Why can't we all just get along?

By: Kevin Meacham

Posted: 11/19/08

Of all the ridiculous controversies I've ever seen, this past week's little tiff between Randy Edsall and the various Connecticut media outlets ranks high up.

For those of you who don't spend a portion of your day reading about UConn football from the 10 or so newspapers that cover it, let me recap:

At last Thursday's media session, the UConn coach said that the decision as to who would start at quarterback in Saturday's game against Syracuse would come down to "Cody [Endres] and Zach [Frazer], Zach and Cody, however you want to put it."

Naturally, at 7:05 p.m., Saturday, Tyler Lorenzen took the field as the starter, after missing four games with a broken foot.

The media, understandably, were very annoyed at having been misled.

Edsall didn't make any further friends in the press room when he said, following UConn's 39-14 win over the Orange, "I guess I could apologize, but I'm not going to apologize. I knew he was going to play, but I didn't want it out there."

So on one side, you have the media, who feel used and disrespected. On the other, there's Edsall, who couldn't care less.

Both sides are right. And both sides are ridiculous.

As a journalist, I have to be concerned about how Edsall is making the media his own personal toy and disrespecting professionals who - though they may not be covering the invasion of Normandy - are trying to make a decent living providing truthful - and thus, useful - coverage of a football team that is growing in popularity.

And as a fan, I sympathize with Edsall. At the end of the day, his job is to win football games and, to paraphrase, loose lips can sink football teams. If he feels he needs to conceal which of his quarterbacks is starting to do so, I can't argue with him. (Though I am concerned that he needed all of this trickeration to outsmart now-ex Syracuse coach Greg Robinson.)

But both sides need to take a step back and think in terms of the big picture.

Some of the reaction in columns and on newspaper blogs - including a well-respected Hartford Courant columnist calling Edsall "Coach Pinocchio" - has been over-the-top.

This is a game that many head coaches play each week. If a coach isn't forced to list starters, or provide an injury report, why do it?

I think Edsall probably did take things a step too far. Maybe if he had simply said, Thursday, "I'm not going to tell you which quarterback is going to start," no one's ego would have been bruised.

It wouldn't be the first time Edsall has withheld that type of information, and on the paranoia scale, it would rank somewhere below Bill Belichick listing Tom Brady as "probable" with a shoulder injury for two full years.

Anyway, Edsall reportedly gushed about Lorenzen's ability at last Tuesday's meeting, which I suppose could have been seen as foreshadowing (though I would have liked to see the coach's reaction had the reporters read between the lines).

Perhaps it would be better for journalists to simply accept that, from time to time, football coaches must say things they don't mean, and work from that premise.

Edsall, though, should be aware where this situation could end up.

This is the coach, after all, who appears in the Big East's television commercials deadpanning the word "integrity" directly into the camera. If he feels the need to risk that integrity by planting false stories - because South Florida coach Jim Leavitt might have DailyCampus.com in his favorites - so be it.

By treating the media as his pawn, Edsall is disrespecting people who are paid to cover his team. These writers don't sit in the press box just for the hell of it. They're there because there are thousands of people in this state who will pay 50 cents a day to get daily coverage of this football team. People care.

Screwing with the reporters, in an elaborate scheme to confuse other teams, means screwing with the readers.

How can you tell if what you're reading - Endres/Frazer starting against Syracuse, Darius Butler playing offense "full-time" against West Virginia, Edsall denying interest in the Syracuse coaching job - is true? Or is it just a diversion?

The answer, lately, is that you can't. That's not on the reporters, who can do no more than write the responses to their questions.

Ultimately, this dust-up seems unlikely to end, so long as the interests of the UConn football program and the interests of journalism fail to coincide.

And that, unfortunately, is the most ridiculous part of the story.