From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: Women Sports Reporters
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 12:51:30 GMT

In article <1993Jan4.212127.27791@adobe.com> snichols@adobe.com (Sherri Nichols) writes:

)>The whole point was that Wyche did *not* change the equal access rules.
)>He decided to change the access rules for *everybody*.  And he still got
)>shot down.  (Which is also what I was saying.)
)
)The statement from Aaron you've quoted above does not say that the access
)rules were changed for everybody, but that they were changed for women
)reporters.  I believe it is the case in the NFL that a team can choose to,
)for instance, have an interview room and ban *all* reporters from the
)locker room; I think the Cowboys have done this for a number of years.
)What a team can not do is to deny one group of reporters access that is
)permitted to another group of reporters.  


aaron:
)>Wyche did not try to unilaterally ban women reporters from the locker
)>room, but attempted to secure the privacy of his players while they
)>were bathing and void of clothing.

That looks pretty clear to me.  I can't prove that aaron is *right*, but that
was also my impression of the state of affairs.

)>)Perhaps if Wyche had dealt with the real problem of the players and their
)>)attitudes toward women, instead of tacitly supporting those attitudes, his
)>)"fathering" would have been more effective.
)>
)>That sounds rather unrealistic to me.  A head coach is not in a position
)>to do a lot of psychological work on his players.  It's  not clear that the
)>players had 'real problems with their attitude' towards women, either,
)>(unless one believes 'group sex' is inherently bad and evil, of course)  nor
)>is it clear that Wyche supported these allgedly 'bad' attitudes.
)
)Your claim was that Wyche was trying to protect these poor athletes from
)themselves because they might not be able to behave appropriately in a
)locker room if women were present.  My claim that this "protection" isn't
)very useful.  

I can see where you might have gotten that impression, and I think I may
understand your response a bit better now (I wasn't sure what your point was
initially).

I think there is an element of self-interest in Wyche's wish to avoid a
volatile situation.  It would not necessarily be good to confuse Wyche's
interests with what is best for the players.  However, in my view, there
would appear to be a strong possibility of a commonality of interests here,
wherein Wyche protects his players from things the don't like (obnoxious
reporters) and they in return refrain from behavior that embarasses the team
publically.  The players might well find or feel that it is in their best
interests to behave in a fashion the media would call 'inappropriate' to
protect their interests if they do not get any support from their managment. 

Of course, there's lots of other possibilities here - it's really hard to
say exactly what happened.  I was encouraged to read Aaron's report that
both the law and propiety was served by creating an 'interview area'
in the locker room, satisfying the agreements to have 'interviews in the
locker room' while still giving the players some privacy.
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball