Covering college football

I was lucky. My first major beat was baseball. Everything is a cakewalk after that.

 

Even though Michael Lewis and Bruce Feldman each wrote books about Orgeron and Ole Miss, the access was tight? That must have routinely pissed off beat writers. I couldn't imagine being told no, only to have someone writing a tell-all book following them around.

 

I'm sure it's this way to some degree on every beat, but in college football there is truly no offseason.

With almost 100 players on every team, the chances of an offseason arrest, transfer, even death, are infinitely higher in college football than any other sport.

Then there's spring football and recruiting, which, depending on where you are, are treated as nearly important as the regular season.

 

That's my favorite, when a national writer swoops in and gets to ride on the team plane. All the while, beat guys get booted after 15 minutes of stretching at practice. Double-standard, but the good news where I'm at, that media-whore coach is gone.

 

It doesn't mean you don't work to change your life if you are miserable. Just know that you could always have it worse.

If your coach is a paranoid jerkoff, at the end of the day, so what?

 

Really is a great point, and one that took me forever to understand. That shit used to eat me up.

 

15 minutes of practice? That's infinitely more than you'll ever see at Texas.
We've been banned.

 

Me too, and I'll have to admit that sometimes it still does. Sometimes I've just got to remind myself that it's not me, it's him. And when I go home at night and hang out with my family in front of the TV, it doesn't matter what Coach Dillhole did or said to me earlier that day.

 

I cover a college football program and college basketball program that are generally successful. I routinely go months without one day off. It is tough, but I am young and can handle it.

Still, when spring football practice ends here in a bit, and I can hang out with my girlfriend and family and other buddies, and play golf, and drink beer, and watch the Cubs, and go to concerts and drink more beer, go to the beach ... I'll be one happy dude.

August through April is a sonofabitch. Love the sights. Love the Marriott points. Don't love never being able to relax. There are some relentless fuckers on this beat, and some of them will stop at nothing to break news. NOTHING. No ethical boundary can't be bulldozed by these assclowns. I compete damn well, though, and I do it without using the bullying and taint-licking tactics of my competitors.

 

On my old beat, we went pretty much a whole season only being able to talk to a college hoops team's star after games. Then Andy Katz shows up, God bless him, and does a "Day in the Life" piece, where he follows said star around campus for a full day.

These guys cow-tow to the national media, because they recruit nationally. They don't need us to recruit the state -- they've got that in the bag, anyway -- but they need ESPN, SI, etc to recruit nationally.

 

Says something to me about their character.

 

Fair point. For pure access though, baseball is the best.