Question for the college and pro beat writers among us...

It's so funny (and irritating) to hear a TV guy sputter through a cliche'd question because they want a 12-second answer that sums up the entire week.

I've seen a TV guy pull out a sheet of paper and recite the questions that the sports director wrote up. Three of them.

 

I have seen the SID from a small college (Division I hoops) basically carry on a Q&A with his head coach at a post-game presser during an early-season tournament because no one was asking his guy any questions.

I've seen radio foofs who aren't even covering the game ask 4-5 consecutive questions of a coach, even though there are working journalists on deadline.

I've seen fanboy loosers/boosters clapping.

All of it, in the immortal words of Mike Gundy, MAKES ME WANNA PUKE!!!

 

I don't think it's necessarily that people are planted there by SID staffs, but rather there's just a lot of dufuses on TV.

It's to the point now where, on my beat, I never talk to somebody in a post-game gang bang unless I've got a major deadline issue.

 

I've only seen it once, but a TV guy shoved his way to the front of a circle around a player, stuck his microphone under the guy's nose and asked a dumbass question. Player answers, TV guy decides he's got his soundbite and walks away while the player is still talking.

 

I've seen that happen... Practically every day...

 

Oh I definitely see the soundbite-only M.O., just never the leaving in mid-sentence. Generally they ones I've worked around can at least feign interest for those extra six seconds.

 

There are two Division I-A FB schools in/near Microville. At one, the post-game presser is limited to credentialed media and school administrators. About 15-20 attend.

At the other, boosters, etc., are able to attend, ask questions, and evesdrop and generally get in the way when you're attempting to conduct a post-game interview. There might be 100 people in the interview areas.

One goes smoothly. The other is a cl-------.

 

In four years of covering college and pro sports, I've never seen a PR guy ask a question. But ever single fucking time players are available, some TV fuck bust into a player interview for a profile and disrupt it with something like, "how confident are you playing Podunk this week?" Makes me want to break somebody's arm.

I'd estimate in a given week (players are available for a total sum about 30 minutes per week on my college beat, not counting postgame), I waste a good 10 minutes of that waiting for TV people to finish their dipshit questions and get their cliche answers for their 20-second story, while I'm trying to generate an advance, two notebooks, a Q and A and two features out of it.

 

The biggest thing annoying me right now is the TV morons who read everybody's stories in the paper that morning and then go waste everyone's time asking about that stuff that day — or worse, a day or two later.

The other day, a buddy of mine saw me rolling my eyes and looking pissed in the background during a TV moron's question. After he stopped laughing, he rewound it, recorded it and made me come by and watch it. I looked like such a smug asshole, but that's how those TV guys make me feel.

 

I've had SIDs do it in non-revenue sports, particularly at tourney time when we actually get out there and cover stuff, more as a service to the two writers there who he knows don't necessarily know everything about the team. Didn't bother me. Never seen it in football or basketball.

 

What I hate is when the SIDs send their little student interns to get quotes for the web. They just stick their recorder into the middle of a scrum, never ask a question, and then immediately publish whatever comes out.

Once last year, I had a pretty good anecdote about a receiver on the team I cover growing up with the quarterback on the team they were about to play. They went to high school together in some bumfuck town, and for fun, they'd tie a parachute to the back of of a pickup truck and "parasail" around the pasture. Usually, it ended badly. It was a pretty good little story for my feature, and one no other writer had.

Ten minutes later, however, every writer had it. The whole thing was on-line on a quote sheet, repeated verbatim.