What's the right place for potentially controversial questions after a championship?

After a bowl game is a perfectly appropriate (and common) time to ask the "turning pro" question. I can't believe it's really in dispute.

 

Well said. That's what it boils down to for me.

I just find the disconnect between our jobs and how fans view such situations to be interesting. I don't know if it's because the actual details of our jobs are still somehow unknown or unrealized by the general public or if it's because of the rise of a "journalists suck" mantra among segments of the population or what.

 

Has to be both, right? When I told/tell people about the daily ins and outs of being a sports journalist, they are usually surprised it is more than just eating a hot dog at a game. But also, you have a great deal of "independent media" that people are flocking to now that don't take part in these postgame interviews and conferences but that also takes shots at the media who do and have to ask these kinds of questions. I think that really helps to perpetuate the "journalists suck" mantra that seems more common now.

 

With access as limited as it is in college nowadays, it's OK anytime to ask any question you want. You better believe the athletes ARE always thinking about turning pro. Like I said if you don't ask them after the last game about their plans, good luck getting access in the future to ask them.

 

I know more and more press conferences are broadcast online, but if they're not, don't publicize that you just asked your "controversial" question.

I get that it may be your only time to ask the question, but do you have to run with that info right away? Why not hold it for a future story? Really the only thing that's controversial is the timing, so if you can hold off the story for a few days, it might not be viewed that way.

 

What if the question gets a legitimate answer that would be big news to your readers? For instance, a junior on a championship college football team tells you he is going pro after the title game. Personally, I'm not holding that story for a few days just because a few readers might be butthurt about my timing.

 

That's a whole other question. When DO you write that story? If you do it that night, like you probably should, it gets lost in the flood of postgame stories and analysis. If you wait until the next day, it's possibly been known publicly for 24-36 hours and you get beat.

 

I guess I'm speaking more on a different scale, closer to the questions that were used in the first post of this thread.

To your question, why ask it? Chances are, the player will give some generic answer about how he's still not sure. Usually these things happen on their own timing, so why force it? Is it really that important to be the journalist who asked the question? Are you going to be credited as the person who asked the question? No, the only credit given is to whoever has the fastest thumbs.

Journalists don't get comments like "oh that was a great question he just asked," but readers/followers are aware when you ask a really stupid or ill-timed question. If its me, I'd usually err on the side of caution and refrain from asking, but then again I'm not in a big enough market to be put into those types of situations.

 

I get that, and you are right, 99 times out of 100 you are going to get the "I need to discuss with my family/pray about it/not sure" answer in the hypothetical I brought up. But you won't know if this is the 1 out of 100 unless someone asks the question. And I never trusted other reporters to ask the questions that I wanted answered. Often they did, but sometimes they don't and I never wanted to leave with a question I wanted to ask still in the holster.

I covered enough big time college football to know that readers want to know the answer to that question, too, even if they don't like when it is asked. They are still going to read the story and discuss it even if you asked the question at a time they feel is controversial. It was never a prideful thing, at least for me, that I asked a tough question. It was just a question that I thought our readers would be interested to hear the answer to. I think waiting to ask until later is a bigger gamble than asking during a time that readers might feel is improper.

 

I haven't worked a regular beat covering big time college or pro sports, but have covered enough games and been around long enough to know how things work. One thing that has always amazed me is how reluctant reporters are to ask questions during press conferences.
I get that you don't blow scoops in a public setting, and maybe there's some super secret availability later on that only the beat writers are privy to. But there are basic questions you can and should ask regardless of the setting. I don't know how many postgame pressers or conference calls I've been to where the coach leaves after two questions because that's all anyone saw fit to ask. Or at smaller college games with three or four other reporters and I'm the only one asking questions -- not because I'm hogging time, but because the other guys are sitting there like stumps and I know I need material to flesh out the three stories I have to file off of this game.
Drives me nuts every single time. Reporters who don't ask questions are as bad as the ones who ask the long, rambling ones about the fourth-string defensive tackle from Podunk High.