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Access? By George Stahl NEW YORK (AQB)--The National Football League has tried to shed its no-fun league image by relaxing some of its broadcast limitations on networks, such as allowing the networks to pick one game a week in which to place a camera in the locker room or a microphone on a player before the game. Sounds good, right? Not so fast... "We absolutely thought so," CBS Sports executive producer Terry Ewert said, "but a lot of its based on the approval of the head coach and the team itself. And we find that a lot of that permission has not been given to us. It depends on the coach, it depends on the team. "They're cautious. They're seeing how other teams are handling it, and they're going to wait to see how the other teams do before they get into it as well. We've had a little bit of resistance with the teams out there to allow that access. But, I think, slowly but surely it's going to be a benefit." Fox legend John Madden said he wouldn't have allowed any cameras in the locker room if he was coach. "As a coach, I would have hated it. There's no way that I would have allowed it in the locker room - as a coach. As a broadcaster, I say, 'Well, it's pretty good. We ought to do it.'" Madden said there's no place for cameras in the locker room before games. "We get ready in there to go play. Then, when we go play, that's what you watch. You don't watch the getting-ready part." "Here's what I believe, and this is the way that I coached: The closer you get to the game, you narrow your circle. ... I always just kept tightening the circle to the point where when you were in the locker room just before [the game], all that's there is just players and coaches." Fox NFL Sunday analyst Howie Long echoed Madden's thoughts. "As a person who is now in broadcasting, it's great for broadcasting," Long said. "But as a player, I think it stinks. I don't think cameras belongs in the locker room. That's from a player's standpoint." "I think [the locker room's] a kind of a sanctuary, especially before a game. I'm not necessarily averse to it in a postgame setting or maybe in a coach's speech prior to the game. But to have the access that we're talking about having, I just think that's a sanctuary for the players before a game." Fox Sports Net's Marv Levy said he might have allowed cameras in the locker room when he coached, but only in the proper situations. "I think upon rare occasions, yes. But I think if you're doing it all the time, you're hogging the camera, and you're sending the wrong message to your players," he said. "I think the time to address that is during your team meetings during training camp one evening. 'We're going to do this, fellas. Here's the reasons why'" "Even with NFL Films, when they wanted to mike me, I would pick my games," he said. "I would do it, but certainly I wouldn't want to be the guy on every week." Madden said he wouldn't allow NFL Films to touch him. "When I was a coach, I never let them put a wire on me [for NFL Films]. I've never seen a coach ever look smart doing that. [Imitating coaches] 'We got to get our running game going' ... or 'We have to tighten up our defense.' Well, hell yes, you do." Madden, though, admitted that he wasn't easy to handle as a coach. "I was no day at the beach." "I think there are certain coaches that are very cooperative, and I think they'll do it until or if they get burned. I think the first time that anyone gets burned in any way doing it, [then] that'll be the last time they do it." Fox coordinating producer Scott Ackerson says the networks have to be careful about burning coaches and players. "I think the danger that you can do is using it just because you have it," he said. "I think you're going to have pick specific storylines for the cameras in the locker room, as oppose to just 'OK, here's a guy getting ready.'" "I think what's going to be incumbent upon us is to not make it an intrusion." Ackerson said a good example from this upcoming weekend would be showing Dallas' Deion Sanders getting dressed, as he gets ready to play his first football game after a toe injury. "Hopefully, we'll get to take viewers inside areas that they haven't seen before." But Ackerson isn't sure if the camera won't lie. "How well this works remains to be seen. When players see that camera, you're not going to see that normal locker room comraderie you normally see. " Fox NFL Sunday host Terry Bradshaw agrees. "I don't think that you'll capture really the feeling of what it's like in a locker room, simply because when players and coaches realize the camera is on, they are not themselves. You'll see them, but you are not going to capture 100 percent the mode of what the players are feeling, thinking in the locker room." Jed Drake, ESPN's vice president of remote production, thinks the easing is just a small, small step. "This is the NFL, and everything is being done on a proper level, so in other words I don't think this will be like floodgates opening. It's going to be one increment down the track towards what may become larger access. "It's a step in the right direction. What it points to, to me, is that the NFL realizes how important it is to keep ratings up. By giving us this level access, they're acknowledging that it's important for viewers to see things that they haven't seen before. "But I don't think it's going to fundamentally change the coverage of our telecasts." |
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