Grizzly football needs a lesson on media relations

A Kaimin sports reporter has a better chance of talking to an NBA player than a Grizzly football player. At least that’s this week’s reporting lesson at the Kaimin.

This week, one Kaimin sports reporter encountered people eager to provide information and quick to return calls, while another experienced gag orders, stonewalls and canned answers.

The ironic part of this scenario is that the former situation was dealing with an NBA team under much greater public and media scrutiny than the team that caused the difficulties: the University of Montana’s own Grizzly football team.

Access this week to the Milwaukee Bucks’ new head coach, former Griz basketball coach Larry Krystkowiak, and NBA player Lynn Greer was easy and straightforward.

But, when asked who was leading the Grizzly quarterback race, head coach Bobby Hauck responded that it’s way too early to tell and that it’s a wide-open race between four players. Quarterback Cole Bergquist couldn’t talk about his chances since the Athletic Department has made him unavailable to the media.

A humble guess? It’s between the guy who has already started nine Grizzly football games as quarterback and the guy who’s taken most of the first-team snaps in practice so far this spring: Cole Bergquist and Cole Bergquist.

But, since this information has been deemed too sensitive to release to Kaimin reporters or Griz fans, that is, of course, only a guess.

Hauck’s smoke and mirrors assertion that the position is totally up for grabs is reminiscent of the junior high attitude of equal playing time for all, and it’s not as though providing this information would jeopardize the team’s success.

This encounter is representative of a larger, more troubling attitude. From closed practices to quieted quarterbacks, in the past few years the team’s attitude toward the press has been defensive. The Kaimin and other media outlets are not out to get the football team; they are out to get information about the football team.

A defensive attitude toward the press comes off as arrogant and paranoid – not only to the reporters dealing with it first hand, but to the public they are trying to inform. Coaching isn’t just X’s and O’s; it’s acting as a representative and conduit to the community (a responsibility coaches have surely impressed upon and expect of the players and should therefore model themselves).

The Griz present themselves as a big-time program, a Football Championship Subdivision powerhouse, and justifiably so. But they seem to expect softball-hometown coverage from the press. A big-time program requires a forward and confident approach toward the press, and through it, the community.

Perhaps Hauck and company should consult Krystkowiak and the Bucks for pointers on how to handle the media professionally.