Welcome to the Friday Feedback, honest with you from the git go. We weren’t supposed to be here today because I’m stealing a few off days before the season starts — and I’m doing it next weekend, too — but I didn’t want to leave without making the bed. That nonsense from Monday and then Wednesday deserves more attention than I’ve given it, but I’m going to warn you now that my opinion is strong and firm here and it might not be popular. I don’t want to leg drop the Macho Man, but here goes.
First, I understand my opinion isn’t any better than anyone else’s. These are opinions and not facts, and the biggest reason we’re all here is because we have and share and defend and sometimes change our opinions. You and I are coming from different places and we want and admire, we frown at and are disappointed by different things from the head coach.
But, man, I have a hard time thinking on the same level as the people who didn’t know what Dana Holgorsen was saying Monday. And my opinion is that if you were offended or appalled or shocked by Dana stating what’s a commonly accepted reality, you probably don’t have a right to be offended or appalled or shocked. That conversation isn’t for you and you shouldn’t be shaping it.
Stop here for a moment … before you leave forever. I’m not saying you can be disappointed Dana said it or that you can’t wish the coach of your team had exercised better judgment. You can. We’re dealing with different emotions there, you see? I understand, never mind condone, that particular response.
But the people who have an issue with Dana going where he went, who decided to make that a headline? Nope. Nope.
This is a big part of a big reason why I don’t think press conferences should be televised or streamed. I post them here. But I do not like it. I pushed back against it for a long time. (Something about giving away the quotes before I write the story bothers me to this day.) But now I accept that if I don’t someone else will, and I risk losing you to some other place. But they’re press conferences, not public conferences. They exist for us to ask questions and then take the information contained within to the public. A portion of the audience doesn’t … speak the language, so to speak … and there’s no translator to Dana’s left or in a little box inset in the corner. People hear and react and things start spinning.
Let me ask you a question: Who among the people in that room that day, or even the people who cover the team who weren’t there that day, made a meal of it? Your answer should be “Nobody.” Isn’t that odd? Yet that’s the reality because those people know and who are around Dana, who know what he says and how he says things and the difference between the two, they knew the conversation we were having. I don’t want to get into the matter of who made a deal of it and why. I feel like we just had a similar conversation. And I think my point speaks louder.
We’re going to talk a lot about this after this, so I’ll wrap this up now, but what Dana did Monday was essentially admit to speeding. Someone’s going to say, “Why is it so hard to obey the speed limit?” And I’ll reply, “You must be fun at parties.”
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words … not uh, can’t get past it … MOTOR BOAT!
Dann White said:
Are you saying that you didn’t want to spill the beans here about another beat writer? It appears that in this day and age, a reporter can make news by reporting it, or tweeting it; if there’s a difference. Is that OK?
I wonder if the party that tweeted those remarks feels any responsibility for the furor they caused? Seems unfair to publish quotes out of context and/or without explaining it was said as a joke, because that is truly how it sounded to me. The over-reaction to the coach’s remark was straight out of Watergate or Lewinsky-gate.
I probably wouldn’t be so curious about this most recent gaffe, but after seeing HCDH letting Hertzel slide so generously, I don’t like seeing him embarrassed or undermined by those he opens up to. (I guess I’m starting to like Dana, I don’t recall feeling protective of him before)
I’m saying I’m not prosecuting a fellow beat writer. We don’t do that, or at least we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t delight in a coach or a player or an administrator blowing up a fellow writer. Again, I understand why it happened, and maybe on some level of recourse or closure, it had to happen. But I’m not going to applaud it. I’m on the other team. And I’ve been in that seat before. That medicine tastes awful. I’m still angry there were some “reporters” laughing about it. I don’t want any of them on my side of the fence.
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