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Does the public care?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by slappy4428, Apr 9, 2007.

  1. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    DiNardo never won an SEC or BCS national championship. He never came close to the latter. There's the big difference between DiNardo's 10-2 and Saban's 13-1, and that's why LSU fans gave him more leeway (and the media less) than even with a well-liked guy such as DiNardo.
     
  2. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    True, according to my dashboard dictionary, means "In accordance with fact or reality." As Finebaum's column and my previous post regarding Moon's self aggrandizement argue, the column totally misses the mark by overstating the importance of the media and understating Saban's record. So no, the column was not in accordance with reality.

    Knute, on the other, nails my sentiments with his posts. Why go out of the way to be a prick? What's the point?
     
  3. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    because he can; because he knows you need him more than he needs you and to a power-hungry control freak, it means everything; and because he makes 4 mill and we dont.
     
  4. armageddon

    armageddon Active Member

    I never suggested his coaching acumen is superior to that of Stoops, Carroll, Urban M., etc. Just pointing out that the body of work doesn't scream overrated.

    And last time I checked, no one has won consistently in East Lansing in a long time. There's reasons for that and it isn't that every guy given a whistle is clueless.

    Edit: And even IF I grant you those three seasons, his record without them is 60-37-3. That's a winning percentage of .615.

    I have nothing against the author. But I loathe any writer who tosses around labels casually w/out checking the numbers.
     
  5. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    Sorry, I forgot to add [/rhetorical] at the end of my last post.
     
  6. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Uh, well, yeah, actually it pretty much is. Of their last five coaches (John L. Smith, Bobby Williams, Saban, George Perles and Muddy Waters), four were just about complete incompetents (although Smith's failure was due as much to internal sabotage as his own screwups, which were considerable).

    The reason nobody wins consistently there is that the moron Perles and his minions (of which Saban was one) have run the show for the last 25 years.
     
  7. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Let us not forget the help of people like Joel Ferguson, who want to see MSU "succeed"
     
  8. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    See the reference to "internal sabotage" above. ;) As well as "minions." ::)
     
  9. To me, this is one of those issues we have to keep bringing up, even if the public doesn't care. It's something we need to keep making them think about, and eventually maybe they will start to get it.
    Also, I think we need to do more to discourage coaches from limiting our access. I don't know all the answers to how you do that, but one is to spend more time doing investigative work if the program limits your access. Take the time you would be spending watching practice and go file from FOIA requests. Find some violations in the program and make it clear to the athletic department that you have all this extra time for these types of things now.
    It's not perfect, but I think it can be effective.
     
  10. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    Had I written something (and I'm still mulling a column or feature), I would have aimed more for this type of approach than a full-barreled assault on Saban. It has the wisdom of the hindsight of five years of covering a Saban team. Of course, I don't write for an Alabama paper, and neither does this columnist.

    Bama media introduced to Saban’s leash
    Scooter Hobbs
    Sports Editor

    MEMO TO: My esteemed colleagues (and, in most cases, good friends) in the Alabama sportswriting fraternity. RE (relative to): Nick Saban vs. the media, Round I. FROM: Been There, Done That.

    So the bloom is off, huh guys? Only a couple of weeks into Bama’s first Saban spring training and I couldn’t help but notice a few of you have already broken ranks. You’re complaining loudly about the new Saban Rules. You’re wondering if this is the fine print in the deal — originally greeted with glory, glory-hallelujahs all around — that hauled in a $4 million football coach to revive the ailing Crimson Tide.
    The new sheriff in town has quit preaching and gone to meddling.
    Won’t let you in to watch practice, right?
    Won’t let you talk to freshmen either?
    And he isn’t exactly the most accessible media darling himself, is he?
    One recent essay from your way, in the Montgomery Advertiser, even suggested that Saban is now biting the hand of the very media that he once courted to help formulate his considerable reputation.
    I assume that would be us, since Saban was not yet the rock star of coaches when he arrived at LSU (although, relative to the times, the $1.6 million he signed for over here raised just as many eyebrows as the Bama deal has now).
    Makes it sound like, relative to you guys, he wined and dined us on the way to the top.
    Well, that’s false. He treated us the same way. We had the same deal you guys got.
    My advice?
    Chill out.
    I know past Alabama coaches all but let you guys in the huddle. But you’ll find that watching football practice is way overrated anyway. Turns out there’s not much brain surgery going on out there.
    The taboo freshmen thing can be a bit of a pain, especially when two of them are vital cogs in a national championship run, as Justin Vincent and LaRon Landry were in ’03.
    And it will get worse.
     
