Long ago, but not far away, I f
irst started to get an inkling that the most overrated aspect of sports writing and sports broadcasting was quotes from coaches or players.
That notion has grown over the years into a full-blown philosophy that I will accept, but not seek quotes during or after a sporting event. The most important reasons are simple — they won’t speak the truth and they’ll deliberately give us a keen grasp of the obvious.
My first inkling raised its ugly head in the late 1970s, when Albion High School varsity basketball coach John Shilling would brush me aside to get himself quoted on the radio immediately after a ballgame. Because most games were on Friday nights, this put added pressure on me to meet my deadline for the Saturday morning newspaper.
I wondered if waiting extra time really was worth it.
Then I listened to what Shilling was saying on the radio and came to the conclusion that he was spinning everything that happened. Even worse, he found ways to dance around uncomfortable questions and essentially did not speak the truth.
When I thought about this more critically, I came to the conclusion that coaches don’t want to tell the truth because it could provide fodder for opponents or it could get the coach in trouble.
I later came to believe that corporate CEOs, too many public officials and particularly school superintendents spoke with forked tongues to advance their own agendas, hide unpleasant truths, control the message and avoid public embarrassment.
Does anybody tell the truth? Yes, but such occasions are rare and refreshing. The one I remember best was former Henika Library Director Lynn Mandaville’s explanation of why she resigned a couple of years ago.
I must offer football and basketball coaches some sympathy. It can’t be easy to speak rationally, candidly and without fault just after the heat of battle has cooled down.
Perhaps the best example was former Indiana and Texas Tech University basketball coach Bobby Knight, whom to this day I regard as a tyrannical bully who treated his players like they were indentured servants.
Knight was known for his temper tantrums and poor sportsmanship displays, but I nearly always agreed with him when the broadcast and print media would hound him for interview after games. Knight often would say something like, “You saw the game. Why do you need me explain what happened?”
Indeed.
Sports writers and broadcasters increasingly over the years have turned away from the art of telling the story about what happened and they’ve put the burden on coaches, and even worse, the players. Asking teen-age boys and girls to offer illuminating explanations sometimes has awful consequences, such as hubris or taunting the opponent.
I’ve always been disgusted by my media broadcast brothers and sisters when they stop the coaches before they go into the halftime lockerroom and thrust a microphone in front of their faces, sometimes with really stupid questions that result in answers that do nothing to advance understanding of what is happening.
This doesn’t mean I never quote coaches. Wayland High School varsity bowling coaches Sherry Miklusicak and Bill Holbrook are very good about offering their impressions of events and I think they’ve helped explain their sport, often with a sense of humor. But I won’t ask them for quotes. They graciously give them to me.
So anyone who has examined how I cover sporting events might notice the absence of quotes from coaches or players. I still follow the directive that I report what I see and hear and sometimes offer impressions. I think it’s my job to tell the story. It’s the job of the coach to coach and the job of the player to play.