Anyone out there hate the team you cover?

Just curious. I'm guessing that with all the horror stories of access problems, inefficient/arrogant PR/SID staffs and dictatorial coaches, a lot of us fit that description.

Another question: If you do, how well are you able to keep it out of your copy?

 

Paging those who cover, Alabama, Florida, Ohio State and Weber State...

 

I don't know that I've ever hated the team I cover, but I have certainly hated the coach I cover. Usually there are at least a couple of players who I like a little bit.

Have I cheered against the team I cover? Abso-fricking-lutely.

Do I own a t-shirt from a low-major school that beat one of the schools that I've covered? You bet. I wear it to the gym all the time.

 

I've hated the administration and the SID staff before, but I don't know how anyone could legitimately say they hated the team they cover.

No matter how much I loathed those other people, I found several athletes and coaches who I enjoyed talking to, and on some level wanted to see succeed. I suppose it's possible for an entire team to be made up of absolute assholes, but I've never encountered it.

 

As a prep writer, there was a basketball coach who I really fucking disliked. I didn't even interact with the guy that much, but I just got a bad vibe from him and he treated me like I was the least important person in the room whenever I was near him. I decided to fight back by completely ignoring his team, figuring that if parents called in to bitch I could just tell them to take it up with him.

It didn't matter. His team didn't win a single game all year and the following spring he was fired for banging one of his students.

Not sure that's relevant, but I felt like telling the story. Carry on ...

 

Banging one of the students eases some of the pain of a winless season.

 

Usually.

 

Re: banging.
Male or female?

 

Does the Fab Five count?

 

Seriously, I usually like the players but often have despised perhaps a school's vibe from the AD to the main coaches or a pro team's arrogance or disdain for the media.

As a group, usually like the players.

 

Female. And from what I heard, it was multiple students.

In my end of the year wrap-up column I gave him a brief mention, noting that at the beginning of the year he was hired as Podunk High's new social studies teacher and boys basketball coach ... and that it turned out he wasn't very good at either. Dude was an epic scumbag.

 

There is a wrestling coach I can't stand, but I have 36 other varsity teams playing this winter that also need to be covered.