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Willingham and the local media What happened to the ring? By Richard Linde, 14 December 2004 Soft spoken and laconic, Tyrone Willingham has the presence of mind to turn a question back on an interviewer in a humorous manner -- a bottom-line guy who can answer a tough question in the clearest of terms. Reporter: “I know this is kind of an unfair question, but...” Willingham: “Is that the first unfair question you’ve ever asked?” (Notre Dame news conference) Another reporter: “Given the tremendous stress you’ve been under…” Willingham: “Does it show?” If you want an honest answer, he’ll give it to you; if you need an elaboration to fill some space, forget it; if you need a long story told, you'll be left with disappointment and a cassock. "He’s not a man of many words,” Lorenzo Romar, the UW basketball coach says, “but he’s got a persona that jumps out at you. You say to yourself, ‘I’ll listen to him.’ He raises your eyebrows.” In Seattle, he’ll be facing what has been called the most hostile local media in all of college football. Don James said his problems started with the Seattle Times. Rick Neuheisel has said he doesn’t know the man the local media have portrayed him to be. Notable members of the Seattle media loathe big-time college football, a fact that brings to light the slightest peccadillo scratching the surface of the UW program. Because of his honesty and integrity, Ty Willingham should, in effect, handle that rapacious gang with ease, like Maximus facing a fierce pride of lions. Also, his appearances at the media’s version of the Roman Coliseum will be less frequent than were his predecessors’. Because he's guarded with the media don't expect a repeat of the media fiasco of February 2002 when Rick Neuheisel ripped the recruiting tactics of UCLA and Oregon, drawing a reprimand from the Pac-10. Neuheisel said he hadn't any sleep and was exhausted when he spoke with the media, having finished an intense recruiting campaign. In the last seventeen months, the local media, in the face of a skein of UW coaches, have now conducted interviews with a lawyer, a blue-collar man, and a soft-spoken minister, going from Rick Neuheisel, to Keith Gilbertson, to Lionel Willingham, respectively. Trapped in Daedalus’s labyrinth, the media’s most vocal Husky hater, Jim Moore, will quickly exhaust his dictionary of pejoratives that he once created at a dimly lit Wazzu library using a Model 33 ASR teletype connected to a DEC PDP-1 computer that was intermittently powered by excess heat emanating from an early cold fusion experiment set up by Stanley Pons. It is said that Moore locks his treasure trove of Husky-hating metaphors in his antique desk, guarding them jealously from the prying eyes of Art Thiel, the simile thief. Thiel and Moore write for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. At every opportunity, both of them take cheap shots at the UW program; however, they have been put out to pasture with the arrival of Willingham. In the main, he’ll run a spotless program that will be hard for them to target. Tyrone Willingham is not about to take any guff from the media. That’s his style, being brief, taciturn, and to the point. Those attending his press conferences won't have to worry about the big hand and little hand, for there will be no need to check their watches. When he first arrived at Notre Dame he announced that neither he nor his players would be available to the media on Sunday and Monday afternoons, normally days in the past that had been available to them. Furthermore, players would not be available to the media for calls in the dorms. “Some things are better off kept in the football family,” he said, with respect to his players and their privacy. One reporter from South Bend called him a “control freak” after he’d reduced his press conferences from one hour to a half hour. “Now what that says to me is that person is a control freak, and they’re mad because they want control of what goes on in here and they can’t have it,” he responded. The look? Oh, yes Coach Willingham, give ‘em the look after a trick question. In Fred Mitchell’s book, “The Meaning of Victory,” Willingham, a former coach at Stanford, is seen posing with Tiger Woods, a Stanford alumnus, and Dr. Condaleesa Rice, a former Stanford provost. Interestingly, at the UW news conference announcing his hire, Willingham was not wearing his Stanford Rose Bowl Ring, a ring he always wears, at least in the photos I’ve seen of him. He says he always wears that ring, one that was given to him after Stanford’s appearance in the 2000 Rose Bowl. "It is time for the University of Washington to return to being the Dawgs. ... That is a vicious animal," he said at yesterday's news conference. Tyrone Willingham is now a Dawg and my guess is that in a few years he'll have earned another Rose Bowl ring, one with the block letter "W" on its face. He is punctual, hard working, diligent, disciplined and has been called the weather man because of his interest in game-day weather forecasts. His golf swing is deliberate, focused and tortured. Those UW fans unhappy with Willingham’s appointment will eventually realize that although his hire might not have had the pizzazz of a gamma ray burst, Willingham was born to lead and is the Ty that binds -- as the media will also discover. Richard Linde (a.k.a., Malamute) can be reached at malamute@4malamute.com |
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