Interviewing Coaches 101
Steve Robinson
Tuesday May 27, 2003
He wouldn’t have any of it. In fact, you got a taste – albeit the very end of the spoon – for what it might be like to be in his doghouse if you lost.
QUESTION: How much of a toll did injuries to the team play in this game? Cowdrey explained that injuries are a part of the game and that injuries are not an excuse unless you are looking to get out of the business.
Next came a question regarding special teams having fielding problems. “We really wanted to drop the football a lot in the end zone on kickoffs,” Cowdrey said with a straight face.
And yes, even I am prone, I guess, to asking a question Cowdrey thinks deserves sarcasm. I asked him if his quarterback, Charlie Peterson, was not getting the proper protection from the front line. Cowdrey’s comeback: “When (Charlie) is on his back, it is usually because they are rushing and we are not protecting.”
A last question for a coach who had just taken a loss – a question about Peoria’s plans now that they are 3-5 prompted an already annoyed Cowdrey to ask us to “Ask decent questions, people!”
Yes, even those of us who do this and get paid for it have to listen to unhappy coaches.
The moral to the story: Don’t worry about your questions. If you did not think your readers would want to know, you would not ask, right? Don’t let a coach’s bad night keep you from asking “that” question that bounces in your brain while you are facing him. His response can only make good copy.
Four Sundays In New York: Dick Adams said he does not regret the time he spent as an assistant coach, overseeing linebackers and fullbacks, for the New York Dragons of the Arena Football League. Almost as soon as the Peoria Pirates were crowned arenafootball2 champs last August, Adams, an assistant under head coach Bruce Cowdrey, got a call from John Gregory, then head coach of the New York Dragons. Gregory asked Adams if he would like to work for the Dragons.
“I had a great time when I was in Peoria and with the Pirates, being with (head coach) Bruce Cowdrey and (assistant coach) Tony Johnson,” said Adams, a 20-year coaching veteran. “Going to New York was an interesting experience.”
Unfortunately for Adams and the rest of Gregory’s Dragons coaching staff, it was an all-too-short experience, lasting four weeks, ending in being fired when the Dragons went winless in the first four weeks of the AFL season. Charles B. Wang, owner of the Dragons, was Chairman of the Board at Computer Associates International, Inc., axed Gregory and his staff after a one-point loss to Las Vegas in AFL’s Week 4.
Adams said the losses New York experienced reminded him of some of the close calls he was part of while on the Pirates’ staff. “We were never out of the game,” Adams remembers. “A lot of them would come down to the last play of the game.
Adams said he never really sensed an end was near while the Dragons struggled to find win number one. The fourth loss, a 46-45 loss to Las Vegas, coached by former Quad City coach Frank Haege, was the last straw for Wang before deciding a change had to be made.
“The next day (after the Las Vegas loss), Wang and his people came in and they made a change,” Adams said. “As a staff though, before the firing, I don’t think any of us, as a staff, had lost any confidence that we couldn’t line up a win.” To be fair about what might have led to the firings, Adams said, the Dragons had had some personnel problems during the 2002 season and “Wang didn’t want to go down that street again this year.”
Adams said he wonders if AFL’s TV contract with NBC, which began at the start of the 2003 season, compounded Wang’s urgency to produce a winner. After all, with New York being America’s leading television ratings market, having a losing football team was not what was envisioned. “0-4 was not producing and (Wang) probably had a feeling that we would not turn things around,” Adams said.
Adams is now semi-retired from coaching, although, he admits, he has fielded calls from teams in the AFL, af2, the National Indoor Football League, and the Canadian Football League, to take the helm for various teams. Adams had coached before at one time for about 15 years in the CFL. Since returning to his Pensacola, Fla. home after exiting New York, he said he has not watched any AFL games, although he said he is not surprised by the Dragons advancing to the playoffs, doing so by beating Chicago and their quarterback, former Bloomington High and Purdue standout, Billy Dicken, 48-45. He said he talks to Cowdrey twice a week, monitoring the progress of the Pirates.
“Everybody’s Shooting At You”: Adams said losing major players like quarterback Walter Church, Peoria’s lead passer last season now a Dragons backup quarterback, and having “everybody shooting at you because you are the champions” doesn’t have Adams surprised at the Pirates’ current struggles.
“When you win a title and you lose some major players, it doesn’t surprise me that (Peoria) is struggling a little bit,” Adams said. “(Cowdrey) essentially has a brand new team in there. Can they win it? Yeah, I think they can win it.”
Peoria is working through a league-imposed bye week, bracing for a road rematch against the Tulsa Talons Saturday.
OPE Financial Losses Reported: Orlando Predators Entertainment, who owns the Pirates, reported a loss from continuing operations of $1,136,208, or 13 cents per share for the six months ended March 31, 2003 compared to a loss from continuing operations of $979,529, or 14 cents per share for the same six month-period ending March 31, 2002, according to a report published by Businesswire.com.
The cause for OPE’s increase in loss stems from its continuing operations in the Louisiana IceGators of the ECHL. OPE purchased the Louisiana IceGators in October 2002. Despite the grim financial report, OPE, operated by Dr. Eric Margenau, was awarded a new franchise in the United Hockey League to begin play in the 2003-04 season by that league’s Board of Governors. The new UHL franchise will play in Richmond, Virginia.
Steve Robinson, a freelance writer since 1984, has written about the Peoria Pirates since the Pirates were members of Indoor Football League, beginning in 1999. He covers the Pirates currently for the Bloomington IL Pantagraph.
