Dan Mullen will walk out on reporters if they ask about injuries

"Our quarterback is sidelined with some bullshit...and our starting defensive tackle has some serious bullshit."

 

I had a college soccer coach from a Southern Conference school refuse to answer any questions about injuries because he didn't want to give any opponents an advantage. This was a student newspaper, with no website at the time. I had a class with a couple of team members, I asked them, got the information and of course was yelled at by the coach...and he was mad at his SID for not banning me from games.

 

George O'Leary freaked out one day because there were traffic helicopters flying over I-75/85 in Atlanta. The interstate is two blocks or less from Georgia Tech's practice field. O'Leary was worried someone in those choppers was taping his practices.

 

Especially in the playoffs, hockey coaches match the paranoia.

 

Oh, and God bless the writer that calls Mullen's bluff.

 

Football coaches are paranoid because they are control freaks attempting to control a sport that is inherently chaotic. This breeds frustration.
There is no reason the NCAA or college presidents could not create a structured injury information policy. The NFL has one, and it has had no effect on the success or paranoia of Bill Belichick. Hondo is right. Were I a gambler, I'd have every student manager on my pad I could find.

 

What are talking about? Why, they're very upfront about all those "upper-body injuries" and "flu-like symptoms."

 

Brad Locke from the Tupelo paper. He's also the one who posted the video.

 

It's trickling into other sports.

Hockey is worse than football about injuries. When Marian Hossa got his clock cleaned in the playoffs last year by Raffi Torres, most people around Chicago were genuinely concerned about his well-being. It was scary. And yet not a peep out of the Blackhawks. If I recall, they wouldn't even admit he was out from one game to the next, even though he clearly wasn't returning for a long, long time.

Watch a baseball conference on the mound now. Glove over the mouth, thanks to HD.

 

In 2004, Deion Branch got clobbered in a game in September. The Patriots report was "he had the wind knocked out of him." Branch returned to action the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

 

That isn't thanks to HD. That is thanks to Will Clark taking Greg Maddux onto Sheffield Avenue in the 1989 NLCS after seeing Maddux say "fastball in" during a mound conference.

http://sfgiants.mlblogs.com/2010/02/06/a-glimpse-of-fanfest/

 

For sure. I got annoyed with it for a while, then understood why they wouldn't talk about it and sort of gave up.

I remember one night after an overtime playoff game, I asked hometown coach why player X was not playing with players Y and Z (as he usually did) in the third period and overtime. His response: "Next question".