Training Camp and the Oblivious in the Press

Have any of you ever gone to training camp and watched the press corp? I used to go all the the time when the Patriots were at Bryant, and I never once saw the press paying attention to what was actually happening on the field; instead I would see them socializing and joking around and doing nothing productive except working off the beers they had with lunch. The next day I would read in the paper some easy-to-report drivel about salary caps or holdouts or injuries or human-interest stories but nothing, zero, zilch about, say, how the new WR was doing in his matchups against the veteran CBs

Today things are a lot better and there are a few reporter who actually watch the matchups. There will be some great matchups in camp this year with all the new CBs and WRs. Unfortunately most of the reporters are still of the traditional, observe-nothing Ron Borges school of negative reporting, and I suspect that the number one topic in camp (aside from QB chatter) will be some douchbag stories on Valentine's weight. I have to assume that Valentine will flunk the conditioning run and will become the new Pablo Sandeval style whipping post. Jerry Callahan, Ron Borges, Felger, all the douches will be on his case...meanwhile there will be a lot of drama playing out on the field as the overstocked CBs fight for a job against some of their old college rivals...but we we hear about it? Valentine will ride the bike on the sideline for a week or two, totally humiliated, and then will quietly get back on the field and the douches will go sniffing around other dirt.

I HAD a press pass back when Parcells was coach. Went to Bryant and stood in the sideline press tent with the rest of the cognoscenti.Ian was just making an online presence with THIS site and the Unofficial Patriots.com was the main message board at the time. I had two sites at the time, one devoted to camp reports and the other devoted to...well...the name of it was Joker's War Zone.

I NEVER saw Felger at Bryant. The other two must have made an appearance but weren't regular press attendees like the guys from the Herald and the ProJo. Man, those were the days...a few feet from the sideline as Bledsoe ripped laser after laser downfield. Kraft ended this iteration of camp when BB signed on, sadly...yet, looking at the state of the art things are today in Foxboro one can't really complain....of course there are some know-it-all bigmouths that never went to either place or season games that will blabber on with their "expert" takes year after year. Go to a couple of practices this summer and YOU will be far more educated on this year's Pats squad than ten million blubberific posts by the perpetual expert Patsfan posse.

Joker said:

I HAD a press pass back when Parcells was coach. Went to Bryant and stood in the sideline press tent with the rest of the cognoscenti.Ian was just making an online presence with THIS site and the Unofficial Patriots.com was the main message board at the time. I had two sites at the time, one devoted to camp reports and the other devoted to...well...the name of it was Joker's War Zone.

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Ah excellent; you were one of the reporters that actually did real camp reports. The ProJo did not; I would scan the ProJo for real camp info and find nothing. Things are much better now....but just watch Felger and Borges jump on Valentine after he fails the physical.

Back then Karen ("Mrs. Bruschi") on this site was great source for camp news.

Having spent time at both TC's find the comparison difficult.. primarily the media coverage up to 2002 is much different than it is now.. the NFL popularity has also grown exponentially. At Bryant used to be able to stand by the ropes as the team came in.. remember seeing John Hannah and reminded me of how big these guys actually are..

The growth and popularity of talk radio, is not about experts being more involved, it is about loud mouths who have some information and speak really loud.. so there are a lot of "experts" being spawned who regurgitate half truths.. there are guys how have no idea of what they are talking about, but somehow we are duped into believing they are experts; Borges, Felger, Bertram, Callahan etc. They make a lot of noise.

I also think the fans have grown as equally savvy with the growth of the NFL and the amount of information available.. see this message board.

There are handful of reporters who "get it" and try to understand a bigger picture, but they are few and far between.. the sports reporting "gene pool" has been undermined by loudmouths and contrarians..

I have been attending camp for well over 20 years with a press pass, and think you are dead wrong. my friends and co workers at camp work very hard and are true students of the game. sitting and listening and talking with them is truly educational, even after 20 plus years, on what is actually going on at camp. with 90 players on the field, it is often quite confusing. I have been posting "camp notes" for a few years on other sites. what I post is not drivel, but actual eye witness account, and what I am hearing and discussing with true students of the game.
a few of the names listed above, I am not familiar with from camp. but too many to name are too hard working to be lumped in with a couple of bad apples

rkarp1 said:

I have been attending camp for well over 20 years with a press pass, and think you are dead wrong. my friends and co workers at camp work very hard and are true students of the game. sitting and listening and talking with them is truly educational, even after 20 plus years, on what is actually going on at camp. with 90 players on the field, it is often quite confusing. I have been posting "camp notes" for a few years on other sites. what I post is not drivel, but actual eye witness account, and what I am hearing and discussing with true students of the game.
a few of the names listed above, I am not familiar with from camp. but too many to name are too hard working to be lumped in with a couple of bad apples

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I think you just made the OPs point you been going for 20 years and are still confused.

MagicMarker said:

Back then Karen ("Mrs. Bruschi") on this site was great source for camp news.

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She was the best! Imagine that; an amateur making better observations than the press professionals. These days there are a few reporters who actually watch the practice such as Greg Bedard and Reiss and maybe Tom E. Curren, but there are way too many Borges, Felger, and Callahan types who do not watch what is going on and just grind out the easy stuff: salary cap, holdouts, injuries, guys who flunk the conditioning tests, and human-interest background stories on the player's mom back in 'Bama...

The best coverage in the history of football reporting was the old Inside the Giants; they had actual, real, football scout/coaches analyzing all the drills; for instance they knew that this big galoot TE from Notre Dame was special from the first day of camp, while the mainline press corp snoozed and did not catch on until mid-season (it was Bavaro). They had one specialist to cover the OL versus DL drills and another to cover the WRs versus the DBs.

signbabybrady said:

I think you just made the OPs point you been going for 20 years and are still confused.

