Did I mess up in any way?

The coach obviously must shoulder some blame, but from watching the team play against better teams ... I swear, there must be dozens of little puddles on the court when the game is over. They don't know what a bounce pass is. They were soooo scared of this undefeated team when they were on offense.

The thing is, in previous gamers I've written, the players have said stuff like, "We acted like we were scared." "We weren't mentally in this game." "That was embarrassing." Etc.

Recruiting the right players ... that's funny because he hasn't had much luck in that department. By that I mean he's had some great players, but many of them get injured. I swear, it's a curse with that team and knee injuries. And other players were so good in high school but flamed out in juco. And yet, he's recruited a few players who were hardly recruited by anyone, and they've turned in to solid players. Juco is a different cat, for sure.

 

High school athletes should be hands off when it comes to critical columns. You want to say the team didn't play well, fine, but you don't go "calling out" kids.
The rule we've had each place I've worked is that you can call out D-I and pro athletes, but anything other than that is hands off unless there are special circumstances, most of which occur off the court. Losing games and playing piss-poor basketball aren't special circumstances and aren't reasons to call out kids.

 

I guess I'm confused by this. Sure, we're going to write good things about high school and college players, makes for fluff sometimes, but it is what it is. Now, when you say we should have every right to say when they didn't live up to their potential, but not key on mistakes. What do you mean by this?

What is a high school or community college basketball players potential and what does it mean if they don't live up to their potential? Ok, so you won't write a column ripping Johnny Jumpshot for score four points in a big game against Podunk High or Local CC, but you still hold them to a degree of accountability. How is that not ripping the kid?

 

I agree with dawgpound. Junior college kids don't need to be called out for their play on the court. If they get in trouble off the court, that's fair game, but ripping players for underachieving at that level isn't needed. Save that for the pros and Division I athletes.

 

What I'm saying is I might not focus a story on Johnny Quarterback's fourth quarter fumble that lead to a loss like I might on similar fumble by, say, Peyton Manning, but I'm also not going to ignore the fumble completely just for the sake of being positive only. I mention it and if it impacted the game, I tell why... I just may not go into the same level of focus and analysis on it.

If the team plays poorly compared to what I know they're capable of, it will be written about - and no I don't think a hands-off approach as some have suggested is fair to anyone, including the kids who are playing. I don't go out of my way to "call out" kids either, the coaches can do that themselves in quotes, but you can be damn sure I write what happens.

 

I understand what you're saying, Red, but I don't see this as a debate on whether or not athletes should be criticized. It sounds as if kingcreole made valid, sound points in his column.

To me, this is about picking your spots. This is a juco women's team. I don't think there's enough interest in a column on a juco women's team anywhere to jeopardize pissing the team off. I don't care too much about that; I just don't want to make my job harder for something that's not going to make much of a splash outside the locker room. I think that's why Kingcreole asked his original question, which I interpreted as, "Was this worth it?" I say no.

I think that's one of the reasons why beat reporters don't, or shouldn't, write columns -- they can't be seen as having an agenda, whether it's valid or not. The juco team can't see Kingcreole as impartial (whatever that is). Kingcreole can cover the team without talking to the women. Screw them. But by not talking to them, he may be missing out, perhaps, on a better story than the column.

 

My 2 cents:

Criticizing college basketball players as being "scared" is weak.

No. 1, you don't know that to be the case for all.

No. 2, what does that mean? Are they passing up open shots? Afraid to take to ball to the hole against some hulking center?

Throwing scared around as a criticism, doesn't do much for me as a reader.

If you say that they had only two fouls shots because they would not take the ball inside or passed up open shots even as the shot clock wound down, that's different.

It makes it concrete and not just a vague accusation.

 

I think this depends on how you do it.

I think before you write that, you kind of have to put it to each coach and see what their reaction is. If they reacted badly, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't write it. If you write it and sounds like you are raving, that you might come off as some sort of disgruntled fan.

I worked as a writer for a couple of years early in my career, and I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about basketball. Then I became an SID and I discovered how much I didn't know about basketball and about the human side of things. A lot of times you don't know how players REALLY feel about the coach. You often don't know if one of the players has a parent or close relative who is dying of cancer. You don't know who doesn't take things real seriously - some players look at this as an extracurricular activity. I think pure rip jobs or praise jobs usually are too simple and I don't think you get too much out of it as a reader.

 

Yes I do. The coach said it in so many words.

"We didn't want any part of them."

Translation - They were scared.

Every offensive possession featured lazy passes, half-hearted dribbling, bad shots that weren't a part of the offense, etc. They should have been giddy at the thought of holding a team to nearly 50 points under their average, and defensively, they did their job. But nobody wanted to do anything on offense.

Hence, "We didn't want any part of them."

 

Coaches say a lot of things. I find it hard to believe a team could play exceptionally well on defense and play "scared" the whole game on offense.

 

meat, i don't think we're disagreeing on anything.

the community college is an important news story in his town based on what we're led to believe from his posts. so why would he write about the superbowl (or any national story) with zero relevance to the community? he shouldn't. readers can get their superbowl columns from hundreds - thousands in the case of the super bowl - of other sources. newspapers will survive if they provide customers a product that can only be obtained in one place.

my point, as a former journalist but now a reader with a much more critical eye on the industry, is that the potential conflict is real. so, ideally the beat writer never writes columns on what he covers. but the reality is that this newspaper needs to cover local stories. covering includes column writing and at some point you have to make a choice between what's more important. obviously i'm not advocating ethical violations and plagiarism but if newspapers don't bend some rules, they'll become irrelevant.

 

I asked about the defense. He didn't want to hear it.

"It took us to get behind by 11 points before we started to play. They just didn't want to get embarrassed."

It was 11-0 less than 5 minutes into the game.