Do we know as much football as coaches?

Excuse me, can I borrow your broad brush for a moment? Thanks.

 

This is a bit hyperbolic, but I think this is not much different from asking if medical beat writers know as much about medicine as doctors do. They haven't put in the study time to have that knowledge, and what's more, they really can't. They're too busy tracking recruiting or talking to campus police about the latest arrest or chasing down interviews for the next feature to sit in a film room for hours on end, assuming they had one at their disposal. The mere notion gives us as a group more credit than we deserve. Coaches on the D-1 and pro levels have watched so much film and studied so many techniques (next time you're in one's office, count the number of football books he has on his shelves) for so many different things in the game, there is no way the vast majority of writers are going to see the nuances they see. There may be a handful of writers nationwide who come close to knowing as much as they do, but honestly, I don't think any of us know more than they do.

 

A colleague and I were invited to a film session for a Div. I college a few years ago under the condition that we not use anything we saw or heard. What a great opportunity for me.

Now-- I consider myself very knowledgeable about he game of football-- it's my best sport in terms of knowledge even though I played softball and tennis.

I'm gonna be really honest here, okay?

I understood maybe 10% of what they were saying.

My colleague, who played college football and does play-by-play on radio, admitted to me he only understood about 50% of it.

That said, I thought long and hard about whether they even understood half of what they were saying... because your point is well taken about football people tending to use this technical language "for show." But my conclusion was, yes, for the most part, they understood this language, and it's an actual science.

So the answer is no, we don't. That doesn't mean we don't have the capacity to learn it if we did it for hours on end everyday... but no we don't.

 

Do we (can we?) know as much football as coaches? No, for the reasons outlined above.

Can we understand the game as well as coaches? Abso-fucking-lutely.

 

Exactly, buckdub.

Understanding is our job. Especially understanding the concepts.

 

Coachs

Can coaches -- most of whom can read and are familiar with the language -- pound out a running gamer on deadline without a final score? Can a coach identify a gerund phrase or gerund modifier? Familiarity and mastery are unrelated.

 

How much do sports writers know about the techniques required for each position? Can you tell that the left guard isn't getting low enough to properly execute his block, and why?

These are the types of things most writers won't have a good grasp of, myself included. But I can write one hell of a story and point out why a game turned out the way it did.

 

I do.
In fact, I know more than most coaches.
OK, who am I kidding?
I know more than all of them.

 

I think there are some reporters out there who do know enough that they could hold their ground coaching or in these discussions, particularly if they played that particular sport... but the higher up the ladder you get with pro or college, those guys either really know their stuff or they have a knack for making players execute.

 

Of course, the answer to the question is no. But I don't think that's exactly the point. I always thought our value as journalists was to know enough about the subject so we can ask coaches, or players, educated questions about what just happened out there. Playthrough is correct.

Let's say a quarterback gets sacked. Maybe the left tackle was overpowered, or maybe the tight end didn't help him, or maybe the back missed the block, or maybe the quarterback held onto the ball too long, or maybe the receivers ran the wrong route. It's my job, I've always thought, to ask the right question to distill the information for the readers.

The best coaches to work with understand that, and the sad part is that the number of coaches are dwindling who have the patience -- and know this isn't exactly rocket science. It really sucks, for example, that most college and pro coaches don't have time to explain, to use Playthrough's example, Cover Two.

I've often thought it would be a great idea for coaches to have an off-season, off-the-record chalk talk with reporters, like the kind Lugnuts went through. Coaches are teachers, and we'd all love to know more. Our stories would be better, and I'd think the relationships with coaches would be less confrontational. I did that with a college coach a few years ago.

I guess those days are gone, though. They don't have the time, and the reporters couldn't sell their editors on it if it didn't come with a 15-inch mainbar and notebook.

 

No.
No.
No.

We don't. And we never will.

But we know more than they do about sportswriting.