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

You might not fill up Rendezvous with the number of Vandy diehards in Nashville.

 

I know where you are coming from Henry and you are right. I thought he meant in the sense of just reporting in general about MSU. Ole Miss coverage has long been a staple at the CA. And considering its proximity to the campus, it has to be.

 

Mmm hmm.

 

Fans don't deserve to know anything and there is no right for them to demand it.

Coaches can say "No comment" just like business leaders or whomever. We can ask questions and keep pushing, and we should in whatever line of journalism we're pursuing be it sports, news, business or whatever.

But the fans don "deserve" anything. The coaches know this. Their focus is on the team and winning, not gratifying 100,000 fans and a group of writers asking about the starting quarterback's strained rib muscle.

But writers should never stop asking and prodding.

 

Yes, writers should never stop asking and prodding precisely BECAUSE the fans deserve as much information as they can get from us. It's our job to get it to them and here's why the fans deserve to know: coaches are getting obscene amounts of money because of the interest in their team by fans, alumni, students, etc.

 

What an asshole.

The douchebag coach is alive and well.

All these fucking guys can go fuck themselves with this paranoid shit.

 

It's high time that football's major and minor league adopt uniform rules across the board... and an appropriate pay scale.

 

Coaches get obscene amounts of money to win games and generate revenue.

If it means they'll clam up and get douchebaggy when a writer asks about injuries, they'll do it AND have the support of the slurping fans. When the coach doesn't talk about injuries "because that's what's best for us" and then rails on the media for asking, we all know the fans are going to march in lockstep.

Definitely doesn't mean writers shouldn't ask, and they should. Always. This is where a good SID would meet with the coach to discuss some avenue of common ground, i.e. a little bit of transparency. At least fucking acknowledge the injury and say something about the guy's progress.

Nothing new, though. Coaches have been doing this for decades. Some are just bigger douchebags about it.

 

The NFL's access is about 1,000 times better than most colleges. I know people who have covered the same college team for over a decade and they've never been allowed in the locker room for interviews. I'm sure there are a few teams that allow it, maybe a place with a reputation for being ultra-media friendly like Georgia or Florida State or a school that is starved for coverage.

When I was covering the NFL the two most media-friendly teams were the Texans (by about a thousand miles) and the Eagles. I don't know if it's still that way, but I remember during the playoffs the year the Eagles went to the Super Bowl they had every player available every day. That's pretty unheard of even in the NFL.

College access sucks and it gets worse every year.

 

College football is the most corrupt, unhealthy and unAmerican (in the sense of what we say we are, not what you really are, there's it's the reverse. I know many of you here love it, but that's the problem. The healthiest thing for our society to do would be to abolish college football, and if the states of the SEC didn't like it, put 'em under military occupation and execute a few coaches -- Selected by the fans of course. We're a democracy after all.

 

Every time I hear about one of these coaches pulling this kind of shit, I think about Bobby Bowden...

I called Bowden for a story I was doing in college and he answered his phone and chatted with me for 15 minutes or so. He would have talked longer, but I was so stunned that he answered the phone and was so incredibly nice that I didn't want to take up too much of his time.

In 2000, my paper had all of its Heisman voters rank its top five every week. In November, my assigning editor asked me why I hadn't had Chris Weinke in my top five all season even though he was the favorite to win the award. I said, "He's too old to win the award. Hell, he's older than I am and I've been out of college for almost five years." For the record, I'm not claiming my view was right, but that was the way I felt at the time...

That gave him an idea and he sent me to Tallahassee to do a takeout on Weinke.

Bowden comes in to do his weekly press conference. I just sat there, knowing that I was getting Bowden later and was just scribbling notes... After the presser I feel this shadow lurking over me...

"Well, I don't believe I've met you before..."

I look up. It's Bowden with his hand extended...

I spent at least an hour interviewing him. This was a big week for them and he was so fucking nice it was scary. Toward the end of the interview I said, "This may sound funny, but I called you when I was in college for a story I was working on..."

"Was that the (name of the story)?"

My jaw hit the floor. It was only about five years earlier and I asked their PR guy if he had told him and he swore he had not.

I got enough out of the interview with Bowden that in addition to the takeout on Weinke, I did another one on Bowden.

I know he had some faults, but holy shit could that guy give a clinic on how to treat people. When I hear about dickhead coaches like Mullen or Meyer or anyone else freaking out about someone asking about injuries, it makes me wonder how many times during Bowden's career did he get into a pissing match with a reporter over a question like that...

 

Mizzou, Bowden had class. When he took over at FSU, he fought really hard to make himself accessible to the media and he had to with all the attention going to UF, Miami, Georgia and Alabama at the time. Bowden had some asshole moments but he never pulled the shit that Mullen, a guy who hasn't done anything except win three straight Egg Bowls (wins over the University of Mississippi for those who didn't know) and wins in the Gator and Music City Bowls, respectively.
It's simply a guy who thinks his shit doesn't stink and he's shoveling it in reporter's faces. When injury information leaks out, and it will, he will change his tune.