It is perhaps germane to ask whether the exhaustive and often personal coverage football teams engender is worth the effort. But coaches like Spurrier and the NFL’s Bill Belichick, the Marcel Marceau of non-communicative performance art, have made millions off the football beast that has run amok across the countryside over the last half century—driven in no small part by the commercialized spectacle created by the media. So the price of admission to this exclusive club includes accepting the scrutiny that comes with it. Rare is the question, opinion—or even a comparison to a program that fostered a child molester—that is worth the aggrieved reactions from the coaches.
A common tactic of football coaches to elicit better performance from players is to insist that the athlete “grow a pair.” It’s advice that the coaches would be wise to follow themselves when dealing with the media—the same media that have helped pay for the coaches’ assorted homes, private schools, and watercraft.
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The Penn State smear is not Spurrier's only personal complaint. For example, he also says Morris wrote a column falsely accusing him of recruitment-tampering. And if Spurrier had anything close to "absolute power" and undue "arrogance," Morris would've been at least banned from the facility long ago.
"[T]he same media that have helped pay for the coaches’ assorted homes, private schools, and watercraft." (And who's arrogant?) That makes so much sense as saying the coaches have "helped pay for the media's ..." If even that much.
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Fri 12 Oct 2012 at 12:30 PM
Having watched Spurrier in action for years, it is clear that he is nothing more than a preening, prickly thin-skinned crybaby.
#2 Posted by Brian, CJR on Sun 14 Oct 2012 at 07:58 PM