Media matters

Yesterday, Clemson announced sweeping changes to its policies for media covering the Tigers' football team.

Initially there's some hesitance to make an issue of this, because I've long proceeded under the belief that fans and the public in general don't want to hear the media whine and cry about the difficulties of doing our jobs. You pay us to report and to tell good stories, not to hear about all the behind-the-scenes impediments we encounter through the process.

But yesterday's development warrants some lament in this space, mainly because it further chips away at Clemson's open, friendly reputation that took a lot of time, effort and vision to cultivate.

Here's the gist of the new media policies for the football program:

-- From now on, the only assistant coaches available to the media will be offensive and defensive coordinators.

-- Incoming freshmen who arrive this summer won't be available for interviews until the week of the first game of the season.

-- Dabo Swinney will not conduct one-on-one interviews with local media, including radio shows.

-- The media will not be allowed to cover mat drills, coaches' clinics or summer workouts.

A lot of this is "inside baseball" stuff that you can't totally comprehend and appreciate unless you do this job on a daily basis. So it's understandable if some of you don't really see the big deal in cutting access here and there.

But again, this is more about Clemson than anything else.

A brief history lesson:

Most of you have heard of Bob Bradley, the former Clemson sports information director whose name adorns the prestigious Ring of Honor at Memorial Stadium.

Bradley served as Clemson's SID for 45 years. He was a pioneer, a luminary and a visionary in his profession, largely because of his dedication to media friendliness and accessibility.

In Bradley's days, Clemson had to fight for newspaper space with the school down the road in Columbia. Since Clemson wasn't as accessible geographically, and since South Carolina was the state school that sports editors deemed more worthy of coverage, Clemson had to be creative and provide extra incentive for reporters to make the trip to the foothills and write a bunch of stories on the Tigers.

There was a refreshing ethic of openness, and that ethic contributed to a broader family ethic that permeated Clemson's entire athletics department. While South Carolina's athletics department always seemed afflicted with trickle-down insecurity and defensiveness that was present no matter who was in charge, Clemson was precisely and refreshingly opposite.

At this point it needs to be noted that the respected and decorated Tim Bourret, Clemson's current SID and a Bradley disciple, probably had nothing to do with the new restrictions that were announced yesterday. The assumption here is that this was all the doing of the head football coach.

Some folks have asked what event or events provoked these sweeping changes to media access, but my guess is that this is merely part of an incremental plan Swinney had all along. Immediately after he took over as interim coach in October of 2008, he tightened access to players and coaches. His belief was that there was a harmful access excess under the man he replaced, and maybe he knew the vast changes he desired couldn't occur all at once.

Tommy Bowden's philosophy on media access mirrored his father's. He believed learning how to deal with the media was a key component in his players growing into men, and he believed his assistants needed to experience regular interaction with the media because it helped them in their progression to running their own programs one day.

But so much of coaching is about mimicking what works, and right now the trend is firmly toward media suppression. From Bill Belichick to Nick Saban to Jimbo Fisher to Bo Pelini -- even to Mack Brown, whom Swinney visited and consulted in the winter of 2009 -- locking down media access and controlling the message is viewed as being imperative to building a successful program.

There are exceptions, of course. Pete Carroll at Southern Cal managed to beat the pants off everyone while allowing extraordinarily free media access. Openness with the media didn't seem to hurt Bobby Bowden when he was finishing in the Top 5 for 14 consecutive seasons.

And it's probably safe to say that, of all the problems that afflicted Clemson's football team during a miserable 6-7 season in 2010, excessive media access ranked, oh, about 347th on the list.

It would be disingenuous for me not to acknowledge that I'm tremendously biased on this topic. My job is made easier by freer access. Openness helps constitute the bedrock of my profession. So clearly, it's impossible for me to claim detachment when I have a dog in the hunt.

But I'd submit that it's also not good for the fans when media access is tightened to this degree. Because a lot of cool stories that came to light in part because of free media access might not see the light of day under the current arrangement.

Quick story:

Back in December of 2007, Clemson was in Atlanta preparing for its Chick-fil-A Bowl game against Auburn. Having attended a press conference at the team hotel, I ran into Swinney (then the receivers coach) and ended up in a deep conversation with him that lasted longer than an hour.

He told me of his tremendously difficult childhood, of the knee-buckling obstacles that came as a result of his father's alcoholism. Less than a year later, after Swinney had taken over as interim coach, I was able to tell that story for TI.

A lot of the great stories that are told -- not just here, but everywhere -- aren't stumbled upon during the controlled settings of formal press conferences. They're discovered through relationships, through long, real-life conversations away from the glare of the cameras.

Had Clemson's football office been guarded like a fortress back in 2006, maybe Ray Ray McElrathbey's story is never told. Maybe in the summer of 2009, we don't learn of Da'Quan Bowers' "other" life as a star guitarist in his father's gospel band. Maybe innumerable heartwarming stories by other reporters are never told on the Clemson football beat, either.

Severe media restrictions are par for the course at most places, so maybe their introduction at Clemson shouldn't be cause for much hand-wringing.

But Clemson isn't most places, so pardon me as I view this news as unfortunate and maybe even a bit sad.

LW