Re: BU 2011-2012 Season: The bar is low, boys!
This is pretty much how I feel about it. I went on a nice long rant on twitter earlier about this article and won't regurgitate everything I said here, but you basically nailed it. There is certainly an argument to be made, and while the columnist did bring up some good points to support his position, he could've made a much stronger argument by looking at the last 13 years and not just this year or even the last two years. In fact, he could've simply read this thread to see some of the points many posters on here have made.
As for the criticism of the Freep as a whole, I don't think it's fair. Obviously I'm very biased when it comes to the Freep (I was sports editor for one semester and a men's hockey beat writer for two years), but columnists have always had the freedom to express their opinions, and that should never change. The editor's job is to simply make sure nothing in the column is factually inaccurate or libelous. Nothing here was, except for the time of Bonino's goal, which is an unnecessary oversight, but not one that detracts from the overall point. You can question the timing of running it now as opposed to after the season or whatever, but that's the columnist's decision, not the editor's or the paper's.
I've been thinking all day about how I would've handled it if a columnist submitted this exact same column during the semester I was editor (ignoring the fact it would've been super-dumb because that was the semester they won the national title). Ultimately, the answer's pretty easy- I would've ran it. I would've spent a lot more time going over it with the columnist than I normally would. Usually the associate editor is the one goes over columns with the columnist, but in this case I would've done it myself. But I wouldn't have made him change too much in terms of what argument he was making or what he used to support that argument. I might've suggested a couple things he didn't mention, but ultimately it's his call as to what direction the column goes. Once an editor starts changing things around too much, it becomes the editor's column and not the columnist's, and that's never good.
I should say, my comments about the Freep columnists is not a reflection on the sports staff as a whole, I actually have found the coverage in recent years to be far superior to years prior. My comments are specifically about the columnists, both from the perspective of their choice of topics, their level of knowledge of those topics, a general lack of depth to their articles, rehashing of beaten to death topics, and even a lack of caring about the topics. These attributes don't apply to all of the recent columnists, some would be applicable to certain columnists. Some have been good, some have been very poor. I won't name names, but if you look at the quality of some of the articles, some being purely for humorous purposes, and using both bad grammar, hazy facts, and poorly substantiated arguments, it adds up to a lot of columns that were just terrible to read. I also know that in recent times, the sports staff has had a general shortage of columnists applying for the position in general, so they may have had to take on some people that perhaps weren't completely up to par.
That said, moving to this article, I would've ran it too. It's a point that's worth discussing, and clearly based on the lengthy discussions here, it's on the minds of the fans, thus it's a very relevant topic. Of course, the factual mistake on Bonino's goal is a fairly big oversight that should've been caught, but I'll ignore that for the sake of this post.
I agree with almost everything you said about what the author should've done here. He makes a far too big generalization in saying "The problem at hand is motivation." Sure, that's a big issue, but it's not the only one plaguing this program over the past three seasons. He follows up that point by placing the blame fully on the coaching staff, namely Parker. Again, part of that blame is placed on Parker's shoulders, but at some level, the players have to be able to motivate themselves also.
His point about recruiting is 100% bogus. We recruit players that are frequently drafted by NHL teams (so does every other big program!) and it's the coach's job to recruit those players aren't looking ahead to the NHL. Well, there's virtually no objective way to tell how a 16 year old will feel about his professional career. You can't tell a kid when recruiting him "If you're drafted, you're not allowed to care about that at all when you're playing for BU." Sure, it's one thing to have one foot out the door, and I give the author some credit here because this has been an issue with some recent teams, and something Parker addressed before the 08-09 season, but it's another to tell the kid his future is irrelevant.
Finally, his criticism of a specific instance of X's and O's with not showing game tape before the PC game is absurd. If there's one area where Parker deserves absolutely no criticism, it's his understanding of the game from a technical standpoint. He's in a lose-lose situation playing against a team with a new coach in his first game, any coach will tell you that's one of the most difficult situations to prepare your team for. Showing the team tape of Union would only go to show very generally the types of schemes he used to use there. But it could also serve to confuse the team, as Leaman may very well adjust those schemes with new players. Showing tape of PC last year would only go to show that these players do things a certain way, but again, could go to confuse the players because under a new coach, those players likely will not play the same, and now you've got two different images in the players' heads of the coaching and players that may be completely inaccurate. I'm going to take a guess as to Parker's approach to preparing for PC, knowing that he did not show tape of the opposition, he likely focused on prepping his team on how THEY were going to play. His thought process likely was, our players are better than theirs, if we show up and play our game at our best, we'll win no matter what hokey scheme the new coach comes up with. So I'm going to prepare my team to impose their will and their superior talent on the game, and get the W that way. This is a perfectly reasonable, and I would argue the best, approach to that game. Arguing X's and O's against Parker is a terrible, terrible idea, and that was really the worst part of the article.
shootin fish in a barrell
