Sports Journalists Have Lost The Plot
Lazy sports journalism is one of those things that can be maddening if you’re a sports fan who wants to hear from your teams’ leaders. More generally, a media that questions the status quo, questions leaders, questions the narrative…all of that is critical to society. People who demonize media who want to report what’s happening instead of cheerleading (guys like Jim Boeheim or Jimbo Fisher) are quite simply awful tyrants – and this can obviously be anywhere from the political sphere to the sports information area. Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent most of my adult life in the New York media market, but it’s always galled me when I see how beholden most college sports media types are to the entities they cover.
It’s a no-win situation for many, and this is something we’ve discussed at BS many times over the years. If you’re Mike Carmin, for example, and your entire career is tied up in covering Purdue sports…how truly critical and dogged can you be? (Note, this is not a shot at Mike – he’s great. Just using his situation as an example.) If Mike were to piss off Mike Bobinski, Mikebob (my nickname for him) could just decide to shut him out and slyly limit Carmin’s access. Then what? What else could Mike go cover? He’d be screwed. This is true in many college towns and what it leads to is a challenge for the local guys. So I get that and I’m sympathetic to it.
I’m less sympathetic, however, when nationally-established, bigger-time journalists/columnists who are employed at prominent media outlets also avoid asking any insightful or critical questions.
Friday night, Purdue basketball suffered what analytics say may have been the worst upset loss in college basketball history. Matt Painter arrived for his scheduled postgame press conference and not one question was asked about his game management, his freshmen guards, or his inability to adjust. This is what happens when the media gets lazy. You get Bob Kravitz writing dopey articles for the Athletic about whether Edey could hit three pointers. Or a few weeks ago you get bozos like Jeff Goodman thinking they are comedy writers as they do a piece with Purdue players and coaches about whether there should be a Rob Hummel statue at Purdue.
It's a question that's eluded philosophers and historians for years. And this weekend, @RobDauster and @GoodmanHoops attempted to get to the bottom of it...#WheresTheHummelStatue
— The Field of 68 (@TheFieldOf68) February 20, 2023
Presented by @BetRivers pic.twitter.com/ovSHOSXeAu
Har har! Good stuff, Jeff!
But do you know what the problem is with this kind of thing and the Kravitz article? When you buddy up to the players and coaches so they’ll do you a favor and play along with your nonsense, it then becomes very hard to actually be comfortable being critical of them or asking them even a semi-difficult question. Your access to stand on the court and be a boob might then be limited! And we all know that what guys like Goodman, Kravitz, Doyel and all the rest like most is the proximity to these cool athletes and coaches. They don’t feel any real need to truly cover them or hold them accountable to the fans. It’s just a game, after all! And it is, make no mistake. But many of these guys are making handsome salaries and traveling to CBB on expense accounts to bring us the story. So one might say they have an obligation to, you know, do some journalist sh-t.
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Let’s take a look at Painter’s presser after the FDU loss and analyze not just the questions he was asked but the answers he gave and the opportunities he provided that a good journalist might have seized on.
Here’s the video, questions to Painter begin at the 5:45 mark.
“Matt, how are you dealing with this? Three years in a row against a double digit seed.” – Kravitz, I think.
Painter answers and acknowledges their system is to work it in to their big and then kick out when needed for open threes. He notes that they struggled down the stretch to do this, including in their most recent game against Penn State. He even notes that FDU didn’t even come out to contest most of those threes in this game. Acknowledges they’ve been inconsistent on this for many stretches of the season. (And the metrics back it up – Purdue was a bad three-point shooting team, 278th in Division I.)
Painter intimates that you need guys confident to take those shots and Purdue was lacking that. Soooo…what would a natural question be? Or any number of natural follow ups? Just a guy without press access asking here!
Painter then points out that Purdue also had 16 turnovers – almost doing the media’s job for them. Like…he’s pointing out that they were off their game, not doing the things that make them successful… “an inability to make fundamental plays.” So why not ask about adjustments to that? What does a coach or coaching staff do when the wheels are coming off like that? Anyone?
