Saturday, October 20, 2012

The college football halftime interview: a toxic, airborne event


Maybe I’m a little edgy today.  Maybe I’m still upset by the recent death of the great Beano Cook.  Maybe I’m irritated that Notre Dame will likely win again against BYU before suffering the first of its two inevitable losses next week.  But whatever the reason, it’s time to call-out college football and demand a change.  No, I’m not referring to putting the “student” back in “student-athlete”; I’m referring to the dreaded halftime interview.

I’m all in favor of smart, attractive, sports-savvy women reporting from the sidelines throughout a college game.  But we need to do something about the interviews they conduct with coaches as they trot off the field after the first half.  Here’s an example of what I mean.  In today’s LSU-Texas A&M game, the reporter asked LSU’s coach: “Coach, good comeback; what adjustments did you make in the second quarter?”

Now that’s a good, if not earth-shattering question.  (After all, this is college football, not physics.)  And I was hoping that LSU’s coach would offer a meaningful response.  Maybe something like this: “Well, we brought our safeties up to crowd the line of scrimmage and force them to abandon their run game.”  Or, perhaps this: “On offense, we adjusted to their blitz with some screen passes and picked up some good yards.”  But no.  Instead, his answer to the question “what adjustments did you make in the second quarter?” was this:

Well, we need to get on track.  We had some throws that we’d like to have back.  Ya know.  Good throws.  We need to execute a little better.  Um, ya know, again.  We need to do the things we came here to do.

That not only fails to answer any imaginable interpretation of the question, but it sounds like the ranting of a drunken frat boy rather than the thoughtful comments of a head coach.  And this nonsense happens game in and game out, just after the end of the second quarter. 

The solution: simply stop talking to the coaches who don’t give intelligent answers.  They’ll come around fast when they realize that no one wants to talk to them anymore, and they start losing face-time with the camera.  In the meantime, just let the smart, attractive, sports-savvy women like Alex Flanagan, Erin Andrews, and Wendy Nix give me their own analysis of what just happened.  Their comments will be immeasurably more informative than the nonsensical musings of The Mad Hatter.

6 comments:

  1. The interviews always bug me too. But, while I don't know for sure, I think you have this backwards. Refusing to interview coaches who give insipid comments won't change things because the coaches don't want to do these interviews in the first place. I believe the television contract REQUIRES the coach to submit to the interview. If it was up to the coaches, the coaches wouldn't do the interview at all. The coaches give nothing but useless platitudes because they view the interview as a waste of precious half-time time at best, and at worst, an opportunity to say something that could help the opponent.

    Jim K.
    http://www.westcoastwisconsin.blogspot.com/

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    1. Jim, great comment. If the contract requires the coach to submit to the interview, then The Mad Hatter breached his team's contract this past Saturday!

      Sometimes the questions are really are stupid, e.g., post-game, "How does it feel to win?" Now that I think of it, I'm often equally annoyed with the interviewer. Either way, the half-time interview needs to be put out of its misery.

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  2. I really appreciate the intelligence and insight of The Legal Watchdog blog. Plus the photos of your mascot, Knight, are beautiful.

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    1. Thanks very much! And yes, Knightly greatly enjoys his photo shoots!

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  3. What do you suggest would be some worthy questions for the coach during half-time, respecting his need to get back to his team, but also his duty to the fans?

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    1. Cherry Bomb:

      Looking back at this old post, my gripe was with the coach's answer, rather than the reporter's question (which was a fairly intelligent one). But sometimes the questions are stupid too, e.g., "How does it feel to win this rivalry game?" Of course the answer is "amazing," or "wonderful," or whatever. Why not ask instead "What kind of defensive scheme did you use in their last two possessions, and why do you think it worked?"

      In short, I'd like to see more specific questions and would then like to see those questions answered. Otherwise, turn the whole thing over to Alex, Erin, and Wendy.

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