When Sports Reporters Ask Dumb Questions

By Gary Cope

Did you happen to hear the audio from Monday’s weekly ACC coaches conference call? If not, click here to listen to the TheSportsDominion.com‘s podcast with the audio. Hold up – first, let’s backtrack. By now, if you follow Virginia Tech mens basketball you know that super freshman power forward Jeff Allen (12.8 ppg / 8.1 rpg) was suspended for two games by ACC commissioner John Swofford. I won’t rehash the detail here, but if you want more info, read my blog post recapping the incident.

Following the ACC’s suspension, Virginia Tech’s athletic department issued a press release containing statements from both Allen and head coach Seth Greenberg addressing the incident. It was the standard apology followed by the whole “he’s really a good kid, so don’t judge him on this once isolated incident” language you would expect. Only in this case, it is absolutely true.

Allen is a good kid who has shown amazing maturity both in terms of his skills and his emotions during his first 18 games as a college basketball player. He let his emotions override his judgment one time and it cost him two games. Lesson learned. End of story. Time to move on … or, so you would think.

As a journalist who covered the ACC for years and sat through many a contentious and confrontational press conferences and conference calls, I have never understood why reporters ask questions about topics that coaches have said they will not address. Coach Greenberg said he would not address Allen’s suspense in the ACC weekly conference call, so what did Mark Berman of the Roanoke Times do? Ding! Ding! You guessed it, he asked about the incident that led to Allen’s suspension. To which, Greenberg got irritated and asked if Berman had a question about Duke or Boston College and when Berman insisted on continuing the question, his phone appeared to get muted and Greenberg said, “Next question.”

Who is Mark Berman? What makes this guy think he is so special that Greenberg will answer HIS questions about the incident. To the rest of the reporters’ credit, they respected Greenberg’s decision and focused on Tech’s upcoming game against Duke on Thursday, which obviously takes on a whole new degree of difficulty without their big man and second leading scorer – a very relevant topic that Greenberg was more than happy to discuss – well, I don’t know if any coach is “happy” to discuss playing Duke without one his best players, but you get the point.

Berman came across to me like a jerk. The moderator of the call made it clear that Greenberg would not talk about Allen’s incident and/or suspension. Yet, this guy thought the rules didn’t apply to him. Not surprisingly, Berman conveniently left out any mention about his brief exchange with Greenberg in today’s article.

Being a sports reporter is not as easy or glamorous as most sports fans may think. Sure, it’s a better job than most, but the hours are long, the pay sucks and for the most part, players, coaches and fans will at some point hate your guts and even threaten you (fans mostly) for something you wrote or said. A reporter’s job is hard enough – so why make it harder by pissing off the coaches and athletics departments. This guy Berman just signed his name to Greenberg’s personal shit list and I imagine that he will be on it for at least the rest of the season.

Sounds fair to me, how about you? OK, next question.