“We had some decision-making in there…that wasn’t that good.”
You mean with freshmen guards playing heavy minutes? No follow up from anyone on this.
Next question.
“What do you tell the team after such a successful season?” –Sam Springer, Big Ten Plus 4A staff member whatever that is.
Lazy, lazy, lazy. How is this journalism? Seriously, who cares what he tells them? As I said on our podcast, you know what he tells them! He tells them that he loves them, that it’s not their fault, that he and they all need to be better, etc., etc. You know damn well what he tells them. This isn’t insightful.
Painter, again, though, gives them an opening…
“They outplayed us, they outcoached us.” He announces that he was outcoached. Many big-time coaches are super insecure and act like petulant toddlers when their coaching acumen is questioned. I’m not saying Painter would love it, but isn’t he inviting being questioned here? Guess we’ll never know because Doyel and Kravitz were too busy coming up with some bangers, like…
“Do you think the team got worn down…the stress of being the hunted all year?” -Doyel.
I mean, not a terrible question… I guess? But again, what does this matter? Everybody has played 30 games at this point and 1 vs 16 is supposed to be basically a workout and a tune-up for the real games. What insight are we expected to glean from this question?
However, Paint once again invites criticism, in my opinion. While saying yeah, maybe the shooters were worn down, he was quick to say he didn’t want to make excuses and that FDU deserved the credit. He then, however, pivoted to the stat sheet and noted that FDU did not have anyone go supernova on Purdue. And how the Knights didn’t even shoot particularly well…and then said “We had to be better at grinding that kind of game out.”
So wouldn’t this be an opportunity to delve into that? Like….how do you get better at that? What can you do in-game when it’s clear you’re not grinding it out and your guys aren’t diving for loose balls? What changes can you consider as the multi-million dollar head coach?
He even goes back to his team needing confidence and – apparently – not having it at the moment. But nobody saw this as worthy to follow up on.
Painter then did typically Painter-cool things by extending the press conference to make sure everyone had the chance to ask questions even as the moderator tried to let him go. He was waiting for it, guys. Waiting for you to do your damn jobs.
And the next question, from an unidentified press member, was about how the only other time a 16 over a 1 happened, UVA won the national title the next year and will Painter remind his team of that.
Really? That’s your question when given extra time and access to a coach who is always willing to give thoughtful answers?
Painter then extended the presser – again – and was asked…
“Will you converse with Zach about his future?”
Gee, what do you think? You know the answer. Of course he will. And also you know with 100% certainty that you will get zero out of that question other than yes, we’ll talk. Nice work!
After all that, there was one tiny throwaway comment by Painter during one of his last answers (and I posted this on Twitter) where when talking about how hard they would work, he noted “….unless they move me…” meaning, obviously, as long as I’m here, we’ll work hard and get better.
What did our buddy Gregg with two Gs Doyel do with that? He tweeted a clickbaity-as-all-hell remark about how Painter “dared his bosses to fire him.” Seriously, he did that.
That was Gregg’s takeaway, after Painter offered endless chances to ask actual good, insightful questions – none of which were about his future, it should be noted.
You know what would generate tweets and headlines that would make people open your article? If you asked questions that got original answers or addressed the in-the-moment issues Purdue basketball is facing in NCAA tourney appearances of late, instead of ethereal –
“How did it feel?”
“What do you say to your team?”
“Were the guys tired?”
– questions that tell us literally nothing about the game, the inner workings, where Painter may be good or bad at coaching, etc.
He tried to offer you nuggets – he pointed out that FDU didn’t do anything magically offensively. He heavily implied that his guys lacked confidence. He noted how their sloppy play and turnovers were a big reason for this loss. And none of those revealing comments generated a single question or follow-up to go deeper. But hey, at least your access is secure.
Nice work, guys! Hope the press room buffet was yummy!
