Covering college football

I like the college football team I covered infinitely more than I liked the college basketball team I covered in the past.

The football team wasn't that good but had several good players. The coach was great -- very personal -- and we had a weekly presser and access every day after practice. We could watch spring practice and the chances of getting a one-on-one during the season were pretty good.

OTOH, the basketball team was one of the better teams in its conference. We had day-before-game access only and often without players. One-on-ones were impossible.

I was much more burnt out at the end of basketball than I was at the end of football if only because there was a lot of stress trying to get around all of the access restrictions to still produce good stuff.

 

I don't know everything there is to know about Croom but from what I do know, if my son's a high football prospect Croom gets in the door.
Saban does not.
I want my son to play for a man who will help me teach him how to be a man, not a paranoid, coniving dictator with no respect or regard for others.
In the same way, I'd rather cover Croom than Saban. At least I feel like I could trust him to be straight with me.

 

I know of one college where they open practice with five minutes left and at that point if there is someone who they don't want to talk to the media, they've already driven them back to the locker room via the back entrance to the practice facility. So quite regulary, practice opens, the media comes in and the starting QB, RB, and top defensive players have already been driven away.

If you want to talk to the longsnapper or the reserve center, it's great access.

 

Jeez ... at the college I used to cover there was no "open practice" even for five minutes. You'd request who you wanted earlier in the day, and if it happened to be someone on their list of people they were gonna bring anyway, you were golden. They'd bring him to a room off the locker room after practice.

If it was someone they didn't feel like bringing, they'd tell you he "had class" or "got away."

 

In the NFL you don't get coaches saying, "This is a big game, so no players are available to the media this week..." like Paterno, Weis, Meyer, Saban, Spurrier and so many others have pulled over the years...