Hello Kettle? This is Pot Calling…
While killing some time during a lunch break, I stumbled across an interesting column from ESPN’s Pat Forde regarding the antics of two college football coaches at press conferences. The first came from Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, who spent several minutes ripping into a columnist for The Oklahoman after she wrote a column regarding the toughness of OSU’s starting quarterback Bobby Reid. The second story referred to Navy head coach Paul Johnson challenging an unnamed fan (and indirectly the reporter who asked the question) to come to his house and talk football, or find one instance in the past four years where Johnson praised his coaching ability when the team won. If someone could do that, he would kiss the person’s butt at city dock.
With the overzealousness of both coaches at their individual press conferences, it’s easy to see why Forde would be upset with what both gentlemen did. Gundy spent a considerable amount of time ripping into the columnist instead of praising his team in beating a tough Texas Tech team. Johnson got a little graphic when trying to deflect the thought that when Navy wins he pats himself on the back and when they lose he blames the kids. Throughout the column, Forde brings up several good points including the double-edged sword of praising and criticizing a player in the media, calling out coaches who claim they don’t read or listen to the local media (trust me, they do), and asking for a little more professionalism from coaches in a public forum such as a scheduled press conference. The problem with Forde’s criticism is while he makes some very valid points, the company he is working for (ESPN) is making what Forde is criticizing perfectly acceptable.
In it’s 28 years of existence, ESPN has turned the sound bite or the incredible piece of video footage into a sportscasting art form. When it comes to coaches losing their top, ESPN has seen its fair share of antics. And I know this because ESPN KEEPS SHOWING THESE ANTICS OVER AND OVER AGAIN! Whether it’s former Dallas Cowboys‘ coach Bill Parcells leaving a press conference regarding Terrell Owens in a huff, former Indianapolis Colts‘ head coach Jim Mora snarkingly screaming, “PLAYOFFS?!?” when his team was in a tailspin several years ago, or Tampa Bay Lightning head coach John Tortorella claiming the idea one of his defensemen purposely injured the opposition’s defensemen as, “BULLS–T!”, ESPN doesn’t mind showing an expletive-laden press conference when one comes along. And it’s not just press conferences.
Sometimes, a coach just melts down, like Asheville Tourists manager Joe Mikulik did in 2006, or Mississippi Braves manager Phillip Wellman did in 2007. Hal McRae has thrown telephones, Lou Piniella has launched bases, and even the usually even-tempered Roger Nielson once through a stick on the ice because he didn’t like a penalty called against his Philadelphia Flyers. The grand master of all meltdowns is Bobby Knight, who could single-handedly have an ESPN show devoted just to his blowups in the 40 years he has coached college basketball. As big of a sports fan as I am, I didn’t just think up of these legendary mental lapses in judgment– I saw them on ESPN (or other sports highlight shows and networks to be fair to ESPN).
But in today’s culture, and really since the early 1990s, showing these meltdowns as “highlights” only adds to the problem. The videos have never been shown to teach someone a lesson, or to get the idea across that “this is a bad idea folks”. Instead they were lampooned and laughed at, and we the viewers laughed along. Along with the coaches going bananas we were treated to football players doing silly end zone dances, bench-clearing brawls in baseball, and wackier attempts at dunking a basketball in the NBA and NCAA. With the endless looping of these “highlights” the idea of showing how a team won or lost a game has turned into how one guy said, “LOOK AT ME!” louder than anyone else in the game. ESPN is not the only guilty party in this issue, but it has certainly led the way the past 15 or 20 years. And if anyone doubts me, please remember ESPN once put together a Top 10 video list of the biggest coaching meltdowns for crying out loud.
Whether or not you agree with Forde is not the issue here. The issue is Forde is panning something ESPN profits on. More outrageous moments in sports, especially in a controlled environment like a press conferences, equals higher ratings which leads to higher ad revenue. In the crystal-clean Disney World ESPN lives in, it actually pays to be nasty. And in a world like that, a guy like Forde needs to realize he falling on a double-edged sword when he tells coaches to behave better in public.
