The bullies shouldn't be allowed to reign

Sporting News, The, Dec 20, 1993 by Steve Jacobson

Reporters deserve the right to write without intimidation

This is about form over substance. No football player struck any newspaper reporter, but they were about this close. One of the football players stands 6 feet 7 and weighs 290 pounds, the other is 6-4 and 285, and they were shouting abscenities at the reporter, who is 5-11 and 180. At that point, form takes on substance.

It was intimidating. "No doubt," Bruce Coslet, the coach of the football players, acknowledges. "Just by their physical size, if they stand up they're intimidating."

A reporter ought to be able to cover a football team and work a locker room without being worried about physical harm. "I did nothing wrong," Jets offensive tackle Jeff Criswell insists. He is one of the villians of the piece.

Actually, he believes he was a hero because he bullied a reporter in front of the team and believed the team appreciated his act. "I was king for a day in here," he says.

Coslet wasn't coming down on his players, mind you, just acknowledging something Jets G.M. Dick Steinberg prefers to refute. It was a threat. Steinberg is one of the villians because he knows better.

Perhaps that was Steinberg deliberately taking the heat rather than being critical of his players and losing them when the crunch of the season is upon them.

There always is an adversarial relationship between a team and reporters, to one extent or another. This team, Coslet's prickliness notwithstanding, generally has been cordial and upstanding, but the potential for conflict always is just beneath the surface. Players want flattering things in the papers; reporters are obligated to report both positive and negative.

The team gets endless promotion of games and telecasts. Offensive linemen such as Dave Cardigan and Criswell get paid $700,000 a year.

Now think of Criswell towering over Newsday reporter and TSN correspondent Rich Cimini, shouting at him, bellowing at him because Criswell was offended by a paragraph Cimini wrote. "I have a right to say what I want to say," Criswell says.

No argument with that.

"I have a right to say it the way I want to say it," Criswell says.

There is an argument there. It's called civilized behavior.

After the embarassing loss to the Colts in Week 14, Cimini asked Cadigan for his reaction. Cadigan responded, "We were sackless; we did well in that phase."

Cimini's interpretation was that Cadigan's reaction put his satisfaction ahead of the team's disappointment. In Cimini's column format, that's fair comment and criticism.

(Last Thursday, Coslet cited a tape of Cadigan saying the political things. Cimini and other reporters on the scene say that wasn't the Cimini-Cadigan interview.)

So last Wednesday Cadigan and Criswell braced Cimini with great heat. And when Cadigan was done, Criswell continued even though he had not been mentioned in the item. Of course, the athlete has no newspaper or radio station, but he can have his forum every day. He can argue with the author, but he may not threaten or browbeat.

"You're a --," Criswell roared. "If I see anything about me in there, buddy, I'm telling you right now, I'll I'll..." He didn't finish the sentence.

"I didn't threaten Rich," Criswell says. "I said, I'll, I'll...' I was going to say, 'take you off my Christmas list this year." Put in there, I said it was a smile.

Shouldn't football players be held up to standard rules of conduct? Steinberg claims the clash between Cardigan/Criswell and Cimini was "natural" because the players are "emotional" and "high-strung." Isn't it a slander on athletes to say they shouldn't be expected to control themselves? Isn't it abdication to think an athlete shouldn't be held accountable.

A reporter is obligated to try to be as accurate and honest as he can. The most honest reporter sometimes misunderstands or doesn't hear what's said in the din of the locker room, and sometimes he hears what the player said rather than what he meant.

These feelings had been building in Criswell for two years as he incurred repeated penalties, and late last season was benched. He and Cadigan were so disturbed that they stayed out of minicamp.

Criswell did not recall being cited in Cimini's midseason report as the Jets' "unsung hero" and the offensive line as the most pleasant surprise. He remembered only past slights. Last Thursday, Coslet and Steinberg were actually aware of how the Mets had soiled their season. Coslet spoke to the two players and then to the team.

There would be no apology. Coslet precisely defended the substance of his players' argument. Carefully, he didn't defend their form. "I am neither against, nor do I support their position in this matter," he said, reading his carefully worded statement. "I don't pick their wives; I don't tell them where to go to dinner. They're men; I'm not dealing with a bunch of high school kids here." If they were high school kids, they should have been taught a better way.

In the end, I come back to what Thomas Jefferson said 200 years ago: Given the choice between football and no free press, and a free press and no football, most assuredly I would choose the latter.