EVANSTON-Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald wasn't in the mood to disclose much to media at Monday's press conference.
Larry Watts' Story: Fitz plays coy with media
Larry Watts' Story: Fitz plays coy with media
Fitz plays coy with media
- Thread starter lou v
- Start date
Fitz is kind of a jackass, isn't he? You've got to earn it to be a jackass. Coaches who finish 5-7 back to back years should be begging the media for positive attention, rather than disrespecting the people who are trying to do their jobs, just like he is. "We're going to run T-formation?" Quick being an ass, coach.
There's no danger in non-answers like "we're going to do a lot of stuff that we've done in the past, and we'll give Clayton a chance to win the game." Let people who have petulant as a calling card (Marshawn Lynch) give the same answer nine times. When you're a coach, especially of a mediocre program, part of your job is selling always. Any of those questions could have gotten a non-answer about first game jitters and happy that there's experience behind Thorson and .. anything but making it obvious that he was trying to be difficult.
Respect the people you work with. Larry Watts is a colleague. He's been doing it for three decades. He and his friends deserve something. Or, alternatively, just cancel press conferences altogether.
I get where you're coming from. But I also see how Pat is trying to temper expectations for Thorson and keep the other two QBs engaged. Hopefully the team isn't putting too much emphasis on game 1 and potentially suffer a let down a la OSU 2 years ago.
Did you watch the actual video? He was being coy, not being a jackass. Said with a smile and laughter. People wanted him to say that he was going to run a 2-QB system or something and there's no way he's going to admit that. Any questions that asked about specific formations or plays or how players would be used were shut down
There is an excellent video on the key cat payers view of the team and Stanford game on nu sports.com. Well spoken guys!
Answer: yes when it comes to giving info that is a) interesting but b) not harmful to our competitiveness.
Didn't watch the video so don't know the "tone" but I do think a lot of the we'll see answers are pretty useless.
Speaking as someone who did a little sportswriting, I doubt Watts was put out by Fitz's behavior. It's really all just a big game, replayed annually, and you get used to it over the years. Coaches are going to reveal what they'll reveal, and there's not much you're going to do about that. I respected that most coaches knew more about their games than I did as they obviously had spent a lot more time studying it than I had. It sometimes got a little irritating when coaches assumed that their knowledge about football or basketball meant that they were superior to the lowly writer in all other fields of human knowledge. I interviewed some coaches of very high intellect and others who, quite frankly, were dumbasses outside of sports. At the beginning of the season, you're generally in the usual dance of who is going to start this year, do you have adequate depth etc. They are questions that have been asked for years, and that coaches will continue to evade for years. Other than the occasional opportunity to do a great human interest story or cover an exceptional game, sportswriting can be very tedious most of the time.
He doesn't need to hype anything this week. The off-season is over and we're playing on ESPN against a nationally ranked opponent getting picked by some observers for the playoff. Throw out some cliches and focus on a good game plan against Hogan and McCaffrey.
But of course. Let's do away with more jobs. Computers don't make errors, eh? Depends on the programming.
No I didn't watch the video. Press conferences are long and boring, the writeups are short and theoretically interesting.
I'm probably guilty of some (lots?) of confirmation bias, but I also strongly dislike statements like 'I'm not going to tell you guys anything' and the repeated canned non-answers. There's a game, yes, but part of the game is giving the sound bite - even if it's 'we like Alviti and Oliver and both had great camps' in response to a question about who will see the field. if he gives plausible non-answers, the story is about the players and not about him giving stonewalling non-answers. He should watch RW's press conferences about nothing which, to this (admittedly, not yet beaten down by the world) student journalist, were simply transfixing. RW with little failure said the same thing every week, which was nothing.
And yes, I've been frustrated by paranoid, standoffish Fitz over the past two seasons. I'm not sure whether his lowlight was celebrating a failed fourth down against Illinois in 2013 ("I went for it like you've all been asking for"), or weirdly blaming bloggers for not identifying Cal's running freshman QB before last year's opener.
I promise, every sucker that has to sit through a silly Fitz press conference secretly WANTS NU TO WIN, because wins mean more readers, more page views, more interest, more comments. It's way more interesting to cover wins than losses, a rising program than a falling one. The media may not be your friend, necessarily, but they're way more in favor of your success than against it. Covering bad teams is painful.
The closed practices are a big part of the problem. There is almost no analysis about the QB situation since few people have seen much of Thorson, especially with the first team. All so that we can gain some mythical competitive advantage? I don't buy it. We've had great seasons in the past when the few writers we have covering the team had better access. We'd gain a more substantial competitive advantage if our coaches would just coach better. I was shooting video at Giants/Bengals joint practices a few weeks ago. They let us film the entire practice. This new philosophy where some coaches close nearly all practices, especially preseason, stinks. I'd love to see some of Fitz's "empirical data" proving that it's a competitive advantage.
I look at how CJones and Barrett have handled things at Ohio State. They've been allowed to talk to the media at times throughout the process. Meyer is treating them like actual adults and both guys are putting the team first. I'd hope we could expect the same from our guys without the hand-holding.
I look at how CJones and Barrett have handled things at Ohio State. They've been allowed to talk to the media at times throughout the process. Meyer is treating them like actual adults and both guys are putting the team first. I'd hope we could expect the same from our guys without the hand-holding.
If you think NFL teams roll out their entire playbook or do any kind of install during these "joint practices," you're fooling yourself.
