Bullies usually quit after you fight back. Sometimes, for student journalists, a little reinforcement from the big kids is necessary.
That’s what happened when professional sports reporters from ESPN and Sports Illustrated stood up for student sportswriters at the University of Montana, who had been blacklisted by the football coach for a month after reporting an alleged assault by two football players.
Montana football coach Bobby Hauck finally ended his boycott against the student journalists Tuesday, accepting a football-related question at a press conference from a reporter from the student newspaper, the Montana Kaimin.
After making a statement that he wanted to “move forward from this date in a positive manner,” Hauck asked Kaimin sportswriter Tyson Alger if he had a question.
“Yes, sir,” Alger replied, according to an account in the Missoulian newpaper.
“All right,” Hauck said. “I like it when you treat your elders like that.”
Hauck’s condescension to students who contribute to his salary was needless but expected; his acquiescence to a reporter’s question in the face of national scrutiny was necessary, but about a month too late.
A student newspaper being undervalued or mistreated by its university’s athletic department is by now a hackneyed story.
Every year, a collegiate athlete somewhere will be arrested for something. A journalist will report the facts — because the facts are public record, because athletes are megastars in the microcosm of a campus community, because students have a right to know about the lives of their peers — and some football coach or sports information officer will decide student media should be a recruiting tool first and a public service second.
But Hauck’s recent actions during the past month were beyond the pale.
When the Kaimin published an account of two football players allegedly assaulting another student in front of a fraternity, Hauck boycotted student sports reporters trying to cover the football team.
He screamed obscenities at a reporter for asking him a question about the incident and covered the reporter’s tape recorder. He taunted Kaimin reporters at press conferences when they asked questions about rotating quarterbacks and the team’s defense.
In one instance, when a reporter from the local newspaper — you know, a real reporter — repeated a student’s question, he got an answer.
Once national media started asking questions, Hauck insisted it was the student athletes who did not want to talk to the Kaimen and he was merely supporting their decision.
Whether that statement was a bald falsehood, a display of a lack of leadership from an educator or both, Hauck looked silly.
The situation got so bad that one of the paper’s GameDay issues featured an interview with a coach from Montana’s opponent, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, because no Grizzlies would talk to the paper. Outrage from alumni led the paper to focus on the marching band in the next GameDay.
Now that Hauck’s hissy fit has ended, the Kaimin will undoubtedly get back to work covering football. And they should never relent in asking questions of their school’s athletic department, players, coaches or administration, emboldened by the knowledge that bullies usually lose to resistance and public embarrassment.
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