Arizona has joined scores of college football organizations such as Notre Dame, Texas and Oregon in intensifying restrictions for the media at pre-practice warmup sessions. It seems so trivial.
Almost no Power 5 Conference school allows access to football workouts.
Those days ended more than a decade ago.
I laugh when I hear reporters cry that this is the end of civilization, and at coaches who insist they can’t trust anyone with a notebook or a tape recorder.
I must’ve gone (wasted time?) to more than 500 college football practices over the years, and at no time did anyone betray a coach’s strategy or leak vital information to suspected spies.
I once went to a Utah State practice during my college days and parked adjacent to the Aggies’ workout. The new head coach, Bruce Snyder, blew his whistle, stopped practice, and sprinted to my car.
“You can’t park there!” he cried. “You can’t watch practice!”
I told him I was a reporter for the student newspaper.
He introduced himself and said, “Let’s get together for lunch.” Now they would call the police.
When Arizona held open-to-everyone practices on campus and at Camp Cochise in the 1990s, a thunderstorm canceled an afternoon practice at the Cochise facility. Dick Tomey moved the team into the basketball gym for a walk-through, and then arranged to have the newspaper guys play a full-court basketball game against the UA coaching staff.
The football team circled the court and cheered — and booed — loudly for an hour.
The only dustup was when UA line coach Jim Young — yes, the former UA, Army and Purdue head coach — elbowed me in the nose while pursing a rebound.
Those were no-harm, no-foul days.
Later that night, most of the coaches and writers met at Brewery Gulch in Bisbee to tell stories to one another.
Over all those years, the only damage was to a good night’s sleep.
