Troy University Athletics
Trojans Hold First Scrimmage, Take Part In Media Day
8/9/2008 5:00:00 AM | Football
Saturday afternoon
August 9
Media Day is, Thankfully, Over
So, you want to be a college Athletics Media Relations Director?
Well, let me tell you about my day today.
The Troy Trojans had their first of two major scrimmages during fall camp, and we in the Athletics Media Relations office take advantage of the event to double-up and hold our annual media day.
I like having media day a little later than many schools because, quite frankly, it gives our coaches and players a chance to get a better feel for the team before talking to members of the media about the season.
Preseason media days are a necessary evil because holding them before the start of camp is the only way to get all the coaches from a conference together in one place. But, having our own media day a little later gives us a chance to produce better stories.
It also virtually guarantees that we get a good turnout for our media day. Saturday's crowd included writers, TV crews as well as all three members of the Troy/ISP Radio crew. In all, there were more than 30 media members on hand.
Our media day is also unique in that I have every member of the coaching staff take a turn at the podium to talk about the players they coach. Doing this is good for two reasons: 1) the position coaches are the ones who work with the players day-to-day, spend time studying film and are responsible for putting the best players on the field and, 2) if any of our assistant coaches have any plans to be a head coach somewhere down the line, they need to be comfortable speaking in front of a crowd of writers and TV cameras.
Having each coach talk makes for a long day, but the payoff, in my mind, is worth it.
Following the scrimmage (more on that later), we had lunch
catered by Country's Bar-B-Q in
After lunch, our Athletic Director Steve Dennis opened festivities with a few welcoming comments before each assistant coach took his turn at the podium. Coach Larry Blakeney closed out the “news conference” portion of the day by giving his overview of the team and fielding a few questions.
One thing that was made clear by Coach Blakeney, who is
entering his 18th season at
“I don't care if we play them first, fifth or last,” Blakeney said. “We could play them January first or July fourth, and it would be the same. I want to beat them whenever and where ever we play them.”
Following Coach Blakeney's time at the podium, we broke up to allow all of the reporters to have some time, one-on-one, with the coaches and players. My staff ? Travis Jarome, Jason Wright and Taylor Bryan ? did a great job of getting the players around to each media member who wanted to talk to them.
I can tell you that it appears our players paid attention during our media training session a couple of weeks ago. They all dressed well to face the media, even though they had just competed in a tough scrimmage, and they all did a great job in their various interviews.
I tried to make my way around the room to see how everyone was doing, and was proud to see the guys speaking with confidence, even when faced with television cameras.
Of course there were three guys everyone wanted to talk to, so they got to spend more time talking than the others. Junior linebacker Boris Lee and sophomores Jamie Hampton (QB) and Jerrel Jernigan (WR) made their way around the room, taking a turn with each writer and camera crew. All three kept a great attitude and handled each interview with class, even though they were at it for more than an hour each.
Barry McKnight and the
By the time Barry finished with all of his interviews, it was after 4 p.m. and everyone was feeling the effects of a long day. After my crew got everything packed up and moved back the press box, there were still four writers working on their stories for tomorrow.
The Scrimmage
To be honest, I did not get to watch much of the scrimmage. I probably saw the first 20 minutes, but after that I was busy making sure everything for the press conference, including the live web stream, as well as everything with the caterer was taken care of.
We also had some issues with the new internet protocol in
place at
Matt Mercer, from the Troy IT office, was patient with me while I tried to help our writers get on the network. He came over and joined us for lunch and spoke with Drew Champlin from the Dothan Eagle to help make sure he was able to get internet access.
Matt has always gone above and beyond to help my office with its network needs and it is much appreciated.
Fortunately, my crew spent the scrimmage up in the press box, keeping stats, so I can relay a little bit of the day's on-field results.
The scrimmage included 12 total drives, four that resulted in touchdowns. The Trojan defense forced one missed field goal, four punts and three turnovers (one each on downs, an interception and a fumble).
Junior Levi Brown continues to improve his status as the No. 2 quarterback, completing 12-of-16 passes for 97 yards. Freshman Dan Parker completed 8-of-17 attempts for 60 yards and was intercepted once, by junior Courtland Fuller, and sophomore Tanner Jones hit on 5-of-10 passes for 29 yards.
The other three touchdowns came on runs, two by junior Maurice Greer, who was the leading rusher on the day with 11 carries for 42 yards. Freshman Chris Anderson scored the other rushing touchdown.
A total of 18 different players had receptions in the scrimmage, and that did not include Jernigan, who, like Boris Lee on defense, took the day off. Senior Kennard Burton led the pack with five catches, for 37 yards, and junior college transfer TeBiarus Gill was tops in yardage, making three catches for 46 yards.
Defensively, another junior college transfer, Jorrick Calvin, and a true freshman, Jacoby Thomas, were the leading tacklers with six each. Redshirt freshman linebacker Xavier Lamb added five tackles and senior Terence Moore, despite missing time during the week with a muscle strain, had four tackles and a fumble recovery he returned 40 yards for a touchdown.
Final Thoughts: Overall, it was a good day all the way around. My assistant, and web guru, Travis Jarome, initiated the first web chat on TroyTrojans.com and had more than 200 people get involved, even though we did not announce that he would be online live during the scrimmage.
We also web streamed the news conference for the first time,
free of charge. I don't have numbers yet for how many people watched, but I am
sure there were quite a few. I wanted to run the stream for free because I
wanted to make sure everything worked properly. We will stream all of our
weekly news conferences during the season as a part of our
We also hope to be able to stream post-game news conferences
following home games this season, in addition to all of the various home games.
Any of our games that are streamed by other JumpTV partners should also be
available through the
Taylor Bryan, a senior journalism student who works in our office, has turned into our web stream expert. You'll hear him often during the year ? especially at soccer, volleyball and softball games ? providing audio commentary during the web stream of those events.
Our video coordinator, Mike Frigge, will also have a big hand in assisting us with getting the various web stream events up live. He will also be a big help in getting the events uploaded after the fact to be archived and watched again and again at any time.
I want to thank everyone ? players, coaches, staff and members of the media ? who made Saturday a success. It was a long day, but it was a great day to be a Trojan.
