I’ve seen way too many interviews in which the sideline bimbo happily asks about “confidence” and other such obvious questions. It’s less of an interview and more of confirming a wrap up of the game. People complain athletes look dumb, but how intelligent can you be with questions like that?

and happy are you that it came out so well?

(Correct answers: “12” and “a fish”)

...I think it’s a bit of a challenge to come up with something deep to ask right after the game is over. People have seen what happened and it’s obvious that a starter lasting 7 innings is important no matter what else is going on, the guy who had four hits and a pair of homers had a big impact and so on.

Off the top of my head, I could think of some questions that relate to specific situations and strategies used over the course of the game, but past that I’m not sure.

Yes.

I thought it was the most correct of the three.

The problem is the way the modern journalism market works.

A TV journalist’s career success is directly related to the amount of face time he gets on TV. If he asks a short question and lets the interviewee talk for a long time, then the athlete gets all the face time and the journalist remains a no name. Now, you might think that that’s the way it should be, but because of how the market works, the no name doesn’t develop a reputation and so he doesn’t get hired as much. Even if the individual interviewers aren’t monopolizing interviews as a deliberate tactic, those who do so simply by their nature will drive out those who don’t.

A similar dynamic is playing out in political journalism. There the disease isn’t long leading questions but rapid rude interruptions. The interviewer asks some sharp question like “what’s your position on xyz?” The politician starts to explain, but before he can get a complete sentence in the interviewer interrupts and says, “Stop dodging the question: I want to know. XYZ, yes or no?” and it devolves into a stupid confrontation where the interviewer bullies the interviewee and as a viewer you just want to shout, “Jeez, shut the hell up and let the guy talk.”

Different disease, same cause. Same result, too: the interviewer does all the talking and the guy you really want to hear from hardly says anything. It’s all about the face time. Probably there are plenty of journalists out there who would like to be intelligent interviewers, but if they act on it, the market squeezes them out and they don’t get on TV.

As part of my job, I interview high school athletes. The interviews aren’t televised, as I’m a print journalist, so I’m not motivated by the desire to be on-camera longer. But I do sometimes ask those “annoying” questions you speak of.
Why? Maybe it’s laziness on my part, or maybe it’s lack of intelligence … but for whatever reason, my own innate curiosity does not always provide a sufficient supply of genuine questions to ask after a high school sporting event. I generally try to just converse with athletes when I interview them—I try to act like just a curious bystander. My job is made easy by interviewees who like hearing themselves talk; they go on and on and I barely have to say anything, and the things they say tends to generate questions on my part.
On the other hand, there are the shy interviewees who need a lot of guidance, and sometimes a 2-0 high school soccer game fails to generate a ton of questions in my mind, and at moments like these, I am more likely to fall back on one of those leading questions you speak of … which do feel sort of false as they come out of my mouth. If my whole goal is to get the athlete to talk, the best way to do so is by asking a real question, and so the non-question only emerges when I have failed to think of a real one, but time is of the essence, and I”m on the spot, and I feel the need to keep talking to avoid having the athlete just walking away.

on the right sidebar, there’s a ranking of “most commented” posts. (A rather pointless ranking, since it inevitably fills up with the five most recent game threads.)

If there were a ranking for longest comments generated, I think this post would be a favorite.

Why is it that post every game there are interviews, why is it obligatory? No wonder we get such rubbish questions, more often than not there is nothing that needs explaining or discussing, and if there is the player can’t really say what they would like too. Players are always very correct; seldom do they slag of their own or opposition players or even criticize their manager’s decisions.

Sports interviewing has become very bland and uninformative.

so I am admittedly biased. Or fair and balanced, I should say.

A few semi-coherent, unrelated thoughts:

-Fosse isn’t a great interviewer in a journalistic sense. But, without fail, the players smile when they put on the headset to talk to him. And he’s welcomed inside the clubhouse, as evidenced by his presence amongst the champagne-doused locker room when the A’s clinched the playoffs in ‘06. Why do they like him more than they like a typical journalist? Maybe because he’s a former player, or because he’s a homer, or because he only asks softball questions. But I’d argue that there’s value to what he does. For one thing, I like seeing the occasional interview where players smile, laugh, relax and let there guard down a little, even if they aren’t saying anything I don’t already know. They do that a lot with Fosse. They also let him in the clubhouse, which allowed me to see that clinching celebration in ‘06, which was cool. Those things probably don’t happen if Ray typically asked hard-hitting, “What’s your real age, Miguel Tejada?!” questions.

As someone who once wanted his job or one quite like it, I recognize that he has his job first and foremost because he’s an ex-pro, and that there are plenty of non-ex pros who could speak more eloquently than him and think faster on their feet during an interview. But I’ve come to accept that. Doing otherwise would be like complaining about the son of the company boss getting the cool internship/job/promotion – fruitless. And as I wrote above, I still think Fosse serves a purpose.

-I think that players CAN give good interviews, but they are infinitely more likely to happen via email. Look no further than a Brad Ziegler diary or a Brian Bannister interview and it’s obvious that we still have tons to learn from players, and that many of them are bright and insightful.
But their insights don’t lend themselves well to 15-second snippets, when they haven’t been prepared for the question and haven’t prepared their response.

