appreciates the coverage as much as men's basketball did (outside of UCLA, Kentucky and Indiana perhaps) in 1978-79 vis-a-vis King Football. Women's basketball is on the doorstep of its golden age. So the tone of coverage could change, and that's unfortunate in some ways.

 

There is going to have to be a culture change in about 80 percent of the D-I women's programs. The fan interest exists in about 20% of the venues. It still has to be built elsewhere.

As far as the WNBA ... I don't know. That we will have to see about.

 

The answer is yes, but let's also acknowledge Staley's good at it: Insightful, funny, consistent with quips, opinionated, fairly transparent.

A lot of coaches aren't that. They're not often hired to be those things though, at some mid-level power schools, it'd sure be nice if they were. The pervasiveness of these management books have infected many of them with a phony, stoic presentism that allows for neither joy nor insight. "We stayed connected and took it one possession at a time." Lord.

The role of the SID here, is frankly more crucial. Increasingly, SIDs have become humorless gatekeepers more suited for NCAA jobs than what amounts to a marketing role. (What is media relations if not that?) I think a reporter covering a college - maybe not a pro beat, but certainly college - is not going to know every good story in the athletic department. That's where, if a reporter asks, "hey, is there a good story over there that might make a mid-week feature" you hope a SID is of the mind to help.

 

For all the stuff we’ve disagreed on over the years, this belongs engraved on a stone tablet.

 

In a former life, I was SID at a mid-major and worked with men's basketball. Head coach at that time is now at a major school - his name has come up on this board somewhat frequently - and during our endless bus trips, he spent his time reading management books. He was, at the time, a pretty humorless dude. I talked to him after post-game interviews a couple of years ago, and he has definitely lightened up.

 

Is his name Francis?

 

Almost all of them lighten up as they get older because, at some point, you are who you are, and part of maturity is learning which parts of the management groupthink actually mean something, and which things don't. The ones who don't aren't in coaching. A 35-year-old with good suits and a grim face is tolerated; it seems like ambition, or something. You try that 25 years later, and you're just a grouch.