Penn State’s Tournament Berth Means Something For The Media As Well

Never mind the coaches, players and fans, Penn State’s berth in the NCAA Tournament means something for the media that covers the team, too.

For longtime play-by-play man Steve Jones, it means he’ll work his fifth tournament in 41 years associated with Penn State broadcasts. Yes, he’s called a lot of bad basketball. So this season provides what amounts to an almost once-every-decade reprieve.

Maybe there will be more tournaments to come. Maybe not.

While most fans will consume the tournament on TV, those who find Jones and broadcast partner Dick Jerardi online or on radio get things (both good and bad) viewers do not.

First, Jones always comes prepared. He knows the numbers, stats and trends. He knows the team inside and out. Now, he might not always share what he knows because he’s more beholden to the program than those listening, but nobody compares when it comes to Penn State basketball.

At some point in the tournament pregame show, he’ll undoubtedly share with listeners how often he’s worked at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa, in the past, and how many different arenas from which he’s broadcast the team’s games. Jerardi, the longtime Philadelphia sportswriter who focuses on horse racing and college basketball, keeps count as well, and listeners will probably hear about his number of facilities and any related stories. It’s just something they do.

To their credit, Jones and Jerardi do a good job with historical context and statistics. They sometimes overemphasize things like points per possession (a stat that means more over the course of a season than the course of four quarters) and often share inside jokes that might entertain them more than their listeners. That’s nitpicking, though.

What they do best happens because they wear their emotions on their sleeves. With a brief listen, before they share a score, at any point of a game, it’s clear whether Penn State is winning or not. That’s helpful for blue-and-white fans.

Now, Jones and Jerardi sometimes get caught up in that approach — as they did during the regular season finale against Maryland, when they lamented a typically awful Penn State first half, sounding as if they were preparing for a funeral — and they should know better. In that game, of course, the Nittany Lions rallied and the broadcasters were left screaming as time expired. The same thing happened in the conference championship game. Again, emotions on their sleeves.

Still, for all the bad basketball they’ve seen through the years, a tournament opportunity seems like a good reward, and they’ll do well with it.

At the same time, for some other media members on the Penn State beat, the tournament represents a high-profile stop to fuel an ongoing effort to support the program. They’ll likely chastise Penn State for not historically valuing men’s basketball enough or champion a bigger investment in the sport.

It’s a consistent, mostly emotional and sometimes irrational plea to make Penn State men’s basketball better. Whenever the program has a good season, the stories follow.

Through the years some Penn State media members have lamented that they care more about men’s basketball than those in charge of the athletic department (and they might not have been wrong at times). Still, without more context in the stories, without specifics and hard facts, the media urging Penn State to invest more or, this year, writing that it must keep Micah Shrewsberry on the sideline as rumors about other job openings swirl, it all feels more like rah-rah than reporting.

In terms of money, we get notes that the entire Penn State coaching staff gets paid similarly to some of the lowest-paid individual coaches in the Big Ten Conference. OK, that’s somewhat helpful. Still, there needs to be more about potential revenue streams, for example, for the stories to really matter.

And, specifically in Shrewsberry’s case, what if you open the checkbook after a senior-laden team makes a run and there’s nothing more to follow? What if it’s typical Penn State basketball? Or, are those other jobs (Georgetown, c’mon) really better? Or just opportunities for leverage.

Nothing against him — he’s probably the right guy at the right time and Penn State should have wiggle room to afford the investments (with all the ADs the athletic department has, it should be able to pay a coach) — but the reporting needs more context. Just a little bit of questioning and what ifs, as opposed to jumping on the bandwagon and just spending someone else’s money, to be truly helpful.

The context is especially necessary when some of those media outlets have a symbiotic relationship with the program. After all, the more Penn State succeeds, the more attention some of their content gets, so they almost obviously want a successful men’s basketball program.

That why, for them, the tournament might partially be a pit stop to fuel more support.

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