Hilariously Bad Interview Questions

I'm not a fan of the "talk about" questions, but it's better than people asking questions that get one-word answers. At least the intent of "talk about" is to get the guy talking...

 

Could you talk about the game-winning drive and your decision to run on every down?

Yes, I could.

 

Team A pulled an upset over second-seeded team in an early round of the boys basketball tournament.
Reporter to winning coach: "Coach, coming into the game did you really think your team had a chance to win?"
Everyone (well, the other three reporters and the coach) looked stunned.
Coach: "No, not really, but they made us show up anyway. Thank goodness we did, huh?"
I knew the coach from covering his team for a few years and talked with him later.
Told him it was too good of a response to a stupid question. He agreed but said that he gave the quote to help the guy out, not drill him for a stupid question.
Don't think I agree because that will just give the reporter fuel for more of the same.

 

Sort of. The team was still good and they even advanced a few rounds into the playoffs, but they were definitely not as good as the previous year's team. If my memory serves me correctly, they won back-to-back state championships in the two years before I wrote that.

What's funny is that I didn't suggest they were going to be bad. I just said they wouldn't be as good as last year's team and that pissed people off like you wouldn't believe. I was just being honest.

 

some people can't deal with honesty...or reality for that matter

 

Like probably all of us, I've asked some dumb questions, but I can't think of any that stand out at the moment.
There will be times, though, that I'll ask a question that I know sounds dumb in an effort to set up a great quote. If you get a quality quote, it's worth it.

 

Don't think I would ever want to come across as dumb to get a good quote. The reputation of being an idiot will stay with you longer than anyone will remember the quote.

 

I covered a HS girls basketball team that went 20-0 in the regular season for two consecutive years. There was a local radio guy who showed up once in the first season, around game 17, and after the game was done, shoved a mic in the coach's face and said, "So...the beat goes on, coach."

And then he showed up just once in the second season, around game 17, and after the game was done, shoved a mic in the coach's face and said, "So...the beat goes on, coach." I'm not sure if he had any other questions in his repertoire, because he would leave after asking his penetratingly insightful question.

Thankfully for him, the coach was a nice enough guy to actually give him an answer beyond, "Yes it does."

 

While there's little excuse for a REALLY dumb question, most coaches -- preps to pros -- should be intelligent (and courteous) enough to provide a legit response. Honestly, it's not that difficult to imply what the interviewer wants.

Sure, it's important to ask pointed, direct, thought-provoking questions. That cannot be argued. But giving sarcastic, one-word answers only makes the coach look like a bigger douche.

 

Well, my point about asking an intentionally dumb question is like this.
I asked a coach this year at what point he would panic about his team's chances of making the postseason, knowing full well he wasn't going to say, "I'm panicking now."
I thought it might lead to a good quote, like, "We never panic with this program. We compete for championships and we always feel like we have a shot at it until we see another team raising that trophy on the final day. You don't win titles by panicking."
Something like that. I figured it was worth asking the question to see what kind of response I got. In this particular case, it didn't work. I got a throwaway quote.

 

Sometimes it benefits you to play dumb. People, for the most part, love to talk and talk about themselves. If you can get some more info or quotes out of them by playing dumb, so be it.

 

I agree with that as well. I've always said I wanted my sources to think I'm dumber than I am rather than smarter than I am. I have found you get better quotes and you can find out a whole lot more when they try to put it in simple terms for you.
Now, I'm not saying pretend you're dumb. But don't let on that you're as smart as you are either. I've caught people in lies this way a number of times.