Toughest interviews

A former college coach who was known to be, shall we say, prickly, with the media during his coaching days but has become a pretty good interview now summed up that phenomenon this way:

"I can talk now."

 

When I was a young scribe, the D-I college we were covering got its first African-American athlete in men's basketball. Now this was in the Deep South, where back at the time, it was unheard of to even THINK about getting an African-American player for your team. Another nearby school, one who had played the school I was covering, had already signed several and was catching a lot of flack.They were also beating everybody's ass, too. Thus the need of opponents to recruit African-Americans.
I found out about the player the local school was getting before even the SID of the school knew about it. The school wanted to "low key" it, not to make a big deal out of it, not to have it run in the area papers. Hell, I get the player, quotes, everything. It's in the paper as the lead story on the sports page. The next morning, the coach calls the paper looking at me. He absolutely chews my ass out from one end of the office to the other, bleeping me this and bleeping me that. He was concerned about reaction of local yokels who couldn't believe the school would sign an African-American and so on and so forth. Again, we are talking back in the day when a Southern school having an African-American athlete was rare as Paris Hilton passing up a trip to Rodeo Drive.
As the proverbial water rolled under the bridge through the years, that coach has actually become one of the best sources I have of finding out things in our region and area. He is retired now and oftentimes will recall that situation in which he chewed a young scribe's ass out.

 

Eh, ,I've found non-revenue athletes -- male and female -- to be very good to talk to. Probably because I was a non-revenue athlete myself. It's the football and basketball players that speak fluent Sports Cliche. Male high school softball coaches, who are SO protective of their teams, have been the worst, in my experience.

 

the D-I college i cover used to have outstanding softball teams and would go to CWS every year. but the coach was a clone of Bobby Knight. absolutely hated dealing with the media and would be pissed even if a feature story on one of his players (and there were many good ones during this time) would be suggested.
Mizzougrad96....that's an unreal story you posted on the interim coach. geez, absolutely unreal. damn.

 

Male girls soccer coaches make me want to strangle someone. Like papa bears protecting their cubs. Criminey.

I generally can't stand club coaches, because they all a) want to schmooze you and b) spew cliches within cliches because they don't know what else to say. That's what happens when you cover attention-hungry folks who rarely get attention.

On the other hand, I agree with Serve, re: non-revenue athletes, usually including the coaches, too. One of the best coaches I ever covered for a beat remains the former cross country and womens track coach at a track-town college. A great, great guy, always with great insight, great institutional knowledge and a great, non-cliche quote. A close second was the (female) softball coach at my college who I covered for two seasons. Helped that I was a softball nerd at heart, too.

 

someone, give me some Cornelius Bennett horror stories. so he was that bad, huh?

 

Well, he did serve jail time for sexual assault ...

I never heard too much about Biscuit's interviews, but most of the beat guys I've talked to in Buffalo couldn't stand Bruce Smith. All smiles and backslaps when the network TV cameras were on, but an absolute tool to the local media. One of them called him "His Bruceness" in last week's Hall of Fame story, and it was definitely not meant as a compliment.

 

From my days of covering him at LSU:

Antichrist, The: See Joey Belle.

 

Try talking to a 6-year-old bowler who has rolled a 200 game.. THEN we'll talk difficult...unless you count Vern Payne...

 

try five 8-year-old rodeo stars.

 

This did not happen to me, but a colleague was telling a story last week about having to interview some 9-year-old when the Steelers were in the Super Bowl a few years ago.
Apparently the kid had broken his leg playing football and he (and/or the parents) had basically written the Steelers' and they had sent him a team photo and what amounted to a form letter.
It was an okay story that localized Super Bowl week, but the funny part was when he asked the kid if he would play football again. The kid said no, the mom said no, but the dad said yes.
According to my colleague what happened next was about and 20 or so minute argument between the mother and father that ended with the kid crying and my colleague simply letting himself out of the house.

 

Hockey players, especially younger ones are terrible. You're lucky to get cliches out of them, otherwise it's one word answers to open ended questions. Not that most of them are trying to be jerks, it's just that they're not so good with the speaking, eh.

Coaches who refuse to talk about individual players or performances "because it's a team game and they don't want to upset the other players" Usually coaches of girls teams -- Why is this? are girls that freaking unstable that they can't handle seeing someone else's stats in the paper when they road the pine?

But the worst was a high school coach from my first stop -- he coached the sr. boys basketball team and I think the cross country team. Absolute tool. For the first year-and-a-half I was there he would snicker all the way through the interviews, that's if I could get him to talk at all. The topper was that the douche bag was a former sports reporter who burned out and went into teaching. If anyone should have a clue to some form of etiquette in an interview, you would think it would be a former reporter. I wanted to punch him so bad.