Most Arrogant Athletes

I've covered pro soccer and haven't found that. Then again, it was 1999 when MLS still seemed grateful for coverage of any kind.

I guess I'm fortunate that I really haven't run into the arrogant athlete among the teams I've covered, and one of them is a major D-1 men's basketball team... then again, I'm avoiding covering the Redskins like the plague.

 

Lots, actually.

The Capitals had a closed locker room, ostensibly because there were female beat reporters. We were told players would be made available in an interview room, and you were welcome to grab them as they left the locker room. But they left through the back door, which was inaccessible to the media.

 

I'm probably biased, but I just don't agree, at all, that baseball players can be the biggest jerks. Most of them are humbled by the minor leagues...as good as you might be in the bigs, you were still just a kid riding the buses trying to prove you belonged at a higher level. you were still just a kid who was homesick that first summer of pro ball and still just a kid who hit .210 or threw slop for three months at Double-A.

sure, some of them turn into dicks in the bigs, and some are already dicks by the time they get there. But the sense of entitlement and suspicion so easily found in an NFL locker room--where the drones have been told since the age of 13 to hate the media and to parrot the company line to outsiders--isn't nearly as omnipresent in an MLB locker room.

 

How did we get as far as the second page of this thread without mentioning golfers?

 

That's what you get for trying to interview a horse.

A while back, on a similar thread, one SportsJournalists.commer mentioned that in his experience NBA players who jumped from high school straight to the league were usually better to deal with than guys who spent even one year in college. Now, this probably isn't 100 percent true but I'd be interested to know if anyone who covers the NBA regularly would agree with that assessment.

 

Because they're still the best. Even Tiger and Phil, with very, very very few exceptions, will talk after a round whether they shoot 67 or 77. Vijay is the only guy really universally despised, and he still has moments when he's reasonably cooperative.

 

Someone needs to remind these track guys that no one in the U.S. gives a rat's ass about their sport until the Olympics.

 

I've done a lot of track, and while a lot of the sprinters like to talk and crow, most of them understand track's struggle for recognition and are incredibly accessible and cooperative. Most of the crowing is done for show, in an effort to promote the sport.

The only track guy I've dealt with who seemed to be looking down his nose at the rest of the world was the insufferably condescending Michael Johnson. He was a pain top get ahold of, and once you did, he treated every question with this frowning disdain, all but saying, ``Why is a nobody like you interviewing the greatness of me?''

 

NBA: Lock it.

 

Baseball. It's genetic.

 

Baseball players always struck me as being the biggest, most caustic pricks, by far.

 

I think most of the problems in baseball stem from the fact reporters and players are interacting daily, as opposed to just one or two times a week.