When you read Oregon football game stories, you know that we take care to give you multiple perspectives through direct quotes. You want to hear how Chip Kelly felt about Darron Thomas’ performance or where LaMichael James’ 180-yard rushing day ranked among his personal list of his best college games.
Ever wonder, though, exactly how reporters get these quotes to your online and print stories?
No? Cool. I’ll pull back the curtain anyway.
The clock hits zero on another majestic home victory for the Oregon faithful. Both teams are exiting the field, and only the most intrepid fans are rushing into the arms of Crowd Management Services personnel and Eugene Police Department officers.
Members of the press usually walk alongside the players through the tunnel of Autzen Stadium and into the plaza between Autzen and the Casanova Center. What we usually see: some form of harassment from the fan base. Like the cadre of drunken students who tried to hug Cliff Harris and rip from his body any piece of his uniform they could see. Or the child who showed his unqualified fondness for Remene Alston by yelling, “Give me a glove!”
In the plaza, the scribes and athletes briefly depart. We are directed to the conference room on the first floor of the Casanova Center; the players head into the locker room. This is not professional sports (despite what you might think), so we don’t do interviews with the players at their lockers. For anyone who has ever used or entered a locker room, you know this is not necessarily a bad thing.
The conference room has a long table with a microphone set up for the star interview of the day — usually Kelly, followed by Thomas and James, because they command the most attention these days.
There are 60 chairs for members of the press and Phil Knight’s viewing party, and a platform behind them for the innumerable television cameras.
At the back of the room is a large steel door and steel dividing wall, which leads to, hey, another small room. This is a film and football study room by day; by night, reporters jam in there to catch quotes and footage of the players (in various states of dress) and assistant coaches (in the highest states of dress possible, particularly running backs coach Gary Campbell).
The sports information directors don their cat-herding hats and take requests from the media for interviews. These are then forwarded to the requested players. The most unnecessarily gracious (read: offensive and defensive linemen) come out right away; the others (read: everyone else) take the time that they need to prepare for the media and their exit from the building.
What follows is highly stylized form of combat, maybe 60 media members of the press jockeying for position around confused but genial 18- to 24-year-olds and assistant coaches. No contortion of the body is unnecessary, and no showing of brute force goes unchecked. There is only so much space in that semicircle around the interview subject for a voice recorder or television camera to fit into, and it shall be maximized. Those bold enough to raise their voices above the din, directed at the athlete or coach in question, are rewarded with the spoils of fruitful answers. (Failing that, some hedging on the part of players and coaches if they need to see the film. It’s okay. We understand.)
These days, the space provided for player and coach interviews seems inadequate. More and more national media members are coming, and more and more attention is being paid to the Ducks. It cannot be entirely comfortable for the players, mostly shoved up against walls, bright lights shining in their faces, listening to a question they’ve been asked three times already by some disorganized student reporter.
As much as I’d like to pull Knight aside and ask about larger media spaces for post-game interviews, the fact is that the title of The Number-One Ranked College Football Team In All The Land comes with great strain, in many different forms. The full extent of the extra attention is only qualified by increasingly tighter spaces and more frequently asked questions.
Yet, at the end of the day, all our questions are graciously asked, the quotes transcribed and the stories written. The media gets what it wants.
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