In his postgame interview after South Carolina's 83-66 loss to Georgia Tech in the NIT Tournament, head coach Frank Martin left the media with one particularly striking comment on how he felt the negative coverage of his team has overshadowed their success on the court and in the classroom.
"It’s a shame that all that good is just assumed, and it's not reported with the same aggression that the one unfortunate accident gets reported. But I understand. That’s the way the world works,” he said.
It’s a sad day when the head coach of the basketball team goes out of his way at his press conference to rip at the media that sits in front of him. And it’s an even sadder day when the point he makes about the media is absolutely right, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
I was one of the many media members sitting in front of Martin as he said this. And as he spoke, I looked down at the one sentence I had already written in my article on the recap for the game. Twenty words sat typed out on my paper, yet this one stuck out: “disappointing." Before all else, with so much else to write about and so many more ways to describe the game I had just watched, the one word I had chosen to describe it proved everything Martin had just said to be true.
And even knowing that, I left it.
The world of sports media is not fair. Athletes and coaches are forced to answer questions, even when they haven’t even had time to come to terms with what has just unfolded. They are forced to sit in front of the media as they cry. They are forced to speak when they aren’t ready.
Frank Martin had it right when he said that this was the way of the world. And as unfair, unfortunate and sad as it is, it is the shortcomings of all teams that will be published. It is those stories that will be breaking headlines, front page stories, and what everyone is talking about.
But this isn’t the media’s fault. The media won't publish what the public doesn’t want to read. Bad news catches the reader's eye. The story about the bad loss, not the one about the expected win, makes the reader grab the paper. And unfair or not, that’s the way it will stay, and as long as the positive news is still equally covered, the media is doing its job just as it should.
I’m sorry Frank, as is the rest of the media. But just as one writer commented after the conference, it's not we who pick what stories run on the front page. It really isn’t even the editors or layout designers either, but the public that we hope to have pick up and read our paper every single day.