The benefit of a email interview, or an hourlong sit-down, like what Blez gets with Geren or Beane, is it gives the subject an opportunity to really talk in depth about something they know very well – baseball.

But I’d say that many athletes – high school, college, or pro – are not incredibly interesting people outside of their sporting life. Oftentimes they devote 70-80 hours a week to what they do, and thereby focus on it singlemindedly. To expect them to also be politically savvy, or witty, or up to date on pop culture and current events, or eloquent public speakers, is unfair. Think of the people you know who work 70-80 hours a week at something – maybe some engineers, some executives, etc. – I’ll bet they aren’t very interesting people outside of work, either. They don’t have time to be.

The athletes who are fascinating, witty, well-educated and well-spoken are usually smart enough to know that they more to lose by opening up and letting the world know how witty they are than they have to gain.

As for where sports journalism (and journalism in general) is going:

At the pique of my interest in journalism (I was still at Cal Poly), I tried out for ESPN’s Dream Job. I waited in line for the cattle-call audition in San Francisco for about three hours. They ended up giving everyone a 50 question sports trivia test that you had seven minutes to answer, crazy-hard stuff even for a sports nut. “Who is the Brewers’ low-A affiliate? Who was the NHL’s ‘73 MVP?”. Then we went into a mass interview in pods of around 15 people with an ESPN person. She would point to one of us and ask a question on the spot, and we basically each got one.

Anyways, long story short, I was impressed with the process, and excited by the opportunity…but disappointed several months later when I saw the winner, who was all potty humor catch phrases. That’s what I had lost to – potty humor.

They weren’t looking for a new journalist or a fresh face. They were looking for a frat boy and shock value.

I lost some naivete and some respect for ESPN at that moment.

I consider AN my journalistic outlet now. And it’s a great place to be.

TV journalists are literally taught to dumb down their language. Less syllables, shorter sentences, no SAT words allowed. “TV is meant for the eye rather than the ear” is a phrase any TV journalist heard from a prof in college.

The rationale for that is people can’t just hit rewind if they don’t understand what you’re saying. Whereas in print, one could read a complex, Ray Ratto-esque sentence dozens of times if necessary.

I think a TV sports interview mostly serves the purpose of seeing an up-close view of the person’s face, hearing the sound of their voice, and getting a feel for their general mood. Expecting more than that in an unprepared athlete interview is unrealistic.

I guarantee most of us have a mental picture of exactly what Michael Jordan’s voice sounds like and what his face looks like. Not too many people could quote something relevant he said in a TV interview.

The athlete might be a little bit intimidated by a person who often has a greater education or has a better command of words than they do. “Is this guy out to get me? Is he gonna trick me into saying something stupid?” That would naturally lead athletes to stiffen up and be bland.

Conversely, the interviewer might be intimidated by athletes who simply look intimidating. Being 5’5” and starting a conversation with someone who is 6’5 and conditioned not to trust you is scary. Sometimes interviewers ask softball questions because it’s all they can remember and say without with stuttering when their brain goes into fight or flight mode.

Hard to get a truly compelling minute of TV when both sides are taking that baggage into the interview from the get go.

Since journalists are not licensed or certified in the way other professions are, and very many of us have no formal training in journalism, it’s a perpetual topic of discussion, especially these days when some of the old criteria have ceased to apply. New media has made it quite possible for someone to be a journalist without being paid, or having a formal relationship with a newsroom, or having an editor.

Anyway, in my personal and professional opinion, Ray Fosse is not a journalist. Ray Fosse is a broadcaster. The two are not mutually exclusive; many people are both, but I don’t think Ray is one of them, and I bet Ray would agree. He isn’t employed by an independent news organization like ESPN or the Chronicle for the purpose of reporting on the A’s, he’s employed by the A’s for the purpose of enhancing the experience of the audience during the A’s broadcast. He has conversations with players, but in the same way that, for example, Garrison Keillor has conversations with musicians about the song they are about to play and how they got interested in this particular genre of music. They’re not meant to be part of an impartial search for an objective truth, they’re conversations.

That said, I think Ray could refine his interviewing skills a bit; I don’t mind that his questions are leading so much as that they’re just too long, and as others have observed, don’t really leave the player with much to add.

IT IS WHAT IT IS!!!!!

While watching the Sharks game, right before the 4th OT they interviewed some player (sorry, don’t really know hockey guys) and it was one of the best interviews I’ve seen in awhile of a pro sports player. Probably because the guy had a lot of information about what the players do if it goes into this many OTs and the toll it takes on their energy. Also what made it good probably is that the game hadn’t ended yet, and the guy being interviewed wasn’t playing, so they didn’t really ask any stupid questions. Also the guy being interviewed seemed really nice and willing to share all this information.

Anyone else see this?

Did anyone hear when Ray Fosse interviewed Raul Ibanez on the pregame radio show before we played the M’s?

Ibanez said he loved the way Pete Rose ran the bases.

Ouch…