Dooley makes poor choice to try and control media

The other day I happened to come across a blog post from the Knoxville News discussing Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley’s decision to allow only certain reporters who had met his criteria to cover the Volunteers mock game a little over a week ago.

Dooley allowed six area reporters who met his criteria of showing up for the vast majority of their practices and being respectful in their questions and reporting to attend the mock game.  I don’t know if any national media were allowed, I would assume not since they didn’t meet criteria.   Admittedly, Dooley was fair in in the fact that his list of reporters covered radio, tv, print and the internet, but I found a comment he made that those allowed to attend the game were being given access with the understanding that “with abuse brings control” a bit disturbing.

Now as reporters we all understand that coaches don’t like us there because they’re afraid we’ll give away their secrets before game day.  You always have to be aware that you don’t talk about the special plays they may have run.  That’s fair and understood.

The question I have is what is abuse in Dooley’s mind?  Is it investigating the program because of reports of NCAA violations?  Is it asking questions about a player that may have had a run-in with the law?  Or is abuse to ask why a young man looking to transfer to another school isn’t being given his release?

Coaches can and will choose not to answer questions.  Sports information offices will try and steer reporters to cover the stories they want covered, but trying to dictate and control what a reporter decides to write about crosses the line.

Most of the comments to the blog criticized the writer and supported Dooley.  And there were a lot of them.  Of course they were rabid Volunteer fans as well.  Nobody really likes to hear someone else complain about having trouble doing their job, I get that.  But the responses are just as troubling as Dooley’s ambiguous criteria.

I remember Watergate, which makes me two things, old and smarter than a lot of America.  I’m actually not very proud in making the smart statement.  It’s more of a damning statement regarding American education than it is about my intelligence.  But in remembering Watergate, I think about the number of people who didn’t want to know and didn’t care what was going on until the President had to resign.

Now I’m not comparing this to Watergate.  Don’t be a fool and say I am.  This is only a little football we’re talking about.  It’s the coaches and rabid fans that want to make it into a life and death struggle against evil.  What I am saying is that when you do that, don’t be surprised when reporters want to know what’s going on behind all those closed doors.