Tennessee bans Knoxville reporter

Misspoke. Fixed.

 

I would trade my company line college kids for a few pro assholes who at least are willing to be their own man and say what's on their minds, even if that means being surly once in a while.

 

If Inky didn't know the reporter he would have asked, "Who are you? And who do you work for?" I think it's a pretty safe bet that he knows the local reporter, especially if they arranged the interview. The fact that the reporter asked him more than once what he would like to say to the Tennessee fans and says going to write it makes it clear the conversation is on the record.

 

I agree completely...

At a lot of the major colleges they treat these kids like they're five. I remember reading somewhere that a coach said "Player X isn't qualified to comment on his injury..." and it was something like an ankle sprain or something like that...

 

That's why I never understand on here when someone says, "I like covering East High preps - the kids are so unselfish. They always thank their teammates first and are so polite! You don't get that in the pros!"

Hell, no, you don't. That's why it's so fun to cover. It's mind-numbing to hear over and over again, "We just have to worry about ourselves this week, not what State U is going to do" or "Army/Stanford/Indiana/Mississippi State/Duke is a great team ..."

 

What's interesting is when you interview some of these guys in college and they're as boring as you can imagine.

Then they get to the pros and they remember they have a personality because they don't have a SID or a head coach ready to jump their shit for saying anything.

A friend of mine told me there was a school that passed out sheets to athletes that had an answer to any question they could face from reporters that is filled with cliches...

This isn't the case at all the schools. It just seems that way a lot.

The beat writers at the main local college that we cover get access to players once a week and after games they bring the same 4-5 players out.

 

Someone in the athletic department set up the interview between the reporter and Johnson. Who did Johnson think he was talking to if not a reporter? The on/off the record comment is a smokescreen/trying to cover the SID/athletic department for the kid talking to the reporter.

 

Fear of the SID or head coach really has little to do with it.

The pro athlete simply has more life experiences from which to draw and a few more years of media exposure under his belt.

Thus, after a while, he gets better at interviews and dealing with the media.

Bill Walton could hardly string a sentence together at age 20. He's a professional broadcaster --- well, sort of --- at age 50.

Just like we are better journalists and writers and editors and communicators at age 30, 40 and 50 than we were at 20.

 

I would agree with that. 18-year-old kids are not usually confident speakers, especially with a crowd of old, strange white men sticking recorders in their face. Four or five years later, they're usually much more poised, relaxed and confident.

 

To be fair, Walton had a horrible stutter that he didn't get therapy for until he was just leaving UCLA.

 

And college coaches and SID staffs think that they're "protecting" the kids by making the only interviews ones where 20 people surround them with a microphone, camera or tape recorder, while one-on-ones, which would make the athletes 100 times more comfortable, are nearly impossible to come by.

Makes no sense.

 

Actually, it does...

It is the mission of the college SIDs to make sure that the athletes almost never see a reporter as anything other than someone who holds a notebook and a recorder who hurls questions at them.

If you grant one-on-ones, you risk the player developing a friendship or mutual respect with the reporter where it could lead to said player telling the reporter things that the school doesn't want out there...