The Buffalo Bills Don’t Want Reporters To Report On Buffalo Bills Practices

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With each passing year, more sports teams are doing whatever they can to control information. Some teams have decided that leaking contract information to a local beat person or national writer isn’t worth it and just put dollar figures in a press release themselves. Some teams have hired their own beat reporter, which is a situation rife for conflict. A lot of teams go a different route and want to control what can be reported from team practices. As of Tuesday, the Buffalo Bills are one of those teams.

ESPN’s Mike Rodak tweeted the Bills’ new media reporting practice policy:

As someone who has covered hundreds of hockey practices, some of this is ludicrous. Then again, some of it is understandable. It’s 2016, and there are all sorts of technologies that allow anyone with a phone to record anything. The Patriots built a dynasty on illegally filming practices, so it’s not unreasonable to think that a guy from the Hot Wings Times or whatever could Periscope or Snapchat something to the world the team would prefer to keep private for a tactical advantage.

In hockey, we see things like line combinations and defense pairings. Sometimes a team will change personnel on a power-play unit. There’s not all that much to hide when it comes to system stuff because everyone knows everyone’s business in that regard. You can’t really install a trick play in hockey, and especially not one day before playing the Maple Leafs.

Let’s look at the rules the Bills are installing. Are they really that bad?

Reports (which also include radio reports, tweets, podcasts and blogs) pertaining to strategic and tactical information are strictly prohibited. This includes:

Referencing plays run and game strategy, including trick plays or unusual formations.

Reporting on personnel groupings, sub-packages, players who are practicing with individual units, special plays, who is rushing the passer, dropped passes, interceptions, QB completion percentage, etc.

This seems … fine to me? For the most part, yeah, why would you want someone tweeting to the world you are working on a double-reverse, flea-flicker out of a three-wide package and give your opponent three days to prepare for it? You don’t want a guy from the Bills Mafia Dot Com posting a video of a cross-field lateral on a kickoff return you plan to use on Sunday, do you?

Honestly, why would you let the media watch that sort of stuff in the first place?

But your skin comes across as thin if reporters writing about a receiver with butterfingers on Tuesday bothers you. If Rex Ryan is genuinely upset that a local reporter is tweeting the completion percentage of Tyrod Taylor in practice, that reporter should tweet that every day until he or she is escorted from the Bills’ practice facility by security.

But everything else? What’s unfair about it?

Only Bills personnel are permitted on the grass.

Well, yeah. Stay off the grass, media.

Members of the media are encouraged to speak to the players during media availability sessions but are not permitted to speak to players, coaches or staff members during practice.

Again, seems a reasonable request. Is this some sort of localized problem? Are media members wandering onto the grass and chatting up coordinators during drills? That rule seems like it was written because it had to be written.

The last three items are wordy and you don’t need me to quote them here. But yeah, you shouldn’t be taking video of plays. Lots of teams don’t like when you are taking pictures of things at practice. I once tried to take a picture in the Ottawa Senators locker room. Their PR guy said, “We don’t allow that.” I said, “Okay.” And that was that. As for recording private conversations, if there are Bills media members pretending they are cops running a sting operation and chatting with coaches using a microphone taped to their chest, yeah, don’t do that.

Everyone is going to focus on the interceptions and dropped passes part of that policy because it’s idiotic, but the rest of it is about controlling information, and this has been coming for years in sports media. Most of what the Bills are restricting in that policy is about losing a competitive advantage. While it seems silly, you can understand it.

And the team probably knows for all the bellyaching that will be done over this, you’re going to capitulate. Want to turn in your credential? Somehow the Bills will find a way to continue to be part of a billion-dollar league that prints money. Reporters will kick and scream for a couple days and then this will go away.

In the words of Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, if you’re a sports reporter, adapt or die.

(Twitter)

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