Dear dimwit on the phone

Flex: It's not the gender, it's the sport.

More football parents and more people in town interested in football.

But you made the right call.

 

Hard to believe there are still a few troglodytes who can't handle females in sports 30something years after Title IX. But then I stop and think: For a couple of generations, girls playing interscholastic sports is normal.

 

Yes, coach, I understand you were on the road and that the home team is supposed to report the game. But you were playing an out-of-state school. And while that is not a big deal to you, since you are just across the border from them down the road, it is a big deal in this situation, because an out-of-state coach is not going to know how to, much less even think about, go about letting us know who won. So...

 

Ah, this is why I e-mailed out my handy reminder last night, which includes "report every game, win or lose, home or away" in a bold-faced large font.

 

On the flip side, we have to deal with the occasional whiny reader who thinks Title IX extends to equal coverage from newspapers, such as the WNBA is supposed to get the same amount of stories and centerpieces as the NFL, MLB, college football, etc. One conspiracy theorist blames the low WNBA game attendance on the fact that they're not on our cover every day.

Most stupid thing I ever saw in the comment section of a newspaper website: Some guy wanted to file a lawsuit against a TV station for not carrying enough WNBA games.

 

WNBA = Why, NoBody Attends

 

Fossy....I believe you earned 25 Internet points for that post.

 

So I don't know if this is a true dimwit mainly because I sort of understand where the mom is coming from on this one:
So her son — one of the top running backs in my area — has just racked up 330 yards and 3 TDs against cross town school in annual rivalry game. Kid is an arrogant son of a bitch and has alumni talking about in the context of disrespecting the uniform. After the game, the cross town team's coach calls him classless and needs to learn some humility. Basically this kid was taunting the sidelines after beating them and it got under everyone's skin. The coach makes reference to the kid's maturity, or lack there of, two or three times in a five minute interview, so I use the classless remark in the story that I posted online.
Mom calls me today (game was Saturday and it's my first day back from the weekend) kind of irate. She said her son is just 17 and things like this shouldn't be spread in the paper. It was a personal attack, she said, and it's something that shouldn't be printed. She asks me not to publish the remark in the next edition (we're a weekly, so I have a couple of days to chew on this one). I tell her I can't make promises, at which time she asked to be passed to my manager, who it sounds like has my back in this one. His coach contacted me before she did asking about the quote (he hadn't seen it before this morning). It didn't sound like he was mad at me, but was pretty pissed at the cross town coach.
I understand where mom is coming from, but I don't know if you have the right to complain when your son is quickly getting a reputation for being a jerk on the field and someone calls him on it in the paper.
So, fair or foul: Running a quote attacking a 17-year-old's character in the paper.

 

I say foul, but I know I'm in the huge minority.

In before false equivalence: "If we praise them, we have to call them out."

 

If it was a small thing, like one gesture in the moment of celebration, I say foul. We all do dumb shit when we're young, and that's a big, happy moment for him.
If this continued all game long -- or is part of a larger pattern of behavior -- and people are talking about it, it's absolutely worth mentioning. Hell, might even be worth a column if you write one. You let the opposing coach speak, and I'm guessing you set up the quote with an accurate description of the kid's actions. The mom sounds like one of those parents who believes her kid can do no wrong, and it's clearly reflected in his actions. If the kid is going to act like an ass in public, in a setting where sportsmanship is valued, I have absolutely no problem calling him on it.

 

I think you have to go with it because the opposing coach said it, if I'm reading correctly - that to me is the bigger judgement issue from a reader perspective, that the opposing coach is harshly criticizing a minor. I think you're clear on this, as it's more likely people are going to judge 1) the coach, for giving you that quote and/or 2) the player, if he really is that much of an egotistical animal.

A couple years ago, girls' basketball of all things, one coach wasn't happy with how an opposing player comported herself in the final couple of minutes and refused to shake the girls' hand in the end-game lineup thing. She noticed and immediately said something, and I saw him not shake hands. He immediately bolted and didn't give out any post-game quotes, and I included both details (didn't shake hands, left immediately after game with his team) in my story, because they were true, after all.

I also included when, after a different basketball game, the coach said, "You didn't cover our last game, so I'm not going to give you quotes after this one." (Roughly - it was a couple years ago at this point.) And he didn't, and left after that statement.

 

I'd go with it but that's because the coach said it and, therefore, he's the one ultimately held accountable. All you are doing, as a reporter, is passing on what the coach said.

With that said, there are probably better ways for a coach to handle it. I covered one basketball game in which one of the teams had a couple of players getting too cocky about how well things were going, to the point their coach had to tell them to knock it off.

After the game, the opposing coach said, on the record, he was happy that his kids played with class, then remarked off the record about the cocky players in question.

But... if the coach goes on the record criticizing an opposing player, it's fair game to attribute it to him. And if anyone complains, you simply tell them that's what the coach said and, if they didn't like the remark, you tell them to talk to the coach or whoever supervises him. And that's because it's the coach who is responsible for whatever he says.