Being confronted by a coach...

It was only high school softball, but I had a coach cuss me out for five minutes after a game and then offer me a Dr Pepper in almost the same breath. A lot of it just goes with the territory, and you have to roll with it. To me, most of it is just like a newsroom on deadline. You can't take occasional friction personally. It's something you learn with age and experience. This is where having an old coot in the newsroom can help out, but they've been phased out in favor of cheaper labor.

As for the drink, yes, I took him up on it. It was 95 degrees out, and the school was miles from the nearest store.

 

Seems to me like the coach was clearly out of line, and the reporter was out of line for calling him out on it in his article. Reporter should have set up a meeting to air their differences instead of whining to his audience that he wasn't treated right. Maybe he should have talked to the Vandals' athletic director about the coach's conduct. Instead, he talked about how professional he was while being unprofessional.

 

I had a high school baseball coach several years ago that also wanted to be editor of our newspaper, too. After covering them all season, the school played host to a regional. I called him on his cell phone a couple days before the regional and asked him to send me their final regular-season stats — stats that I had received from thme on a weekly or biweekly basis all season. He told me that he didn't want to fax me a copy of the stats because it would be giving a scouting report to the opposing teams in the regional. I told him that I all I wanted to do was promote his team, and said there was nothing wrong with adding stats to my story (every reader wants to know who leads the team in home runs, runs batted in, batting average and hit leaders, along with the pitchers' won-loss record and earned run average, right"). I spent the next day calling the coach, only to be told that I wasn't getting the statistics. I called the athletic director and he said, "If he doesn't want to send in the stats, then that's his business." I kept calling the AD, saying it was unfair and that he had already given a copy to the radio station, our main competitor. I told him that I wanted equal access. As fate would have it, the team I was covering, the No. 1 or 2 seed, lost its opening-round game and was out of the tournament. Coach was being a little bitch and was giving me dirty looks and treating me like I had done them wrong while the other tournament teams kept playing. Sometimes, on the high school level, a reporter has to remember that he's a prep coach and a school teacher. Sometimes those types are self-centered and unprofessional because it is what it is — an insecure high school coach.

 

Coaches yell. That's what they do.

Even though the program is not the best, you are ahead of the game by actually being allowed to watch practice. And at practice, coaches are more likely to be in yell mode.

So roll with it.

I agree that readers may eat it up, but don't think it's worth the cost to write it.

Also, don't be so damn defensive. Put yourself in the coach's shoes. Is he really mad that you were wrong? Is he just lashing out because his job is on the line?

Try to get a handle on it, take the heat and go on. Often, I have found that the relationship with coaches is better if they get it out of their system. Or assistants/trainers/managers see you stand up and are more open with you (especially if they don't like the coach).

Part of the job as a reporter is to take the heat for the paper. Some of it may be what you write, some may be the headline that was put on your story, the photo that ran with your story, the cutline that ran with your story, the crappy editing that screwed up a fact in your story, someone else's story or the fact that there was no story.

You are there. How you deal with stuff like that will determine how successful you are going forward making connections with coaches, assistants, SIDs, trainers, managers, etc.

 

Would have been funny to say:

Reporter: "Oh, you think knowing the stats gives the other team an advantage?"
Coach: "Yes, I do."
Reporter: "Well, I have your opponent's stats. Would you like to see those?"
Coach: "You're damn right I would."
Reporter: "Read the paper." Click.

 

I guess I'm not a smart-ass to someone I have to work with. Try to be professional.

 

I said it would be funny. I didn't recommend it.

But that attitude is not unusual once teams get further in playoffs and they get more tightly wound.

 

Absolutely. Bad part is the column was written shortly before the season starts. If the column hadn't been written things could have been patched up before the season starts. But now it's out there and the odds of smoothing things over before the season starts in two weeks are much worse. If the season goes badly (and we're talking Idaho so let's play the odds), anything the SE writes negatively about the team has the strong potential to set Petrino off.
BTW, this shop was my starting point. When I was there (in news, not sports), the sports desk had three people: the SE who didn't do much writing, the WSU beat guy (also covered small Washington high schools in our area, which was right on the Washington/Idaho border) and the Idaho beat guy. My guess is it's now a two-main sports department.

 

Pure butt-hurt from the halfway point on.

 

Now this is an awkward position.

Why the hell did he tell you?

I would always show a coach I was clicking my pen off when doing an interview to show we were just talking off the record, and if it was in person you still writing or recording would have tipped him off that you were going to use it. Just a shitty situation.

 

Either don't talk about things you don't want printed or ask the reporter if you can talk off the record. Plain and simple.

The most bizarre thing about your whole ordeal was that he hadn't told his kids he was previously married. That's just crazy. Did he think he could keep that a secret forever?

 

I was once in a press conference with a coach who went off on a rant of personal attacks on reporters who had written about his losing record against another coach. Just childish behavior. The coach is held in such high regard that no one will ever hold him accountable for his unprofessionalism, either. So, as a reporter you just move on, and I believe things were back to normal between the two parties a few weeks later.