I am in the middle of moving from Virginia to Jacksonville right now, so I’m a little slow on the uptake on routine daily happenings. I was a bit late, then, in listening to the May 7 episode of the Gator Nation Football Podcast, which brought up something I hadn’t really heard litigated regarding the lack of media access in spring.
The hosts basically said there were only two reasons why UF would lock down media access to the spring session as much as they did and then only release a fluffy, soft-focus two-hour advertisement disguised as a documentary in lieu of a spring game. One was to protect Todd Grantham, and the other was to protect Emory Jones.
Before we get too far, I’ll remind you that Scott Stricklin said publicly that the main reason there was no spring game was because the Swamp was being used as a COVID-19 testing and vaccination site. I know the building has been open and there’s been a TopGolf event, but none of those things bring tens of thousands of people from all over the state to the stadium at once. A normal spring game crowd could’ve inhibited folks’ ability or willingness to get in for a test or shot in a way that students running the stairs or even TopGolf would not, so they chose to forego the game. It’s a defensible decision in and of itself and requires no conspiracy theories about the coaches trying to hide things.
The GNFP hosts dismissed the former explanation pretty quickly because Grantham was apparently a frequent sight in the two-hour special. I didn’t watch it because I turn off YouTubeTV during the offseason and didn’t expect the special to have much substance. I have ways to find stuff if I need to, but every review of the thing said I didn’t need to bother.
With only one explanation remaining, they spent a fair amount of time talking about what protecting Jones would be about and what it would mean. I encourage you to listen to at least that segment of the show if that sounds interesting to you.
I just think they left out the simplest explanation: Dan Mullen would lock the media out entirely if he thought he could get away with it.
Mullen has been cagey about injuries for a long time, and he gets snippy with reporters who ask about them. Trying to guard injury reports like they’re the crown jewels is one reason why he would like to keep anyone out who isn’t going to write fluffy, soft-focus features on the players and team.
The other is that he’s simply a modern-era college coach who is paranoid about information getting out to opponents. Nick Saban used to stand out in this regard, but it turns out he was more a leading indicator than an outlier. Never mind that Pete Carroll at USC used to let not only media but celebrities have as much practice access as they wanted and then go beat the snot out of nearly everyone he played.
I do realize that some of that was inevitable with the more professionalized media we have now. The days of when a head coach and sportswriters could be drinking buddies on the side are long gone. The coaches could trust that major injuries or new strategies wouldn’t get out because the people who would’ve reported that stuff were actual friends of theirs. The cozy relationships led to plum access to players and coaches for profiles, and everyone could benefit in the end.
Cutthroat competition in the media business made those kinds of relationships die out, as there are now more than one-to-three newspapers closely covering any given major conference team. Reporting inside information is a great way to build a following — indeed, the business model of sites like Gator Country relies on people paying for that info on paywalled message boards — so the major dailies couldn’t hold stuff back on a gentleman’s agreement and stay relevant.
However, coaches like Mullen can’t get their way entirely. Restriction and access are on a continuum. Just as going too far on the access end could have drawbacks, so could restricting things too much.
The best example here I can think of, based on what I’ve seen actual capital-J journalists say, is Chris Petersen’s Washington. He almost never let media into his program because he is a quiet person who hates dealing with media. Even as he had a run of three straight New Year’s Six bowls with a Playoff appearance, he wouldn’t give much access to coaches or players.
How does that hurt? UW could’ve tried to parlay the success into media exposure to create buzz for the program and bolster the flagging reputation of the Pac-12. It could’ve engaged more fans and maybe gotten more donations. It might’ve made recruits outside the region take notice. Instead, you never heard anything about the Huskies, and the recruiting topped out in the mid-teens for three years going before crashing to the 30s after he left.
Florida under Mullen hasn’t gone that far. It doesn’t go out of its way to prevent access, but it doesn’t go out of its way to create much either.
Unlike some other programs, the Gators didn’t do anything to make up for the COVID-required restrictions in fall camp. It was a few weeks of near radio silence other than press conferences and the inevitable leaks.
Realizing they might need to do a little more in spring, they put up some Instagram streams. They ended up better venues for alums like Major Wright to promote their books than get any idea of what was going on, though. There were good angles for stretching but terrible ones for when actual football-like activities were happening. And with the spring game itself, they didn’t make affordances like going with no crowd or trying to hold it at an alternate site so as to put on a show without interrupting the COVID testing and vaccines.
I don’t think they were specifically trying to protect Jones any more than they were trying to protect Kyle Trask last fall. If they were making an attempt, it didn’t work anyway. It didn’t take long for leaks to hit both paid boards like GC’s and open social media that Jones had a rough time of it throwing the ball up until the final scrimmage of the session. One of the GNFP hosts even said he had someone who was at every practice predict to him that Anthony Richardson will take over the starting job by mid-season. That’s about as good of protection as the 2019 offensive line, am I right? (rimshot)
I think Mullen just doesn’t put the tradeoff between restriction and access in the place a lot fans want it to be. This shouldn’t be surprising, since he’s proven to be a savant at bad PR. And if he was good at using media access, even in-house video stuff, to create a real effect on recruiting, we’d have seen it by now.
No, Dan Mullen is a playbook tinkerer who has built his career off of development and strategy more than anything. It’s his special sauce, so it makes perfect sense that he doesn’t want a lot of bystanders around during practice sessions.
Let’s not forget that the first P5 opponent of the year is Alabama. Mullen has never beaten the Crimson Tide as a head coach, and there is no game on the 2021 slate that would boost his standing more with a win than that one.
Whatever he’s doing to adjust the offense for Jones and modernize his spread option stuff from the Mississippi State days, he has an enormous incentive to do it as quietly as possible. He can out-talent FAU and a rebuilding USF in Weeks 1 and 2. He needs to have as big an element of surprise as possible to overcome the sizable talent deficit in Week 3.
Maybe protecting a still-developing Jones from prying eyes was a part of the plan in keeping spring locked down. If it was explicitly in play, it wasn’t the biggest thing. Not by a long shot. Mullen would have no media around at practice every year if he could do it, not just this one. There’s nothing unique about spring 2021 in this regard.