Media Bowl Gifts

I don't know when you're talking about -- maybe like within the past 10-20 years -- but the stories I know, it was a helluva lot worse than this in the good ole days.

Talk to some of the old boys that used to cover NASCAR in its early days. Planes would pick them up and fly them to races. Hell, some of them even got cars.

 

A few years ago at SEC media days, I had the chance to go out to dinner with some of my fellow media pals. The PR guy for one of the BCS bowls was going to be picking up the tab. I declined - not because of some extraordinary sense of ethical purity, I was just busy working. A few months later, that bowl PR guy took a job as an SID for a school in the conference. Now when I deal with him, I'm pretty pleased I wasn't at that dinner. As easy as it is to say something won't compromise you going forward, there's really no way to be completely sure unless you decline anything that isn't unremarkable stuff (notebooks, pens, etc.) available to all reporters.

 

A college football tradition is that the SID from the home team takes out the writers covering the away team. I know this was commonplace in the Big 12, SEC and Pac-10. Can't vouch for the other conferences. I know as recently as five years ago, this still happened.

Thoughts?

 

I'm sure there are ways to justify it. But the fact is, I instantaneously judge anybody who wears or uses anything with an event logo on it. Maybe that's a reflection on me. But seriously - if you really need a cheap fleece, go down to Old Navy and buy one for $15. Even if you can somehow justify accepting the thing on ethical grounds, you look like a tool for actually utilizing it. And if you do end up accepting gifts from bowl games that you cover, nobody had ever hear you bitch about the BCS, because the entire system is set up on bowl-sponsored swag, albeit swag far more expensive than a Sugar Bowl laptop bag.

 

I think it was at the Super Bowl in Tampa (Ravens-Giants) when they gave out laptop bags that could be worn like a backpack. A very prominent columnist saw people with one and started freaking out because I guess someone had picked up his credential for him or something like that and he didn't get one. He was running around like a fucking idiot looking for the PR guy and demanding that he get one of the bags.

 

That always amuses me.

I arrived for State U's bowl game a few hours before the kick to help our beat writer with coverage. I saw some other guys — mainly TV — doing the same thing.

The only perk I wanted was sodas in the press box instead of just water and coffee.

 

I covered the AT&T National during its first year at Congressional. They gave out backpacks. I had no idea there was any sort of media gift and didn't think anything of it until the tourney's media relations sent one to me at my office three months after the tournament.

 

I'll bet you opened it and yelled, "Well, it's about goddamned time!!!"

 

No. They groaned because they'd have to stay in that shithole Tulsa for one more day.

 

Actually Hondo, it was for both reasons.

 

Never had a desire to play Southern Hills. In my opinion, has two good holes, 9 and 18. The rest, forgettable.

 

Just getting around to this thread. You really don't say that with a straight face, do you?

Can you cover the Super Bowl without knowing what it's like to be rushed by James Harrison? Can you cover a war without knowing what its like to be shot at?

Then you can cover the Masters without a free round on the course, right?