Covering college football

Does it wear anybody else out as much as it does me?

So regimented. Such a gulf between coach and media. So much suspicion both ways. Just so damned tough to find and write good stories.

 

And if you do it well enough, congrats! You get to cover the NFL...which is even worse.

 

Ah, so it's a football thing, not just a college football thing.

 

Pretty much.

The paranoia filters over with most coaching staffs, I think, and many of the players are tough to deal with. And every story, just about, has already been written and re-written about 100 times.

Just remember -- it can always be worse.

 

I think covering the NFL is considerably easier than covering major college football...

There's no recruiting. Access is about 100X better since the NFL has mandated time that the locker room has to be open. How many major college teams even have an open locker room?

 

Yeah, access is better. No question about that. No recruiting is a bonus.

All my other observations still stand, though.

Football is a grind, any way you cut it...

 

College football is easily the worst I've covered. I thought it was just me because the team I cover, the coach breathes down the SID's neck to make ridiculous availability rules and other things, such as not being able to report any injury until X amount of hours have passed.

I'll cover hockey or soccer any day, though.

 

i'm with mizzougrad96 here

nfl access is pretty damn good and there's certainly never a shortage of stories. most of the guys are decent to deal with, and a good percentage of the PR staffs are pros and cooperative

norman stansfield ... curious if you've ever covered an NFL team because your observations are opposite of mine

a grind, yes. but without many of the frustrations of D1 college football

 

Plus, during the offseason, you just write mock drafts every week.

 

I've covered college football and the NFL.

To me, the thing about covering the NFL is that there seems to be only so many stories and way too many people there to write them. If you find something original, you're doing a hell of a job. Otherwise, most NFL reporters are sheep following the rest of the flock.

In covering college football, I always found myself feeling like an outsider trying to crack the code. There's a lot of stories with every team, but you're the one who gets the shovel and has to dig.

I never found myself tired at the end of the NFL season. College football wore me down by mid-October.

 

you can make the argument that any beat is a grind. covering MLB has the benefit of a new game each day, which means you have fresh material, but with almost 200 games, including spring training and the postseason, it's got to be tough to come up with new ways to write about petey pitcher's seven strong innings and harry hitter's 2-for-4.

 

It's funny because it's true.