What's the dumbest question you've ever asked?

"Mr. Newspaper editor, are you hiring?"

 

I do hate it when bosses want us to ask certain questions
I was covering a high school football team a few years back that was 0-10 the year before and 0-9 heading into the season finale. My boss told me to ask the coach if he thought this was his last game, and if he deserved to keep his job.
I understand when coaches are on the hot seat, but there's better ways to approach things than that. How many coaches come right out and say No I think I'll be fired? And after asking that and the school does retain him, it kind of makes for an awkward season the next year.
Maybe not the the dumbest question I've asked but one that sticks out it is "What went wrong on that last play?" (Asked after I was dumbfounded watching a football game lost on the final play, when Team A down by 4, calls a perfect QB tight end rollout from Team B's 20. The lone defender that goes with the play is caught trying to decide to cover the TE or prevent the QB from taking off. The defender drops back and the QB for some reason passes. The defender makes the INT to seal the game. I was so in shock watching it transpire that I couldn't think of anything smart to ask)

 

I asked someone in the state championship hockey game about scoring the game winning goal. Needless to say he was a senior and it was his younger brother, a freshman. In my defense, I had never seen them play before and they wore 15 and 16 so it was tough

 

I once had an editor (who might or might not have been drunk and off-duty at the time) call and tell me that she heard the coach of Podunk High the last time they won a state baseball championship 30 years ago would be attending the clincher of their state finals series that night. I've never met this man, and there's a thousand people attending this game in a minor league ballpark -- one of whom might or might not be this old coach -- but I should try and find him because it'd make a neat story.
Did I mention she called to tell me this about 90 minutes before deadline? And while I was on the field waiting to interview coaches and players from the current Podunk High squad after they'd won?
Needless to say, Coach Geezer was nowhere to be found. I asked one person if they knew him searched high and low for him, but just couldn't track him down. Dangit.

 

This might be a dumb question, but what is so dumb about that? You're trying to get the QB to talk about the play, right? Seems like phrasing it like that, instead of the harsher "Why did you throw that pass instead of running it?" might get him thinking about it a bit and give you a decent answer. If it's a one-worder, you can always come back with something else.
Had something similar once, where Podunk High went for two in double overtime to try and win. Same play, a QB rollout, but the defense had it sniffed out. The QB ran out of room to scramble, tried to force it into a tight window (his only real option) and it was intercepted. I think I asked him the same question you did, and got a good answer about how the defense knew it was coming and he just had to try to do something with the football.

 

I could see some smart-ass/teenager/coach respond, "I/He threw a pick." But I don't disagree with you.

 

As a student stringer, I once got "berated" by Leonard Hamilton in a press conference after a legitimate question about shot selection. It was a close loss in which his team was horrid from behind the arc while about half of its field goal attempts were from 3-point range. The bad question, though, was not asking another one. I meekly took the intimidating response without pushing back.

 

I once asked Scott Skiles what his favorite Tribe Called Quest song was. Early in my career, I was given the enviable assignment of asking silly questions to NBA players. I wound up with the assignment because everybody else they asked to do it told our editor to fuck off...

The rest of the media horde looked at me like I had just asked him if he'd ever fucked his mom.

He smiled and said, "The one where they mentioned me. I can't remember the title."

 

Not a journalism question, but my first "Will you marry me?" could have turned out a lot better had I not asked a bipolar nymphomaniac.

 

This reminds me about when I was a hockey stringer for Sportsticker snd each preseason they would send us a series of silly questions to ask one or two players.

The one that got the oddest looks back was " who's your secret crush," especially from married guys.

Always made sure the PR team and players knew what we were doing in advance and would ask when we had the player one-to-one, not with other media around.

 

At the first place I worked, the boss covered a high school basketball game that ended in a bench-clearing brawl, resulting in several player suspensions. His story had several fact errors (he wrote that the coaches traded punches, which was not the case). I was assigned to cover the hometown team's next game, and the boss ordered me to ask the coach about the suspensions. I asked, and the coach (whom I'd gotten along with quite well until that point) went on a five-minute rant, said our paper sucked, and added that he, his assistant coaches and his players would no longer speak with our reporters. Then I got yelled at by the boss (who'd created the mess with sloppy, inaccurate reporting) for writing a game story with no quotes from the coach or players.

The coach called me at home the next morning, apologized and said he'd always enjoyed my work and would be happy to speak with me and other reporters from our paper -- except for the boss. They didn't talk to each other for about a year.

 

Yeah, I did that whenever possible. It was funny, I got some much more prominent players one-on-one for the question, but I couldn't get Skiles alone. I remember after I asked Skiles that question, a pretty prominent NBA writer came up to me and said, "Is Tribe Called Quest a black group? That's got to be the first time a black group mentioned a white basketball player who wasn't Larry Bird." He used my question in his weekly notes column and even gave me credit (or blame) for asking it.

I did a variation on "fun questions" when I covered the NFL and about 90 percent of them went really well and would spark a conversation I wouldn't have otherwise had with players. I remember talking to a guy about the brilliance of Tyler Perry, and the Chicklin circuit for 20 minutes. At the time, I had never heard of Tyler Perry. But every once in awhile, even when I would explain what I was doing ahead of time, I would get a "Why are you asking me this?" response from a player.