  11. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    After a year or three of Saban indoctrination, all the players will start sounding, give or take a “relative to” or two, just like their head coach.
    But that’s perhaps the saving grace.
    I will give Saban this: Unlike a lot of coaches, if you ask him a question, you will jolly well get an answer. He’s particularly enlightening when the question is more of a college football issue than what Tennessee’s offense is capable of.
    A good answer, too, well thought out and, relative to most coaches, well articulated. He doesn’t get bogged down in coach-speak. When the Tide plays Sewanee, you won’t have to listen to the dangers they present, you’ll hear about the “process” of coming up with an honest effort being more important than whatever Sewanee has in store for the Tide.
    And you can have some good give-and-take with him. I know I had some memorable duels, going back and forth and rephrasing questions for 10 minutes or so.
    It was kinda fun, actually. He almost seemed to enjoy it, too. Almost.
    I would love to be there — and would suggest they issue smelling salts to the Bama media — the week of the Auburn game when he runs it up that it is “just another game.”
    After they revive you, listen to his reasoning. It makes some sense.
    OK, he’s not going to be your buddy (yeah, I know, Gene Stallings used to even favor you guys with childrearing advice).
    That’s not Saban’s style.
    But he also doesn’t suffer fools lightly (which can be a good thing, often high entertainment ... if you’re not a fool).
    Alabama is no different than here. You’ve got your share of faux media, the hangers-on who wrangle some obscure media credential mainly to get closer to the jock-sniffing.
    Those guys aren’t part of Saban’s show and, you’ll be happy to know, after a while they get tired of pulling the arrows out of their chests and just shut up.
    I assume assistant coaches are off limits, too, right?
    That was always the case around here. Saban is a big believer in that “one company, one voice” philosophy of public relations.
    You won’t be watching film with them.
    Assistants will come and go and you’ll never know their names until the bowl game, when rules require a few of them to be at news conferences.
    Of course, by then about half of them will have one foot out the door.
    The parlor game you can play amongst yourselves each year is figuring which assistants got fed up with Saban and which of them ran afoul of him.
    Doesn’t matter. As soon as one leaves in disgust (or disgrace) a line will form of begging up-and-comers, all eager to get a hitch under Saban on their résumé.
    Just don’t get to feeling too sorry for yourselves.
    No. 1, the fans (readers) don’t care. So long as he wins — and he will —they could give a hoot about how he treats the media and will even credit it for his success.
    Their “right to know” is more important to you than to them; they think it’s their birthright to win.
    Besides, it could be a lot worse. You could be the poor Alabama sports information director. Or worse, you could be a football secretary or office go-fer or anybody else who works not just around him but for him (which, for his purposes, usually includes the athletic director, school president, governor, etc.).
    Pity those poor souls.
    The story is legend around these parts. An LSU player was waiting outside Saban’s office for a meeting with the head coach. Inside he could hear an obscenity-filled tirade directed at someone he could only pity.
    A few minutes later, the door opened ... and Skip Bertman walked out.

    -- -- --
    Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. E-mail him at shobbs@americanpress.com
     
  12. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    Can't vouch for that ending, by the way, but I sat in Saban's waiting room once and listened to someone getting cursed, berated, chewed up and spit out, and as I wondered what player it was, the door opened and out stepped two of Bertman's assistants, both high-ranking athletic department officials.
     
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