Jay Bilas doesn’t understand why college basketball coaches struggle with talking to reporters after games.
The ESPN analyst went on SiriusXM with Chris “Mad Dog” Russo on Tuesday and unloaded on coaches who behave badly during press conferences, specifically addressing UCLA coach Mick Cronin’s recent incident in which he berated a reporter for asking “the worst question I’ve ever been asked.”
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“I thought it was kind of petulant and unnecessary,” Bilas admitted.
Then Bilas opened it up beyond just Cronin and discussed coaches in general who struggle with the basic concept of sitting down after a game to field reporters’ questions.
“This goes beyond Mick,” Bilas continued. “I can’t understand why so many of these coaches go into these press conferences. Why does Iowa State’s TJ Otzelberger and Bill Self at Kansas, how can they go into these press conferences after getting it handed to them and behave themselves?
“It’s not that hard. What do they expect? That they’re in a multibillion-dollar entertainment industry and nobody’s gonna be interested. “Look, I’m OK with the feeling that the media doesn’t understand basketball the same way coaches do. Congratulations. When I go into a restaurant, I’m not a chef, but I get to opine on the meal. I’m paying for it, I get to opine on it. I don’t see why this is so difficult. I understand they’re a competitor, but the competition is over, and now it’s time to talk about it, and it’s not that hard.”
You don’t need to be an expert to have an opinion about something you’re consuming. The people paying for the product get to evaluate it. The people creating it have to answer questions about it. That’s how the entertainment industry works, and college basketball is an entertainment industry, whether coaches want to accept it or not.
“They win, and they’re nightclub comics,” Bilas added, “They lose, and they can be petty at times.”
That’s exactly what happens. Coaches who win are loose, funny, and happy to talk. Coaches who lose suddenly act like every question is a personal attack and every reporter is an idiot who doesn’t understand basketball. The game result shouldn’t change whether you’re capable of being a professional and doing part of your job, which is talking about what happened.
“I guess I’m talking more broadly and globally on this,” said Bilas. “But these things aren’t that hard. There’s no reason to act this way. If you don’t like a question, just say, ‘Look, I prefer not to answer that.’ It’s not that big of a deal.”
College basketball coaches are among the highest-paid public employees in most states. They’re running programs that generate hundreds of millions of dollars. Their games are broadcast nationally on ESPN, Fox, CBS, and NBC, as well as on streaming platforms. Millions of people watch. Reporters asking basic questions after those games about what happened and why isn’t an unreasonable burden. It’s part of the job they’re paid extremely well to do.
As Bilas said multiple times during the interview, none of this is that hard.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.