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Now that was a little rude, but I challenge the press corp to get some binoculars and a clipboard and watch every WR versus DB drill and record who won each battle. Also watch each OL versus DL drill and record who one. Then take play by play notes for the scrimmages. Summarize the results in your daily columns. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but the rest of work for a living and so should the football beat writers, instead of just reading the press releases and re-hashing things over a beer that night.

With some noteworthy exception such as Bedard, the football press is lazy. I challenge them to do real coverage this summer.

Loved Smithfield because it was so easy to get up close & personal. Could hear colorful guys like the Tuner and Weiss curse out the players for mistakes. Epic! Once Parcells was BS at Chris Slade for simply touching Bledsoe on a pass rush as he pulled up sharply. Slade threw up his hands and whined, "What am I supposed to do, Coach?' Parcels was all over Ty Law his rookie summer but you could tell it was because he saw something special in him and was trying to bring out his best ASAP. Once Weiss really lit into everyone's favorite whipping boy Patrick Pass with a long, colorful string of epithets.

Met & talked with Bob & Myra Kraft several times. Nice people. I do think Bob had the hots for my wife. Once had a long post practice chat with Petey Carroll on his bike after practice.
Then afterwards it was off to nearby Parente's restaurant where the players congregated after practice. An old buddy of mine was there one afternoon when Bledsoe walking by hands full of food plates, tripped and stumbled a bit. Wiseass friend says, "Out for the season?" Drew replied, "Not funny!" good naturedly.

Worst experience when totally ripped tough guy Lawyer Milloy was outside on his cell phone apparently talking to his agent. I shouted to him. "Take whatever the Pats offer!" He shot me a look to kill and I quickly retreated back inside. Too fast for Milloy, but then who wasn't?

I remember watching our wonderful new, big WR Donald Hayes at practice at Smithfield and seeing him drop pass after pass. I saw nothing, zip, in the press about it, but by mid season they were scratching their head about why the new wonderkind was not on the field.

I think I have pissed-off some of the press that read this site, but maybe they will be pissed off enough to actually watch the practices. As Bill Parcells said, it is not exactly rocket science. All you need are some binoculars and a tape recorder and a memory for the new player's numbers; record every pass and summarized after practice with an emphasis on the new players.

FredFromDartmouth said:

I think I have pissed-off some of the press that read this site, but maybe they will be pissed off enough to actually watch the practices. As Bill Parcells said, it is not exactly rocket science. All you need are some binoculars and a tape recorder and a memory for the new player's numbers; record every pass and summarized after practice with an emphasis on the new players.

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You should definitely exempt Chris Price ("our own Chris Price") and I've no complaints whatsoever about the ProJo guy, Mark Daniels. But, yeah, Mrs B was the best!

Mike the Brit said:

You should definitely exempt Chris Price ("our own Chris Price") and I've no complaints whatsoever about the ProJo guy, Mark Daniels. But, yeah, Mrs B was the best!

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I recall Mike Reiss, Jeff Howe and Tom E. doing a decent job of relaying back what happened in practice.

Kevin Mannix, Donaldson and others mentioned were awful.

FredFromDartmouth said:

Now that was a little rude, but I challenge the press corp to get some binoculars and a clipboard and watch every WR versus DB drill and record who won each battle. Also watch each OL versus DL drill and record who one. Then take play by play notes for the scrimmages. Summarize the results in your daily columns. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but the rest of work for a living and so should the football beat writers, instead of just reading the press releases and re-hashing things over a beer that night.

With some noteworthy exception such as Bedard, the football press is lazy. I challenge them to do real coverage this summer.

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Yeah it was probably a little worse than rude but I have some serious contempt for sports media. And even some of the best like Reiss, Curran, and Price deserve it for their part in letting it get to this point. A lot of it is on the consumer too as they giving us what the ratings say we want.

Did Fred just call someone else out for being oblivious?

Did I wake up in an alternate universe? Is this the Twilight Zone? What is going on here???

convertedpatsfan said:

Did Fred just call someone else out for being oblivious?

Did I wake up in an alternate universe? Is this the Twilight Zone? What is going on here???

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Do you have a specific complaint about one of my posts or are you just being a ****?

robertweathers said:

Kevin Mannix, Donaldson and others mentioned were awful.

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Donaldson needs to be put out of his misery.. his shtick is tiring. He hops on and off any bandwagon...

FredFromDartmouth said:

Do you have a specific complaint about one of my posts or are you just being a ****?

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It's just strange seeing you post about something other than a complaint about the team. I am not sure if I'm in my original reality right now.

In my original universe, you are nothing but a Jets troll who stayed mostly quiet during during the team's spectacular Super Bowl run, until the deflated balls issue hit the media, then suddenly you reappeared with plenty to say. Then when the team won the Super Bowl, you were strangely silent.

I am genuinely confused. I checked your recent post history and I've seen lots of actual legitimate posts. For the longest time, you were Felger's mouth piece. Or Felger himself. But over the past year or so (sorry, just cleaned up the ignore list a little while ago), you actually have been posting content. Like real content. Not just echoing whatever Felger said.

So I am honestly genuinely a bit confused right now. I may not be part of my original timeline. I may have crossed over somewhere.

Alternatively, you have replaced FredFromDartmouth in this timeline somehow. You haven't visited any weird shamans lately have you? Or maybe you killed the original FredFromDartmouth and assumed his identity.

Either way, significantly different from what I remember. Whether alternate dimensions or new medication or whatever, I'm glad to see the change. And I will hold back on being my usual ****ish self from this point forward.