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Top five worst college football coaches to deal with?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by GRUDGE, Aug 20, 2009.

  1. Blitz

    Blitz Active Member

    Doesn't surprise me that there was no flack in San Antonio.
    To this day, there are very few blacks here.
    And back then, the Old South mentality was alive, so for there to be no outrage is not surprising.
    This city is, today, about 65 percent Hispanic, 20 percent white, less than 10 percent black, etc.

    And, I think Saban takes on younger sparring partners as a general rule. That's my take on the man, from a limited perspective.
    Being older helped you get better treatment, I would guess. That's just a guess.

    Great recollections, CVincent
     
  2. WoodyWommack

    WoodyWommack Member

    Covered O'Leary as a beat writer all last season, the first after one of his players died during offseason drills. The team was also terrible so I don't really blame him for being crabby, but here's a story I always tell people who ask me what he's like.

    UCF loses at home, post game press conference:

    O'Leary: We just couldn't get anything going on offense tonight, the passing game just wasn't working and I don't think we tried to run the ball as much as we should have.

    Kid from student newspaper who is disabled and uses a wheelchair: So coach is it safe to say that you were unhappy with the play-calling in the second half?

    O'Leary: Did I say I was unhappy with the play-calling?

    Kid: Well ... uh ... you said you didn't run it enough ...

    O'Leary: Look, I wouldn't expect someone like you, who knows nothing about football, to understand this, but we couldn't do anything in the passing game and because of that it was pointless to try to run because they knew it was coming. But once again, I would expect someone like YOU to understand something like that.

    Also, there's this whole thing: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orl-cusanotes2108jul21,0,5755679.story
     
  3. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Agree with both lists with the exception of Butch Davis being included on the UM list.
     
  4. SixToe

    SixToe Well-Known Member

    No one asked O'Leary what he meant specifically by that answer?
     
  5. DisembodiedOwlHead

    DisembodiedOwlHead Active Member

    Seeing from the SF incident how Crabtree is apparently a delusional idiot, that might be a shred of defense for Leach keeping him under wraps. (He still should have been available at least once during the week, but he's the kind of guy for whom the helicopter PR monitor was invented.)

    Agree on these lists, and especially second Beamer, who is gracious during the week and after the game to national media, beat guys and visiting media alike.
     
  6. Hoo

    Hoo Active Member

    It's all part of the Perkins/Parcells mentality that the media aren't worth dealing with. Groh isn't a bad guy all the time, but he definitely can be a jerk for no real reason. And he sure as hell doesn't make our job any easier, which is the point of this thread, I suppose.

    I don't have the national perspective to say how Groh stacks up against everyone else. Is he really worse than most of them? Don't they all treat us like the enemy these days?

    EDIT TO ADD: I too can't say enough about Beamer's friendly, non-paranoid approach.
     
  7. Hoo

    Hoo Active Member

    Groh is one of those powerful coaches who assumes you're an idiot unless you prove to him you're not. You have to earn his respect.

    The problem, though, is that you still shouldn't treat people like garbage, even if they're inexperienced or ask what you think is a dumb question. It's just basically a jackass move -- and one that plays especially poorly with media and even fans and alumni when you're losing games. Pete Gillen's open, friendly nature, by contrast, basically got him an extra year at Virginia when his program was in a death spiral.
     
  8. armageddon

    armageddon Active Member

    Former UCLA coach Bob Toledo -- Where is he these days? -- has to be somewhere on the nice list.

    He ran open practices and didn't worry about gagging his version of Crabtree -- Freddie Mitchell.

    Had the pleasure of covering Mitchell and he said crazy stuff all the time. The UCLA brass cringed but they let him talk.

    Mark Richt has always been good to me.
     
  9. Twoback

    Twoback Active Member

    No. Coach K just doesn't want to deal with it.
    Access to his assistants and players is good.
    Paterno actively sought to make reporters' lives more difficult. He seemed to delight in every new means he could conceive of in that pursuit.
    Not even close between the two.
     
  10. finishthehat

    finishthehat Active Member

    Yeah, I remember someone, I think the Moneyball guy, spent a week with Parcells in the run-up to a game. He asked Parcells if there was any information he wished he had on the opponent. Parcells was stuck for a while, because basically they knew everything from film study, but eventually he said "maybe something like their audible calls," but even that probably wouldn't have been all that helpful, given the time crunch at the line.
     
  11. Shaggy

    Shaggy Guest

    I don't know about the other guys, but what makes Bill Snyder even worse is that the coaching tree under him has been inspired by the media-relation nightmare he proudly lives.

    Neither Bob Stoops nor Mark Mangino are as bad as Snyder was. But they're still really bad. My one encounter with Mike Stoops wasn't great. Jim Leavitt was an asshole everytime I dealt with him. The list goes on.
     
  12. SoCalDude

    SoCalDude Active Member

    Toledo is at Tulane (or is it Tulane is at Toledo?).
    He had that folksy way about him, but he ran a loose ship, too loose a ship. UCLA got in trouble during his watch with the handicapped parking scandal. And he was a horrible recruiter. I remember reading a story in which the coach at Long Beach Poly (producer of more NFL players than any high school in the country) said he had never met Toledo, Toledo had never been on his campus, which is something like 30 miles from Westwood.
    Toledo nearly won a national championship. Bruins, with an unstoppable offense, would have been in the national championship game in the 1998 season but they lost the rescheduled game to Miami because of some really bad defense and some bad calls by the refs.
    But Toledo was headed for a fall because he couldn't recruit. One year, he brought in NO defensive linemen, so a couple of years later, guess what the team's biggest weakness was.
     
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