I don’t follow college basketball (people, I went to Georgia!) so I missed this story when it broke over the weekend. I heard the tail end of an ESPN radio show in the car that alluded to a dust-up between the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball coach, Jim Calhoun, and freelance reporter Ken Krayeske. The topic was Calhoun’s $1.6 million salary as a state employee. Check it out:
Most of the callers on the radio show were defending Calhoun. One caller stated that while he didn’t have a problem with Calhoun’s salary, he had a huge problem with the arrogant and insolent way that he addressed the question. I’m guessing this may not be the first time those two adjectives have been used to describe Calhoun.
Krayeske is apparently a bit of a rabbel-rouser and his “freelance journalism” has gotten him in trouble in the past. To be fair to Calhoun, I don’t think the press conference was an appropriate place to ambush him. But to tell a reporter to shut-up and call him stupid? Hello? That even trumps OSU’s Mike Gundy (“I’m a MAN! I’m 40!”).
Organizations have a responsibility to media train anyone who might step in front of a camera and represent them. For universities with big-time athletic programs, that means coaches and sometimes their star players. I don’t know if UConn has put Calhoun through media training. I’d like to think that with as high-profile a basketball program as the school has, it would have done so. But Calhoun was clearly ruffled and reacted in about the worst way possible. He was rude and insulting. He started throwing out numbers to back up his point, and they didn’t quite add up. He and the university are now going to have to backtrack, apologize, and commence serious damage control.
Media training can’t be a one-time event: people get better, more comfortable, and more able to think on their feet by practicing over and over again. The more comfortable they are, the calmer they’ll remain when the tough questions come out or the awkward situations arise. Put them in front of a camera a few times a year and toss mock interview questions at them. Watch it back with them and critique their answers. Anticipate tricky questions that might come up in certain situations and equip the person with some points to remember so they don’t get flustered. And repeat.
Calhoun should have stayed calm. He should have let the reporter know that he was there to talk about the team’s performance in the game that had just been played and not his salary or contract. He could have offered to sit down with the reporter at a later time in a more appropriate venue and discussed the topic.
This is basic blocking and tackling, guys. Or whatever you basketball fans call it.
More coverage from:
The Hartford Courant’s Jeff Jacobs
The Hartford Courant’s Colin McEnroe
Well you could go with pick n roll or high post screen here. But I bet his contract is much like the football ones. With a base salary, then you add to it, TV, guaranteed appearance fees, Athletic Assoc pay and so on. So the state is actually only paying the base.
In UGA Terms, I think CMR is only 800K base, but makes 2.6mil total.
As far as the way he handled this, I think he needs to go talk to the PR department at UCONN. Same could be said for a lot of coaches and players.
Also the reporter should have known and maybe he did know that it would set him off, by asking non-basketball questions.
I have shared your blog with my FB friends, some are in or near you field of work, so I hope they get a kick out of your writings.
Hi Amy,
Great post. I wrote a post on my blog about how this entire situation could have been prevented by the UConn PR staff. I definitely agree with you that Calhoun should know and be trained to handle the situation better, but it also never should have come to that point.
He may be in even more hot water if his stats on revenue were incorrect.
Brian
@BGleas
Thank you Amy,
The consensus on this seems to be a debate over how badly Calhoun “owned” the reporter. Calhoun is a seven figure executive leader and molder of young men in his role as coach of a big time Division 1 program, and his tantrum did not reflect the EQ one would expect of that role.
My athletic background is in hockey, and we were coached not to retaliate regardless of what cheap shots we took. Retaliation penalties are a cardinal sin, they generally get caught more often than the original antagonism by officials, and coaches hate them. So possibly my perspective is different, but I can’t see how people are justifying Calhouns behavior because “the student reporter started it”.
Though I’m not sure Calhouns rant trumps Gundy’s “I’m a man” rant, that played well on the ESPY’s when Justin Timberlake challenged Gundy on his Jonas Brothers calendar and Miley Cyrus CD.
Amy, I couldn’t agree more with you! Calhoun should know better and the media training/retraining is very important in sports.
Here’s some of what I commented on Brian’s post:
“Calhoun has been coaching a long time and should know better than to create Mora-esque or Gundy-esque sound clip, whether he’s right or not, and appease the reporter, but the PR people need to train or re-train Calhoun to handle off-topic questions like that one with a “No comment” or with the Belichikean “I’ll answer questions about the game today.””
Michael,
I’m not sure calling him a “student reporter” is entirely accurate. Yes, Krayeske is a law student at UConn, but he’s a political activist that also ran for Governor of Connecticut. He’s a mid-30′s law student, not a 20 year-old reporter for the campus paper that got picked on. Big difference.
I have agreed with you all along that Calhoun could have handled the situation better, but from what we know it sounds like this Krayekse guy deceptively acquired a game credential with the intent to cause a scene at a postgame press conference.
Hi Brian,
I’m a bit familiar with Ken and his background, I had not heard of him prior to the incident, but we’ve communicated through email since the incident.
If you want to know what his intent was, you should ask him. If you respond to him intelligently, he will likely return in kind. I think his website is called “40 year plan”
Thanks Michael, I’ll definitely check out his site and send him an e-mail.
I would like to know the vetting process the UConn staff put him through to get his game credential.
Thanks for the comments, guys.
Alan – I am sure this incident will now be cause for all manner of investigation into just what constitutes his salary and what sources it comes from. Which is exactly what the reporter wanted!
Brian – you make a good point (here and on your blog) about how press credentials could have prevented the whole incident. It would be very interesting to see how Krayeske actually made it into the press conference.
Michael – I heard the same thing from coaches growing up when playing soccer: the ref doesn’t always see the first hit/foul, but he rarely misses the second. Retaliation doesn’t make anyone look good.
Tom – Staying on message is key to keeping cool during interviews. Krayeske is getting way more mileage out of this due to Calhoun’s reaction than he ever would have if Calhoun had moved to a different topic, or even calmly answered the questions.
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