As if all the closed practices and scrimmages didn't make things hard enough on us fans to feed our football habit, Coach Stoops announced Monday that he was going to impose even further restrictions on the program. Nothing changing with the access practices of course, those are all still closed. As it is today, the media has access to both the coaches and a group of players Monday night after practice as well as Tuesdays and Wednesdays (typically). Then of course there is Bob's weekly presser every Tuesday.
Monday Stoops announced that process would be changing and that for the rest of this season the players will no longer be made available to the media on any other days besides Monday. Same goes for the coaches apparently, however Stoops did say that next year he's moving his presser to Monday instead of Tuesday. So next season, we'll get info, and that's stretching the word 'info' when it comes to Stoops, on Monday and Monday only.
While I certainly understand he has a job to do I can't help but be frustrated by his continued insistence to keep us the fan cut off from the program. I do not cover the team in person on a daily basis like our friends Jake Trotter or SoonerScoop, so I can only imagine how much more difficult this will make their job. We here at CCM rely on those guys to provide not just us, but all of you with reliable info that we can bring back to Sooner Nation. Reliable being the KEY word mind you.
In my opinion, it also clearly shows (not that it was really in doubt) that Stoops can pretty much do anything he wants. He rarely faces a tough question and yet here he is even further limiting himself from having to answer the softballs he constantly gets. So in that sense we're not really losing much if anything I suppose, but at the samme time it kind of makes the decision to do so now even more confusing. It's not like, even after a loss, he or the players were getting peppered with tough questions. The guy has one of the easiest rides, with respect to pressure from the media, of any coach in the entire country. I'm not sure what his grudge is regarding dealing with the media other than he just hates to do it. So now, because of that, we all get to suffer.
For whatever reasons he may have, clearly he feels this is a necessary move to make. Well I hope it's worth it for him and the team because it once again shows that he and OU place little value in appeasing the fan base by once again severely limiting our access to the program we all love and support.