The San Antonio Raiders? (Or, dickhead coaches)

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

The trick is to ask Belichick about that, and then sneak one in about how Aaron Hernandez fits into the equation.

In terms of intimidation, I think Saban has a level of North Korean dictator working for him. My guess is he could have a reporter killed with a nod of his head.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

Belichick has held court on the holder position in the NFL.
Sometimes getting the best out of a subject is appealing to their intellectual vanity.
Granted, you can only do that with finite people in sports, but Bill B. knows his football history.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

What constitutes "great access" these days?

Does any football or men's basketball team in a power conference have open locker rooms after games, not counting tournaments when it's required?

I wou consider "great access" to be, access to the coach on most days during the season. Open practices, no restrictions on which players you can talk to and ability to talk to assistants.

Auburn and Georgia used to be pretty damn good. IIRC, Georgia's practices were closed, but you could see the field from the media work area. Florida State had the best access of any major program I've ever seen. Not sure if that changed with Jimbo.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

Jimbo brought in two rules Bowden never had: can't interview true freshmen and assistant coaches. Hell, Bowden wanted the beat guys to talk to the assistants because most of the time he didn't know who was going to start at nose guard. "Ask Mickey," was one of his favorite sayings.

Fisher isn't the only coach to do the freshman restrictions. If you've signed a kid to play for a big-time program, it can be assumed a coach believes this kid can perform under pressure. But he's going to wilt like a wet tissue just by talking to reporters?

Outside of that, Fisher is pretty good. He tries to act like Saban sometimes but he's been around the Bowden family for decades (played for Terry in college) and he's got more Bobby in him than Nick.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

If a player is redshirting, I don't have a huge problem with him being off-limits.

If he's starting, he should be made available.

Does anyone know of a major program that has open locker room after games? When I was first starting out in the 1990s, there were a few schools that didn't have it, but they were the exceptions. For some reason, I think Michigan or Florida were among the first to do it, or at least the first of the ones that I dealt with.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

Fisher got that from Saban, who got it from Belichick.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

Covering the NFL is a dream compared to colleges. Even control freak media-hating coaches have to allow open locker room on most days. The worst thing they can really do is not let the assistants talk. Saban pushed things pretty far when he was trying to get rid of media parking and the media work room.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

But how "open" are NFL locker rooms during the week? If a player isn't in the locker room, you can't talk to him, right? Training room and everything else are off limits aren't they? All a guy has to do is hide out.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

And this was a concern to the Huey Lewis-looking dictator why? How are a few parking spaces and a conference room of any consequence to this man?

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

At the risk of boring you all with ancient journalistic history, one of the things that made being a deskman tolerable for the last part of my career was the access issues mentioned above.
When access started being reduced and locker rooms were suddenly being closed, I told more than one coach, "If you're closing the locker room and denying access, that tells me you have something hide and I'm going find out what it is." And when they started hiding injuries, I always brought up the gambling aspect and added "the ticket-buying public demands to know."
When I was in school, I had a standing interview appointment with John McKay at 2:30 every Thursday, one-on-on, in addition to the Tuesday session with all the media.
After that, in my professional career, my first paper didn't publish on Sunday, so when I covered USC or UCLA football games, I went for a featurey second-day angle, but I also had an arrangement with Ted Tollner. He called me every Sunday evening between 6 and 7. And when I began covering UCLA exclusively, I could get Terry Donahue on the phone within 30 minutes just about any time I needed to talk to him.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

Most teams would have a guy or two who would hide out. I covered one superstar who would have a weekly press conference and you would almost never see him in the locker room. I covered a guy who was really shy and might talk once or twice a year. The first thing he told the PR guy when he made his first Pro Bowl was, "Oh, shit, does this mean I have to talk today?"

One year I was covering the NFL, the FBWA sent out an email to find out which players weren't being made available. I think it was less than 10 guys in the whole league.

There are guys who are dicks who if you walk up to them will tell you to fuck off, but they're still technically available.

 

Re: The San Antonio Raiders?

Control. Carroll is probably the exception, but if a college coach is taking over a NFL team, the coach is going to get frustrated that he's not allowed to control access they way they could in college.