Access limited: Y., U. and the media

Do athlete interviews sound like the same old stuff? Are you still hearing or reading things on Friday that you also heard elsewhere on Tuesday or Monday?

Welcome to the world of media management, 2011.

It’s all about the controlling the product.

Gradually as the years have passed, media access to athletes has been reduced. I remember in the early 1980s interviewing a Utah State football player on the morning of a game. Want to know the latest in the week a news outlet can interview most football players nowadays? Wednesday. This week Utah players will be available through Wednesday’s practice; BYU’s just through Tuesday.

For a Saturday game!

Meanwhile, if a media outlet attempts to contact an athlete on its own, it does so under threat of having its credentials revoked.

Media management has become standard practice. Michael Jordan was recently fined $100,000 by the NBA for telling an Australian newspaper that the business model in the NBA was broken. Team front office employees are banned from talking about the lockout during the work stoppage. But there’s more: They can’t even speak the names of the players on their teams. Or at least it feels that way to them.

I recently called an NBA team on an uncontroversial matter and the spokesman didn’t even say the name of the player about which I inquired. I wasn’t inquiring about the labor stoppage, or even asking to talk to the player. Yet the guy reacted like I was proposing a drug deal. I didn’t really blame him, he was just doing what he’d been told.

So if you’re wondering why it seems to be the same old stuff on athletes, there’s a reason: The chance of getting original, spontaneous, fresh stuff is being squeezed out in favor of a controlled environment with limited access.

It kind of reminds me of buying a car. Odds are that most of the vehicles you see on the lot are going to be white or silver, not candy apple red. One size fits all.