It’s news about the news and it’s not all that important, but at the same time it’s so petty and silly that it’s somehow important.
If you missed it, Penn State conducted its last Tuesday afternoon news conference with coach James Franklin this week. Starting next week — mark down Monday, Nov. 6 as the date for posterity — he moves his weekly news conferences to the first day of the week.
Why? Because he can. Because he (and apparently others in the athletic department) think talking to the media on a Monday will somehow alter the news cycle and end any negative conversations or questions sooner after a loss.
It’s kind of like turning the clocks back and expecting more sunlight. Nope, same amount of sunlight (that’s how the Earth rotating around the sun works) but we’re calling it a different time of day.
It all started, or at least became public, after Ohio State.
After Franklin’s post-game media effort in Columbus, he then met with the media Tuesday in Beaver Stadium and was apparently dismayed and disappointed (perhaps even saddened and shocked) that questions about the Buckeyes and his team’s performance in that game persisted three whole days later.
He noted that timing during his weekly in-person radio show that week as well, and that happened on Thursday. That was five days after the loss, an entire workweek for many people and clearly an affront to a coach who simply wants to go 1-0 each week and put a loss behind him when necessary.
Honestly, Penn State could conduct Franklin’s news conference any day of the week. Why not go the day after the game, Sunday? Monday? Tuesday? Even Wednesday?
Again, it doesn’t matter.
What matters most is Saturday. Just win games, or at least play well, and that would be the end of the things.
No news conference timing will change the nature of the media’s questions, though, and it’s not as if Franklin is getting grilled by the Penn State media corps — which dutifully exchanges pleasantries each week and even talks coffee preferences with the coach when he’s in the mood, because he controls their access to information and insists those other things happen.
Honestly, if Penn State loses to Michigan next week (we non-coaches are allowed to look ahead) or struggles against Maryland this week, questions will come. Beyond Mondays, questions might even come at many times throughout the next 300-plus days depending on how the rest of this season plays out.
That’s probably what’s most head scratching about the decision to move the news conference.
It’s minutia, not newsworthy and not something the coach should be worrying about in the middle of the season. Instead, the little thing somehow created enough of a mental princess-and-the-pea moment that it had to be addressed.
It just seems like things could be so much simpler — meet with the media, answer some questions as completely or as honestly as you’d like and be done. No matter the day. Easy peasy.
But we’re getting later in the season and that’s when Franklin invariably starts parrying questions or previewing answers with context — and expectation-setting responses, so the media knows that he knows his answers get heard and seen by a variety of audiences he’s trying to placate. So, he explains his answers before he answers, but media members already know the game and what it produces so it’s not necessary.
He’d be better off just answering and keeping his thought process private. When he keeps it simple, he stays out of the territory that gets other coaches in trouble and often the media is not there trying to outsmart the coach. They’re just trying to ask some general things, make their deadlines and produce content.
If the coach doesn’t outsmart himself, it’ll be alright, no matter when he talks to the media. Again, the day of the week really does not matter.
Unless it’s Saturday.
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