Media Bans Only Rankle the Fans

When Nebraska football coach Bo Pelini banned the media from practice last week, he was hardly the first high-profile coach to do so. Upset at reporters for calling a player’s family and high-school coach to confirm an injury the player sustained at practice, he locked them out for three days. “The kid was still on the [operating] table last night, and people were calling the family,” Pelini said. “That’s crossing the line.”

Pelini understandably wanted coaches to be the ones delivering the news. Meanwhile, his handlers asked reporters to avoid using open practices to create injury lists. Memo to Cornhusker officials: Banning media from practice and banning what they can write will have the same ill-conceived effect. The next step, writes the Journal of Sports Media, is “apparently the burning of printing presses in and around Lincoln.”

Unlike in a football game, where Pelini can micromanage every down, coaches have little chance at slowing the fire hose of information (and misinformation) flowing around marquee athletic departments these days. As Bob Gilbert, a retired University of Tennessee news operations director-turned-sports columnist wrote today, barring the media will only serve to tick off the fans. “And just what,” asks Gilbert, “if a few thousand fans each year let their priority ticket applications lapse?”