Knight Fight

My main man Mike Bianchi treads lightly this week as he addresses UCF head coach George O'Leary's boycott of the Orlando Sentinel.

O'Leary's refusal to speak to the newspaper, which became apparent at the Sun Sports-sponsored FSWA Media Days in Tampa last week and was reinforced at the Conference USA media days that followed, had been casually referenced in the Sentinel before. Now, it's page one of the Sports section. Probably about time.

To review: O'Leary's boycott is a result of what he termed "inaccuracies" in the Sentinel's coverage of the death of UCF football player Ereck Plancher, who passed away following an offseason workout in March. O'Leary says he will not speak to the Sentinel's writers unless and until the paper prints "corrections" to those inaccuracies.

Problem is, O'Leary has yet to spell out what, precisely, the Sentinel got wrong.

Bianchi reports that O'Leary is scheduled to meet with UCF athletic director Keith Tribble to discuss the Sentinel situation, once Tribble returns from vacation in a few days. Until then, here's one guess as to the root of O'Leary's ire:

In its admittedly "aggressive" coverage of this story, the Orlando Sentinel relied heavily on the eyewitness accounts of four anonymous UCF football players who were present at the workout. These players wouldn't speak for the record because, according to the Sentinel, "they feared retribution from UCF coaches."

On the heels of a player's death during an offseason workout, that line looks exceedingly bad. It gives the impression that O'Leary's staff somehow attempted to put a lid on the story, which in turn may imply complicity or guilt. That's the part, I'm betting, that has O'Leary so incensed -- the Sentinel's refusal to accept only the 'official' explanation led to a reliance upon anonymous player sources.

As one who has worked in media for almost 20 years now, I can assure you that 'anonymous sources' are far from perfect. For one thing, we have no way of knowing how accurate the players' recollections of the workout might be. For another, we don't know if they had axes to grind with the UCF staff before this tragedy and allowed those emotions to cloud their perception -- to say nothing of the fact that one of their teammates just died, a fact that might impair one's ability to accurately recall the details of a workout.

But perhaps most relevant for an old-school coach like O'Leary: speaking to a newspaper reporter off the record means that these players went outside the chain of command. They broke ranks. It points to a lack of control, and that's poison to a coach like George O'Leary.

Of course, we're only guessing, because O'Leary hasn't gone public with his Sentinel beefs. And in the big picture, as Scott Maxwell so eloquently points out, a young football player is still dead. That is the truly relevant story here, Scott argues, and I wholeheartedly agree. But in examining only the very small sports angle to this story, it's an interesting glimpse of George O'Leary and the UCF football program.

Programs like Florida, Florida State, and Miami have been through these kinds of PR crises before. Names like Bryan Pata and Devaughn Darling jump to mind; while players like Eraste Autin are perhaps lesser-known, their deaths are no less tragic, no less awful. But while no program ever "gets used" to tragedies like these, some programs are better equipped to deal with them, particularly when it comes to media coverage. If we've learned anything from this rift between O'Leary and the Sentinel, it's that UCF wasn't prepared for this level of scrutiny.

Whether we agree with it or not, this sort of aggressive coverage is the norm among big-time college football programs. South Florida earned the white-hot lights last season when the Bulls reached the 2nd position in the BCS standings; I'm sure that the Bulls' football program had some tough moments while adjusting to that limelight, albeit for reasons on the opposite end of the spectrum from what now confronts O'Leary's staff.

For programs like South Florida and UCF, who have made it their mission to be considered perennial top-25 contenders, the learning curve will be steep. Whether it's the heady rise to the top of the BCS rankings, or the tragic loss of a player during a workout, the coverage is going to be far more 'aggressive' now, no matter what. Perhaps that will be one of many lessons hopefully learned by UCF in the wake of Ereck Plancher's death.