Mistake

You got me. I laughed. If you knew what I covered and where I work, you probably would too.

No, seriously. Sorry for the personal attack. But anyone who has a hard and fast rule against quoting coaches has problems. I am against quoting coach-speak. But if you can't cull a nice, punchy, descriptive quote out of most of your coaches, you're just doing it wrong.

Another thing you're wrong about: People DO want to know what the "40-year-old gym teachers" have to say. If you're talking high schools, that "40-year-old gym teacher" is either the most respected or despised man in town. People, by nature, want to know what that guy has to say.

I'm not against quoting players either. They can give you a perspective a coach can't. Just like a coach can give you a perspective a player can't. I'm not sure why you can't just quote both, but apparently you have some sort of irrational, deep-seated hatred of coaches. Did one give you a wedgie in junior high or something?

 

Can we put an end to all the big-timing now? ...

We already know they hire assholes at larger papers, too. ;D

 

Hey, I never claimed not to be an asshole

 

We're probably sitting right next to each other, Some Guy. And, yeah, I never claimed not to be an asshole--if I did I'd be a liar.
Another reason I made it a hard-and-fast rule: The writers I have tended to use it as a crutch. They run down, grab a coach cliche and run back up to give us a: "Coach Bob Snoremore looked across the field and..." lede. Followed by some lame coach-speak.
High school coverage is vital to a newspaper in that it's one of the last areas we can grab young readers. If you have to do something radical (as the kids used to say) you do it.
As far as a wedgie from a coach, that didn't happen. I had a baseball coach who used to slap us around a bit and a track and field coach who bounced a baton off my head but no wedgies.

 

Getting back to the original question, it's a lesson to be learned. I learned it another way.

When I was 19, I was writing for the 20K daily 10 miles down the road when I covered a high school girls' basketball game involving my alma mater over the Christmas break. They lost. After the game, I was interviewing my old school's coach, and he said things might have been different if the administration had let his team practice in the gym in the three days previous.

I quoted him.

Next week, I was covering the boys' team, and the HS principal (who didn't like me much anyway) asked me out in the hallway for a discussion. Where he heatedly informed me that a water main had broken in the school three days before that girls' game, and if I had asked him, I'd have known it.

He had me. Lesson learned. If you're going to cast aspersions upon anyone, you would do well to get their side of the story.

 

Well then you have some pretty bad writers for a "Top 10 circulation" paper.
There are no hand-and-fast rules. If the coach has something worth saying, quote him. If the kids have better things to say, quote them.

If you categorically eliminate either, you are an asshole!

 

I thought maybe someone remembered my birthday five months late.

 

Well, already admitted to the asshole part. And, yeah, we have some pretty bad writers.

 

Gotta appreciate your honesty, even if I disagree with your hard-and-fast rule.

 

I've always thought that the only hard-and-fast rule in writing is, if it works, it works. If you can write a gamer without talking to a coach, and it works, do it. If you need to ask the coach about something, then do it. You have to do what you think is necessary.

For instance, what if a coach went for it on a fourth down situation that practically cost the team the game? Not talking to the coach would be a mistake.

But if you are covering a game that featured a player or two that just took the game over, I dont see why you couldn't just talk to those players and his teammates.

 

My hard and fast rule is you talk to as many people and get as many perspectives as possible. That addresses both problems brought up here: It would have eliminated the mistake with the other coach and, like spnited said, it allows you to get the best quote - no matter who said it.

 

This is all I've been saying.

If your writers are using only boring-ass coach-speak quotes, they are probably not getting anything much better out of the kids. The problem isn't who they are talking to, it's what they are using. The solution isn't to eliminate coach quotes. It's to eliminate bad quotes. And I'm not sure taking away one of your writers' resources is a very good way to go about that.