Read online:
Coach K calls timeout TV interviews 'horrible', by Ken Tysiac, The Charlotte Observer (
ktysiac@charlotteobserver.com)
photo: Chuck Liddy/Charlotte Observer
In an increasingly camera-friendly world, the newest TV interview trend in college basketball is meeting resistance.
Imagine that Duke trails Kentucky by a point in an NCAA tournament regional final with 2.1 seconds remaining in overtime and the Blue Devils are about to inbound the ball from underneath their own basket.
Will coach Mike Krzyzewski call the same play that defeated Kentucky on the epic Hill-to-Laettner basket in 1992? Or does he have another plan?
Luckily, TV can get the answer before the play takes place. A sideline reporter/reality TV show star shoves a microphone in Krzyzewski's face during the timeout.
You wouldn't want to see what would happen next.
Live interviews during timeouts have crept into ESPN's broadcasts of SEC games after coaches agreed to do them during the conference's spring meetings.
Krzyzewski finds the idea reprehensible.
"That stinks," Krzyzewski said earlier this week. "That shouldn't be. Are you kidding me? That's horrible. Horrible."
Krzyzewski said a college coach's responsibility is solely to his players from the time he is in the locker room with them before the game until he meets with them after the game.
"You shouldn't be distracted," Krzyzewski said. "You don't owe anything to anyone else. That's wrong. That's why I never do halftime interviews. I want my team to know the only people I'm talking to from start to finish is them and sometimes the referees."
Krzyzewski isn't the only employee of an ACC school who doesn't like the idea. Boston College sports information director Chris Cameron, a Kentucky alumnus, started a Facebook page appealing to "Sports Viewers Against In-Game Coaching Interviews" after watching the Wildcats on TV.
Friends quickly chimed in with comments that were mostly critical of in-game interviews. Cameron later e-mailed other ACC sports information directors asking if they, too, were concerned.
He asked where the intrusion of TV into the games is going to stop.
"I've been working with coaches for 30 years," Cameron said, "and I can't imagine any of them really want to do this."
But some SEC coaches appear not to mind.
"I think it has worked out well," Florida coach Billy Donovan told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "It's not like they're holding us that long."
"It has no effect on me whatsoever, to be honest with you," Kentucky coach John Calipari said recently during a media availability that didn't occur during a game.
So if there's ever a desire for an interview at a pivotal point during a Duke-Kentucky game, the sideline reporter needs to approach Calipari.
Because Krzyzewski won't be talking.
"I've seen that a couple times," Krzyzewski said. "I've said, 'What are we doing? What are we doing with our sport to have that?' It's wrong."