Tennessee bans Knoxville reporter

"Working through a source within the UT athletic department over a course of several weeks, Hooker was able to arrange an exclusive interview with Johnson."

clearly, someone in the athletic department thought so much of the SID access rule that he/she helped hooker set this up. sports information departments/media relations departments protect their athletes and coaches like they are holding state secrets. does phil fulmer have the launch code briefcase? no wonder UT has rules like that.

this is just another example of the business of college (and pro) sports getting so out of hand that the schools/franchises see themselves as far more important than they actually are. i vigorously fight the notion that sports departments are "toy departments", but we do cover games. we just try to bring solid journalistic practices to our coverage.

i think the reporter should be commended for doing what he did to get the story. whether he asked all the right questions or put all the right info in the story is certainly debatable. if he kept pestering the player for an interview and kept getting turned down, that's one thing. but there's no indication that happened. he worked a source in the athletic department for some days and was finally rewarded with an exclusive interview. the fact that some on here consider the story insignificant is irrelevant. if it had broken important news, we'd be lauding him for getting around the university stonewall to serve the readers. i don't see how this can be any different.

 

No, now is the time to demonstrate to the athletic department "No more" by making the people above the athletic department -- nominally, anyway -- sweat a little. That's not a tantrum. It's what we do, with the volume turned up.

 

"Brent Hubbs of Volquest.com and the Vol Network, was suspended for bowl week in 1998 for publishing what was said between a coach and player at practice, Carpenter said."

Umm, public figures, public domain. Unless practice was closed to the media.

 

And just what members of the UT media are going to stand up and say no more, FB... the cause is noble, the editors weak.

 

Are Bama fans pathologically miserable, or what?

You cheated. You got caught. You got punished. Get over it.

The GOP blames Clinton for all of its screwups. Alabama blames Phil Fulmer.

Enjoy getting your butt kicked Oct. 21 . . . for the 10th time in 12 years.

 

While Alabama should get its butt kicked -- and deservedly so -- Fulmer did have something to do with the last incident...

 

I'll continue to make this argument to tight ass coaches and SID departments until someone gets it through their thick skulls: Between 1982 to 2001, a span of more than 20 years, the two most successful college football programs were Miami and FSU: seven national championships between them, and were in another 4-5 games where a victory would have won them a title. Miami and FSU also were the two most open and accessible programs in the country: practices open, until very recently, locker rooms open (FSU closed their locker rooms 2-3 years ago), coaches available, players available, no one cared if a player gave a reporter their cell or dorm number -- everything pretty much open.

Therefore, the correlation between being a tight-assed program and winning doesn't exist.

 

Perhaps, but I'd say Spurrier had a pretty big hand in it as well.

 

Honestly, I can understand a school taking exception to a reporter publishing what was said between a coach and a player at practice.

Sure, by the book, everything is on the record. But I'm never going to write something a coach says to a player at practice, particularly if it is objectionable.

Use what you overhear at practice as background, but don't print it verbatim.

When I played, every coach I ever had at some point said something in practice that would make him look like an ass in print. It's part of sports.

 

True, but A) Spurrier isn't the rival that Fulmer is and B)It grinds the bama people that they go on probation while UT gets accused with solid evidence (academic woes) and skates...

 

Sort of. If the practice is closed to the public but open to the media on the condition that all information gleaned from practice is on background, then it's not fair game. Many schools have this rule and coaches will ask that you respect it. Fair enough. They don't have a problem letting you watch practice, but they don't want the fact that they called some kid a dirty motherfucker to get out in public. Fair enough.

Now if a practice is open to the public and any random person can come in and watch, then absolutely, it's public domain.

The whole "every interview has to go through an SID" sucks balls, but sometimes you can't do anything about it. I was working on a story on a kid at the I-AA I cover last fall and his best friend and high school teammate was a freshman at Virginia who was redshirting. I asked the guy if I could get the friend's cell number, and he says no problem and gives it to me. I call the kid, and he freaks out, starts muttering that "you have to go through the SID, and I can't talk" etc. He was scared shitless that Groh was going to bring the hammer down on him if he talked.

Stupid part was that the story really had nothing to do with UVa. I just wanted to get some thoughts on the kid I was doing the story on from his best friend.

 

If I was Hooker, I'd start sending out my resume ASAP. If the SE doesn't have my back over a chicken-shit story like this, what happens if he uncovers some real dirt? I wouldn't trust McElroy farther than I could throw him... and I've had two shoulder surgeries and elbow work done, too.