Coaches who won't let players speak to the media

So, I'm reading the Chicago Sun-Times website tonight for local basketball stories, and read a gamer about a small-school regional final — http://yourseason.suntimes.com/home/10864892-390/boys-basketball-mark-weems-goes-off-as-seton-tops-hales.html

Of course, there's one part of the story that stands out to me —

This shocked me. Seton has a legit shot to win the Class 2A state title in Illinois. They won in 2009.

Has anyone else ever had to deal with a coach who refused to ever let his players talk? Luckily, I never have and it's unfortunate that coaches like this let their egos get in the way of common sense.

 

Yes. A football coach never let his players talk after a loss.
They went 0-10 that season.
Parents were furious since all the other schools allowed kids to talk. So we had nice gamers, features, sidebars and whatnot all week on the 2 other main schools...and notebook stat pieces on the other.

 

If you ask permission of the coach, it's your loss.

 

I've had the situation a few times, and I simply tell the coach "OK, I understand those are your wishes and it's your program. Do I have your permission to tell parents - if the call us - that you are the one who won't allow their players to talk?" I also write it in the article. I've only had one instance where a coach or an athletic director got upset at me about printing it.

 

Just curious. Why would you ask his permission to tell parents about his policy?

 

Not sure if you are referring to my post. I did try to talk to the kids...they said if they were quoted in a story, they would get in trouble.
It had nothing to do with asking permission.

 

Not to speak out of turn, but I would assume the tactic is aimed more at proving a point than actually asking permission.

I remember just once that a high school coach asked I not speak to his players. He said it would go to their heads, which he wanted to avoid. I told him that without talking to the players there wouldn't be a story. He relented. This was a mid-weed feature sort of thing, so I started with the coach. But after a game? No need to go through the coach, especially if it's football. Just grab the kids.

 

Once had a coach who did not talk the week before the game and asked me not to speak to his players becuase the team was facing a coach with ties to the town where the school was. He didn't want to start a bunch of small-town BS, as that had surrounded the other coach's tenure there. I accepted that, then used the fact that he didn't talk as fodder for a pointed preview and column on the day of the game.

Note: The guy was fantastic to work with outside of that one week.

 

Someone stole smallpotatoes' thunder with this post.

 

Sonner can back me up on this, but once I dealt with a coach that wouldn't let his kids talk to the press. Tempting as it is to say "screw you, give us access or we don't cover you," it's very difficult to pull that off in a small community that already has a chip on its shoulder every time you give one of its two rivals anything better than roundup/agate coverage. You just work within the parameters you're given and do the best you can with it.

Stories involving the team always got the "Coach Jaberwoky does not allow his players to speak to the media" treatment. He had been doing it so long that I think most people in town accepted it, but then I wasn't really around that long.

 

Are douchebags.

 

Nick Saban thinks it's a fine policy.
Seriously, this isn't just a high school thing. I know Alabama, for one, doesn't let its freshmen talk to the media. That must've been a lot of fun this past season when they started a freshman quarterback.