USC bans LA Daily News reporter for 2 weeks for reporting an injury

First post-game question for Kiffin: How did Andre Heidari's surgery and the use of Alex Wood in his spot change your kicking game strategy for this week?
Second question: Do you feel the dust-up between you and the press, specifically the L.A. Times, regarding the reporting of Heidari's surgery detract in a significant way from your team's preparation?

 

This is also dumb as dirt for another reason. Every coach I've ever heard says that to win a championship, not only do you have to be good, but you have to have some luck along the way AND avoid key injuries. On the flip side, when a team underperforms expectations, injuries can and do often play a big part in that. It's part of the game, it's a fair excuse sometimes, and the media knows this. We will give a coach a pass for a subpar season if it's obvious that he lost a lot of key guys to injuries. We'll let the coach talk about it and use his quotes to give him a reasonable amount of cover for a poor season.

But now, if I'm covering USC and they start losing, I don't give a damn if all 22 of their starters tore their ACLs in the first week. I'm not mentioning a word about it. Instead, I'm going after Lane Kiffin's head.

 

I like this idea. Symbolic as it might be, having USC drop from No. 2 to unranked as a show of protest would send a message.

 

The Daily News can't be the only media outlet reporting this. If so, the LA Times and ESPNLA are not doing their jobs. Not to side with USC, but are the beat writers at the Times and ESPN too chicken shit to report an injury to the kicker for the No. 3 team in the country?

 

"Lane, I notice you've changed kickers. Is it true the previous one was (your choice here) busted with 100 pounds of cocaine (probably slander), abducted by aliens, flunked out of school, sucked so bad you had to replace him?

 

Sure, except it's the Daily News, which is a distant third in the SoCal market, and a paper no one really cares about.

For that matter, more fans will wonder why they bothered to report on a kicker's injury, than will care that the Woodland Hills rag's guy doesn't get to go to practice.

When it's just the kicker? They could find a way to justify it to themselves.

Let's all beat our breasts for the sake of "JOURNALISM!!!!!!!"

The only way anything negative happens this week is if the Trojans lose to Stanford.

I admit it, I laughed at this one.

All the tough-guy message boarding in the world won't change two facts:

1. The fans (remaining readers?) don't care.
2. The coaches don't care.

Can anyone provide a single good reason why they should care?

 

Do you not give a shit about your profession, whatever it is?

 

I just asked you a question that you still haven't answered.

Oh, dear lord, never mind. I just realized who I am talking to. Oops. Have at it.

 

The fans don't care about an injury to the kicker? Really?

You must know different fans than I do. The ones I know -- even for the crappiest teams -- obsess over stuff like this. Hell, they argue over who should be the third-team left guard.

You don't think when another kid runs out there to kick a field goal, fans will be saying, "Hey, what the hell happened to our No. 1 kicker? Is he hurt? Did he get replaced? What the hell?" And God forbid the replacement kicker misses one, especially in a close game. Will they not care then?

The deal is, the fans really care if their kicker is injured. Even if their coach is a dick and won't tell them -- and doesn't want the media to tell them -- the fans very much want to know this stuff.

 

Soon as the new kicker hits his first FG, the fans will forget. Kicker's identity is only important to them when he misses.

But that doesn't have anything to do with my assertion that the fans don't care about the L.A. Daily News.

 

So then the writers who vote would be no better than the coaches they accuse of using their votes to either vote for their buddies or hurt their competition.