Spring Break
Why can't we all just get along?
Kevin Meacham
Issue date: 11/19/08 Section: Sports
Of all the ridiculous controversies I've ever seen, this past week's little tiff between Randy Edsall and the various Connecticut media outlets ranks high up.
For those of you who don't spend a portion of your day reading about UConn football from the 10 or so newspapers that cover it, let me recap:
At last Thursday's media session, the UConn coach said that the decision as to who would start at quarterback in Saturday's game against Syracuse would come down to "Cody [Endres] and Zach [Frazer], Zach and Cody, however you want to put it."
Naturally, at 7:05 p.m., Saturday, Tyler Lorenzen took the field as the starter, after missing four games with a broken foot.
The media, understandably, were very annoyed at having been misled.
Edsall didn't make any further friends in the press room when he said, following UConn's 39-14 win over the Orange, "I guess I could apologize, but I'm not going to apologize. I knew he was going to play, but I didn't want it out there."
So on one side, you have the media, who feel used and disrespected. On the other, there's Edsall, who couldn't care less.
Both sides are right. And both sides are ridiculous.
As a journalist, I have to be concerned about how Edsall is making the media his own personal toy and disrespecting professionals who - though they may not be covering the invasion of Normandy - are trying to make a decent living providing truthful - and thus, useful - coverage of a football team that is growing in popularity.
And as a fan, I sympathize with Edsall. At the end of the day, his job is to win football games and, to paraphrase, loose lips can sink football teams. If he feels he needs to conceal which of his quarterbacks is starting to do so, I can't argue with him. (Though I am concerned that he needed all of this trickeration to outsmart now-ex Syracuse coach Greg Robinson.)
But both sides need to take a step back and think in terms of the big picture.
For those of you who don't spend a portion of your day reading about UConn football from the 10 or so newspapers that cover it, let me recap:
At last Thursday's media session, the UConn coach said that the decision as to who would start at quarterback in Saturday's game against Syracuse would come down to "Cody [Endres] and Zach [Frazer], Zach and Cody, however you want to put it."
Naturally, at 7:05 p.m., Saturday, Tyler Lorenzen took the field as the starter, after missing four games with a broken foot.
The media, understandably, were very annoyed at having been misled.
Edsall didn't make any further friends in the press room when he said, following UConn's 39-14 win over the Orange, "I guess I could apologize, but I'm not going to apologize. I knew he was going to play, but I didn't want it out there."
So on one side, you have the media, who feel used and disrespected. On the other, there's Edsall, who couldn't care less.
Both sides are right. And both sides are ridiculous.
As a journalist, I have to be concerned about how Edsall is making the media his own personal toy and disrespecting professionals who - though they may not be covering the invasion of Normandy - are trying to make a decent living providing truthful - and thus, useful - coverage of a football team that is growing in popularity.
And as a fan, I sympathize with Edsall. At the end of the day, his job is to win football games and, to paraphrase, loose lips can sink football teams. If he feels he needs to conceal which of his quarterbacks is starting to do so, I can't argue with him. (Though I am concerned that he needed all of this trickeration to outsmart now-ex Syracuse coach Greg Robinson.)
But both sides need to take a step back and think in terms of the big picture.
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