Pissed off coaches

It won't help now, but in the future, next time an assistant high school football coach tells you one of your stories was the worst article he's ever read, tell him that the (fill in play here) in the third quarter was the worst call you've ever seen.

I did that once and the coach fell right into my trap with "you don't know shit about football."

I said, "Well, you don't know shit about sports writing."

That was the end of that conversation.

 

Well played, sir! Huzzah to you!

 

Better to do it this way...

You: "That was the worst call I've ever seen."

Coach: "You don't know shit about football."

You: "Neither do you, apparently."

This prevents the coach from using the "neither do you" line if you instead tell him he knows shit about sports writing.

 

i have had a bunch lately. one coach went from saying she liked how i was covering small sports better than in the past to i have a vendetta against her team and her sport. that was ina week. and she hadn't even read one of the articles that she was bitching about!
I told her, sternly, that all she had to say was i missed something, when i did (and it happens to all of us) and I would correct it. but to insinuate that i have anything personal against her team or sport or school is offensive.
then i told her to call me, because i knew we both had more to say. she was kind of quiet on the phone, and i made nice and explaiend things from my side and she was cool by the end of it, or more cool (who knows).

all i ask is that i get treated with respect, as we all want. when they get personal, i get mad. then my boss tells me to chill the fuck out. it works well.

 

Dude, if I may be so formal , pissed-off coaches are your badge of honor in this business.

You are going to have pissy coaches no matter what you write. Some are going to get mad for the smallest of reasons, some are going to get angry for bigger reasons.

Some are going to get angry because you dared to point out that the starting quarterback lost his job because his performance was not up to snuff -- which the coach told you.

Others are going to get angry for even more bizarre reasons. One coach got pissed at one of my writers because he dared write a positive feature about how a player came back from an injury to lead the team to the playoffs the next season. That story somehow spotlighted a single player, which "went against the team concept" the coach was trying to promote.

The overriding thing is always to report the truth. The truth shall set you free. No matter what the bastards say, always, always, always report the TRUTH. Write the truth without bias and you can always look in the mirror and know that you did your best...

 

Had a coach today use 4 timeouts to help score just before the half... to go up 38-6. Wasn't pleased when I asked what he thought about running it up. And he really wasn't pleased when I mentioned a letter he wrote a couple papers over the offseason about some Thanksgiving changes. He felt his team was getting screwed. The team he blasted the most in that letter... today's opponent.

BTW, I have no problem with playing a first string in the first half, no matter what the score. Those kids deserve to get the majority of the snaps. But to use timeouts to do it is chickenshit.

 

If they're a badge of honor, I've run out of room on my clothing to add another.

 

My only advice would be, don't continue the argument. It's one you'll never win. Their minds are already made up. Just smile and nod. Remember, they need you more than you need them.

 

Jerk store, baby. Jerk store.

 

True, true, but I think you over estimate high school coaches.

The next time I run across one that's witty enough to come up with that line will be the first.

 

I haven't had a pissed off coach yet but I've got a snippy one on my hands now. about a year ago, local private school wins state championship with players who had formerly played for public high school.

private school was very talented, had a dedicated young coach and, in the final, defeated a team with several Div. I signees. it was private school's 2nd consecutive title and fourth in 6 years.

because private school will not be scheduled by 3 public schools in country, the constant question I heard was, "Could private school beat any of the county public schools?"

So, I wrote a column, that was meant to highlight private school's true excellence and not denigrate the public schools. but my lede had to do with my opinion that private school would beat the public schools as a way of quickly relating to my audience that private school was that good.

I also like to periodically bang the drum that it's dumb for public schools to not play private schools in a county with less than 80K residents.

ever since then, one public school coach barely acknowledges me whereas before he was always inviting and friendly. I've heard from other coaches at the school that he was displeased with the column, mainly because he has a grudge against private school for taking "his" players.

therefore, I'm bracing for it to come out when I sit down with him for the first postgame interview of basketball season in a few weeks.

 

About 7-8 years ago, before I got moved to the copy desk, I had an incident where I pissed off a coach.

County high school girls tennis tournament. I had stopped by a quarterfinal match one of her players was in because it was a great matchup. Found out the match was just as close as I was expecting, but late in the first set. So I walk off 40-50 yards to catch part of another match, when all of a sudden I hear her screaming at her player "don't let that cheater win!" I head back over to see what's going on, turns out some very close line calls didn't go her player's way. But the player she yelled at was only a sophomore and lost her composure, easily losing the match.
In my article I mentioned that it was a competitive match until the coach shouted "don't let that cheater win" to her player, after which her player proceeded to lose the last game of the first set and then the second set.
Coach calls the paper the next day threatening a libel suit if I didn't apologize, that I should have talked to her about why she yelled, etc., etc. The paper backed me and I refused to apologize. Coach tried talking to me on the phone about it, saying it was a private conversation between her and her player and likened it to a football coach yelling at a player on the sideline.
After that, instead of calling in her results, she would fax them in so she wouldn't have to talk to me. At the state tournament, I wanted to talk to her about a couple of her kids who won flights, she said to me "are you going to apologize?" I said "No" and she said that she had no comment for me. So I got some extra quotes from the kids and wrote a good story anyway.
The next season our beat writer on another sport left the paper, so I got moved to take his sport. So I didn't have to deal with her after that.