Every week, PowerMizzou.com publisher Gabe DeArmond answers questions from Tiger fans in the mailbag. This format allows for a more expansive answer than a message board post. Keep your eye out each week to submit your question for the mailbag or send them to powermizzou@gmail.com. On to this week's inquiries.
Mofan79 asks: 2022 commit with the highest ceiling? Who's the most polished right now?
GD: I could write a bunch of words and pretend I have any idea. But that would be kind of dumb. The truth is, I have no clue whatsoever. These guys are juniors in high school and many of them didn't play a normal season last year. Plus, I haven't actually seen any of them play in person. I don't feel like I'm qualified to give complete breakdowns based on film, especially because when you're looking at film, you're seeing a handful of plays the player has picked as his best plays. Personally, I don't feel like I can get a real sense for how good a guy might be until I've seen him in a number of practices and at least a game or two.
Plus, anybody that says they know the answer to this question is just lying. We see five-stars bust and two-stars turn into NFL players. So it's all a huge guess anyway.
Bengalese asks: NFL teams have open preseason camp practices where thousands of fans show up to watch and build excitement for the upcoming season. What is the reasoning for preseason college practices closed to all including media?
GD: Because college coaches are among the most paranoid people on the planet. Your question hits on what I believe is the silliest thing about college football. Are opposing coaches really going to get a huge schematic edge because they read a practice report on the Rivals site? Come on. If they do, it means you should get better at adapting and adjusting. I get, to some extent, teams telling the media we can't write about specific formations or trick plays or schematic things. I mean, I don't really get it because, again, if I write that Missouri lined Mookie Cooper up in the backfield in a practice in March (and let's be clear, I haven't seen this and don't know if they have or not, it's just a random example), is it really going to give Florida a huge edge for a game in November? Of course not. Is there any disadvantage to me being able to go to every practice and write something that tells you a freshman defensive end has been dominating one-on-ones and there's no way they're going to keep him off the field (like we wrote about Aldon Smith)? No, there isn't.
Ultimately, it's about control. College coaches want to control EVERYTHING. They're the lord and overseer of the program and they want to be in charge of every aspect of it. Including telling the media what we can and can't write.
For my first ten years covering the team, we got to see about 98% of practices and we could talk to absolutely anyone we wanted to. This was true during the disastrous 2004 season and also during the phenomenal 2007 season. We wrote about standout players in practice and about big plays and even about fights and kids getting yelled at. It had zero impact on how good the team was. All it did, as you said, was build excitement among the fans and let you guys know the players a little bit better than you otherwise would have. Then, Missouri moved to the SEC and the 2012 season went sideways and all of a sudden everything changed. Freshmen couldn't talk and scrimmages started being closed and we had far less access than we'd ever had before. Why? The company line back then was "This is how everyone else in the SEC does it, so this is how we're going to do it." The truth? In my opinion, they had a bad season and the media wrote about it being a bad season and Gary Pinkel was feeling some heat from fans and they shut us out. They haven't let us back in.
I think everyone is worse off for it. The reporters know less about the team than they used to. The fans know less about the team and the players than they used to. The players don't know the reporters at all. We can't build relationships where by the time a kid becomes a starter in his third year we've already talked to him six or seven times and written a feature on him and built up a little bit of equity with him where he knows who we are and will talk to us. The questions are generic and the answers are surface level and the coverage is worse.
I saw a story a year or two ago where Herm Edwards said he was going to open every practice and allow all players to do interviews. His logic was that this is the way it is in the NFL. And it's the right approach. Every single kid who signs at a Power Five program has the goal of playing in the NFL. When you get to the NFL, you don't have the option of refusing to show up for interviews because you didn't play well. Reporters are at practices and in the locker room and it's just part of the deal. Why wouldn't college coaches want to prepare kids for that? It's like telling a journalism student, we want you to practice writing and get ready for your career...but we aren't going to let you actually go out and do interviews. We don't trust you enough to talk to the people you're writing about yet. So when you get your first job, good luck with that part of it.
It's changed in the last 10 to 20 years and it's probably not every changing back. And we're all worse off for it.
Rant over.
