For an indication of how petty UVA Athletics is with its treatment of the local and regional news media, they’ve been locking the cooler with sodas and waters for media members during games at JPJ, because, apparently, a few more than expected had been walking out the door at the end of the night, and the $200 million-a-year operation can’t continue to sustain those kinds of losses.
Holy bejeezus.
I mean, sure, yeah, this is a small thing in the grand scheme – I’ve been hearing about it for the past couple of weeks from fellow media members, whose issue is more, what, so they expect me to buy a $5 soda or water from a concession stand now; what’s next, they’re going to start charging us for our seats on press row?
Be careful what you wish for there.
ICYMI
This one isn’t a big deal to me, but for videographers and photographers working the floor, I can see it.
You’re up and down taking photos and shooting video during the game, and during media timeouts, you’re walking the baseline getting shots of fans and other things going on in the arena, getting your steps in, most definitely.
It’s been a courtesy for as long as I remember – I go back to 1995, in terms of covering games at UVA – that the media-relations office makes available basic replenishment on a gratis basis.
I didn’t think much of it this past football season when it came to be the case that they’d leave literally a handful of water bottles out for the contingent at halftime, and nothing after the game – though I do recall asking my wife to please bring something wet, whatever it would be, on her way over to pick me up afterward, because I knew I’d be parched.
Football games are a beast to work – you get there and set up at least an hour ahead of kickoff, which means getting to the media parking area even earlier, because they moved the media parking area, several years ago, to the top of Observatory Hill, to give the prime spaces they’d reserved for decades for media types to paying donors, which, I understand, have no problem with them making a few extra bucks there.
The press box does at least offer the media a free, most of the time edible, meal – a nice touch, given that when you’re there at least an hour before kickoff, then on-site for games that now routinely run three and a half hours, then another hour to hour and a half for the postgame, that’s pretty much a workday.
Basketball is not quite that much, but you do need to be on-site at least an hour before tipoff, and if you’re arriving in the media lot right at an hour before, you’re running the risk of not having a space there, since it’s not really just a media lot.
The overflow lot is a quarter-mile down from JPJ, and considering basketball is played in the winter, you know, that’s a fun walk, like the one I had the other night, in a steady, cold rain.
So, you’re there an hour early, the games go two hours-plus, then it’s another hour for postgame work – four hours, as a starting point.
The last three of those with you being on your own for liquid replenishment.
Again, I’m quibbling here – and not for myself, but for the people working courtside, who can’t escape the baseline during media timeouts like I can, sitting in the upper media section, two-thirds of the way up the lower bowl.
Those who toil courtside don’t have a lot of time to stand in line with the paying customers to buy a $5 soda or bottled water, because they’re working.
I’ve been working in the media business for 31 years now, and been able to see and do a lot in that time – in DC covering Congress, an afternoon in the White House briefing room, a Final Four, two College World Series, multiple football bowl games, visits to several ACC football stadiums and basketball arenas.
The common thread to those experiences: the media-relations staffs everywhere else know that their very livelihood is based on them serving as liaisons between the media and whoever it is they work for.
And, funny thing is, people who work in media relations are paid more, usually a lot more, relative to the media people they encounter.
I’ll let you try to figure that one out, because it makes no sense to me – but my point is, their job is to make our jobs easier, in any way they can think is possible.
The folks in the media-relations office at UVA Athletics take a different approach.
My questions on practically anything of consequence are routinely redirected to the Freedom of Information office – this is unique, incidentally, for me; I deal regularly with the athletics departments at other schools in Virginia, and never have to go to FOIA offices elsewhere for basic things like contracts.
The idea of getting an interview outside of a game is so ridiculous that I haven’t asked for years – and it’s not like it’s an interview at a postgame press conference, when there are 8-10 other reporters there trying to get their questions in within the allotted time slot.
They don’t even leave the damn fridge unlocked so that you can get a soda or water at halftime.
Not to mention, somebody comes to say hi to you in the press area, and you get read the riot act.
What the chuckers in charge over there don’t get is, they should feel lucky that there are media organizations still willing to spend their money and resources on covering their athletics events – because, let me tell you, it ain’t cheap, doing what we do.
Consider March Madness: the ACC Tournament is in Charlotte, a four-hour drive, meaning, a hotel for each night that you’re there.
The ACC feeds you lunch and dinner, and isn’t stingy on the soda and water, but you’re still on your own for breakfast.
Virginia, at 26-4, at this writing, is going to get an NCAA Tournament spot, which means, another road trip – closest ones for the first and second rounds: Philadelphia, Pa., or Columbia, S.C., which are drivable.
Get to the second weekend, and the regionals are in DC, Chicago, Houston and San Jose.
What we’d all love to see is another weekend at the Final Four, which this year is in Indianapolis.
Start doing the math in your head on this: between driving or flying, and hotels, how much do you think this all costs, say, The Daily Progress, NBC29 or CBS 19, 247Sports, AFP?
Oh, and then, you know, you gotta pay whoever you’re sending.
Even me, I don’t have to pay somebody else, but my time is worth … something.
Pardon my French here, but, it all costs a f–king lot.
If you’re wondering why an ill-advised interaction with the head of the media-relations department at UVA Athletics has me saying, not going out of my way to spend thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to give you ingrates free publicity anymore, well, yeah.
Maybe this is why press row at basketball games and the press box at football games is missing chiclets most nights, unless Duke or UNC is in town.
More and more, outlets are relying on wire services and AI for their content, and the danger there for college athletics is, as the games become less a priority in terms of content, the onus ends up falling on the schools themselves to get the word out.
The dirty secret of college athletics is, college athletics only exists to serve as a PR vehicle for the attached college or university – to get old-fashioned attention from alums and donors, to remind them to write checks, and to attract applicants, the successful among whom will pay tuition, then become alums, rinse and repeat.
The PR policy at UVA Athletics, which is, we don’t care if anybody covers our games, is already backfiring.
Look at the empty seats in JPJ for Tuesday’s game with Wake Forest.
The second-place team in the ACC, on the verge of an NCAA bid, in its second-to-last home game of the season, didn’t come close to filling up the building.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s why the media-relations people are so worried about a few sodas and water bottles walking out the door of the press room after games.
I think what we’re being told here is, UVA Athletics is hemorrhaging money, having to pay NIL and revenue-sharing to the athletes – and having to account for its own stupidity, running off long-time fans with ridiculously jacked-up ticket prices.
To this, I say, I’ll do my part.
No, I’m not going to fund the $5 million I hear Thijs de Ridder wants to come back for a Year 2.
I am willing, though, to chip in fifty bucks for sodas and waters for the media room.
Whaddya say?
If you want to help out, here’s a good address to send your donation to:
Athletic Communications
290 Massie Road – McCue Center
PO Box 400853
Charlottesville, VA, 22904-4853
Make sure to earmark this as: Media Sodas/Waters Fund.
If anybody actually does this, it would make my year if you would send me a receipt.
Come on, folks – let’s all do our part to help the folks in Athletic Communications do their job, which in turn, helps the media folks do theirs, without the $200 million-a-year UVA Athletics apparatus having to go bankrupt keeping the fridge stocked.
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Chris Graham
