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Coverage Of Alabama Football Has Some Restrictions
Missouri Coach Barry Odom is relaxing media restrictions during spring football practice
247sports.com
And then I woke up. I had been dreaming about going to Alabama football practice and then afterwards picking out a player and an assistant coach, interviewing them, and writing a story.
Maybe it was because I saw where Football Coach Barry Odom at Missouri has announced that during spring practice, all practices will be open to media and that following practices all players and assistant coaches will be available for interviews.
I’m not going to presume Odom’s motivation. Some think it is because the Tigers will be on bowl probation in the 2019 season because of the academic work done by a tutor for football players and he’s looking for “good press.” Whatever, I suspect it will be positive for Mizzou. Those who cover college athletes ordinarily are not looking for dirt, nor likely to get it from players and/or assistant coaches.
I’m also not going to hold my breath waiting for such an opportunity at Alabama as we anticipate the start of Crimson Tide spring practice beginning in about a week and leading to the April 13 A-Day Game. Nick Saban’s policy is pretty much the same as everywhere else (though he probably was instrumental in making it that way). Reporters get to see a portion of practice (not team work), assistant coaches speak only a few times a year, including those mandated following the Southeastern Conference Championship Game and at certain bowl games, times when all players also are available. Otherwise, the players to be interviewed during the weeks of spring practice and the regular season are selected by Coach Saban.
You may have noticed that the same 10 or so players are the ones quoted in Alabama football stories all season.
Not that he has to explain anything, but Saban has said he has the coaches off limits because they don’t want to do it. He doesn’t want reporters at practice because it would be distracting to players -- players who perform pretty well with 100,000 or so watching on Saturdays.
In my experience, players and assistant coaches have been very agreeable to interviews, players, particularly, enthusiastic about the experience.
(If you are thinking that you see plenty of player interviews and practice footage on ESPN, that is because it is the exception to the media restrictions. Perhaps because of contract obligations, perhaps because coaches think prospects are more likely to watch television than read, ESPN gets pretty much carte blanche.)
I can appreciate that someone who gets to watch an occasional Alabama football practice would think of it as a tremendous experience. For most of my professional life, Alabama practices have been open to reporters and when that was the case I was dutiful in attendance. It was mostly very, very boring.
(I wasn’t really dreaming about covering an Alabama football practice. Reporters cover football practices and interview players and coaches because fans want that information.)
Primarily what the experience of being at practice does for a reporter is give him/her the insight to ask intelligent questions of the head coach. I can never remember a time when reporters covering practice did not do so except under the restriction of “You don’t write what you see, you write what you hear” from the head coach following practice. I can’t remember too many times when a head coach responded to a question about something seen in practice that was put off the record. And I can never remember any journalist failing to abide by that agreement.
I do understand the proliferation of so many tweeters, bloggers, etc. could make coaches wary.
That is one reason I don’t like to play the “When I was in Alabama’s sports information office card,” but I do think about how it was under Coach Paul Bryant.
To be sure, there was nowhere near the media coverage of Alabama football on a daily basis as is now the case. The Tuscaloosa News was represented after practice a few days a week. Occasionally a sports editor/columnist from an Alabama newspaper would show up; more rarely an out-of-stater, Sports Illustrated and the like. There was no Internet, little or no sports talk radio, and television was restricted by technology, unable to cover Alabama football in the afternoon and be able to put it on the air until “film at 11.”
My afternoon duties in football season and spring practice were to be at practice, to shepherd any occasional visiting journalist around, and following practice to get a few Bryant quotes to then dictate to the Associated Press, United Press International, and a few of the larger newspapers around the state.
That brings to mind some stories.
Prior to the 1971 season, Bryant made the decision to change Alabama’s offense from its pro-set to the wishbone. He did this in August, with Alabama set to open the season Sept. 10 in Los Angeles against Southern Cal, one of the favorites for the national championship. Bryant wanted that change kept secret.
We didn’t even let our radio team, John Forney and Doug Layton, in on the change until the week of the game.
But sportswriters would show up occasionally, I would take them to practice, and then remind them of the “what you hear, not what you see” coverage rule. I remember walking off the field with a very prominent sports editor after practice and saying, “Now remember, nothing about the wishbone.” He said, “Wishbone?” He wasn’t even aware that he had been watching Bama’s offense running the wishbone for the past few hours. Most reporters aren’t in to schemes, plays, etc.
In the 1970s there weren’t SEC Media Days. Instead, a handful of prominent reporters from around the Southeast toured each team site for about half a day during fall practice. Some of them actually went to practice. That year Bama’s practice reverted to a dropback passing game while the out-of-town reporters watched.
On the Monday night before that Friday night Southern Cal game, Alabama students had an impromptu pep rally on the Quad, and that rally somehow moved to outside the gates at the Tide’s football practice field. Cloach Bryant instructed the managers to open the gates. He said later he thought the students would like to see what their classmates were doing. Can you imagine that today?
Finally, in those days (as today), during spring practice, the team would go to Bryant-Denny Stadium for its Saturday scrimmages. Unlike today, the gates were open and anyone would walk in and watch. It was also a time when we could expect a half dozen or so reporters.
Coach Bryant was not happy about the way things were going, though, and decided the scrimmage that week would be closed “to everyone.” I was to get the word out to media. The assistant coaches had to contact friends they had invited to practice and tell them not to come. Managers were stationed at the one open gate to break the news to any would-be spectators.
It was weird to have that scrimmage in a completely empty stadium. Even today when Alabama has its Saturday spring scrimmages and even its fall camp scrimmages, there are selected groups of boosters, sponsors, former players, etc. who are allowed in.
Following that closed practice, I met with Coach Bryant on the field to get his thoughts so that I could get the story out to the wire services and newspapers.
As he lit his Chesterfield, he looked around and asked, “Where are the writers?”
I said, “Coach, you told me it was closed to everyone. I told them not to come.”
He said, “I didn’t mean the reporters. They are our friends.”
He genuinely liked reporters and had an annual event in which he had them as his guests for two days of golf and visiting with him and his assistants, even to the extent of grilling steaks at his Lake Martin home.
Gene Stallings was much the same way. Alabama’s open door policy for practice and interviews was because, as he frequently said, “I know you guys have a job to do.”
It may have been in Nick Saban’s introductory press conference in 2007 that he was asked if reporters would be allowed to watch Alabama practices. His answer was, “If ou can tell me how that will help us win a game.”
My guess is that media availability makes not one iota of difference in winning, that Nick Saban would be just as successful regardless. But, as we’ve heard, it is what it is.
