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The Miller media fiasco and what we learned from it

By Paul Zeise / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 7 years ago


Sean Miller (Ralph Freso/Getty Images)

Probably the worst feeling in the world when you are a beat reporter is when you are surfing on Twitter or listening to the radio or watching TV or surfing through some other new websites — and a huge breaking news story on your beat breaks and it was someone else who broke it.

That is bad enough, but generally if you are working on a story and are close to breaking it yourself, you can live with it because “well I was right there, at least I wasn’t caught in the dark, at least I can call my boss and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t get it but I knew about it and I have it.’”

A great example was Monday. Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports broke the actual news that Jamie Dixon had accepted the TCU job, but when the news broke, I was dialing the phone to tell my boss telling him I was going to file a short story that read “Dixon is leaning heavily towards accepting the job and barring a last-second change of heart, he’s expected to take it.”

In that case, I didn’t get the news first, but I wasn’t lost in it and so far behind that it caught me off guard. I was right on it, had followed it all day, and so, I could live with the fact that someone else beat me to the punch and got it out on the internet because he only beat me by a few minutes.

That’s not ideal (obviously you want to be first), but it happens, and these days there are so many outlets and so many leaks, it is getting more and more difficult to try to gather information and be the first to break the news.

And there is a competitive nature to all of this too – everybody wants to be first, to have the story, to be the guy who is seen as the authority on a story because you broke it.

So with that as the backdrop, I can honestly say that Tuesday — for about 15 minutes, maybe a little less — was the worst day of my professional career because I was 100 percent in the dark about one of the biggest breaking news stories involving Pitt athletics since I’ve been around and started covering the Panthers in 2001:

KDKA-TV is reporting Sean Miller is in Pittsburgh and he has been offered the job and there is a 50 percent chance he will take it….”

My heart sank when it popped up on Twitter and I thought: “Good lord, this is the worst feeling ever. How could a guy with that many local ties come into town to interview and be offered the job and I didn’t know a thing about it….”

And this wasn’t some blog or some Internet site that has questionable sourcing or whatever — this was KDKA, which is a reputable news outlet with an impeccable reputation for doing things the right way.

And, again, if it is one of these other candidates from some mid-major or some other guy who has no ties to Pitt or Pittsburgh, again, it is tough, but the reality is I don’t have sources around (just throwing a name out) Stephen F. Austin so if Brad Underwood (I’ll use him because he already took another job so there won’t be any rumor that I am putting names out there) came through here and met with Pitt at the airport (or Nemacolin, where this Miller meeting allegedly took place), I might not get it first and I wouldn’t be happy, but I could live with it. I’d just have to do my best to catch up to the story, that’s all.

But Sean Miller, well, given how many people I have around me that run in those circles and from the basketball community, if he came in and interviewed and I had no clue it happened, well that would be a complete failure on my part....

So, because many of my followers on Twitter are Pitt fans, I retweeted the tweet with a link to the story, made a few comments about what an unbelievable development it is and then started to try and confirm it for myself.

My first phone call was going to be to my boss to say, “Um, I just got my ass whooped and I don’t have a good answer as to why…..”

But I figured I could soften the blow if I had some real information so I decided to try and confirm all this or some of it….

After about three phone calls this much became evident: I was completely in the dark about it all because the story wasn’t true, it didn’t happen and wasn’t ever going to happen.

You know the last time I had that absolute sinking feeling like “holy crap, I just got beat on THAT story” was when a different TV station reported “Tom Bradley to Pitt is a DONE DEAL”. Turns out there was a reason I was so far in the dark on that one, too…

Back to Tuesday — Best I can tell (again, everyone is lying to you — remember that motto as we go through this coaching search mess again) — Miller was never in Pittsburgh, he didn’t “interview for the job” and he never even considered the job and actually made it clear on multiple occasions he had no interest in the job.

Miller was in his office in Tucson and was seen at various points in Tucson by a number of different people at various stages of the day, and a reporter even took a picture of him walking outside his office and tweeted it.

And Scott Barnes couldn’t have interviewed him (again, this just goes to show the insanity that follows this stuff) either at the “Airport Marriott at 7:30” like one “source” said to KDKA nor at “Nemacolin” — where another ”source” said it took place — for a meeting that lasted all morning.

Do you know why?

Because he was at Pitt. More than one person confirmed this for me: by 8 a.m., Barnes did a radio interview with 93.7 The Fan morning show and shortly after 8:30 had a meeting, then conducted a couple of interviews for some administrative spots in the athletic department and apparently filled one of them.

So let’s do the math. For Miller to be in Pittsburgh for, let’s go with the 7:30 airport meeting, 7 a.m. — let’s do a 3-hour flight (which is probably aggressive) — he would have had to leave Arizona at 1 a.m. his time (because they are 3 hours behind).

He would have arrived at 7 and been in this meeting at 7:30 ... and Barnes was back in Oakland by about 8 a.m., give or take a couple of minutes.

So essentially, Barnes and Miller would have met for less than 5 minutes and Barnes would have done the near impossible — get from the airport to Oakland in about 25-30 minutes through morning rush hour traffic.

And to get to Nemacolin is even more ridiculous because it is, what, an hour, maybe 90 minutes from the airport?

Now, the only part of the timeline that could have worked is Miller sneaking back into Tucson before most people woke up — I mean, if he got on a plane at say 8:30 a.m. Eastern (again it is 3 hours ahead of Tucson and we are assuming a 3-hour flight) he could have gotten back to Tucson by 8:30 and been in his office by about 9:15 without anyone suspecting anything.

But here is the problem with that: why would he fly all the way across the country for a 5-minute meeting with Barnes for a job he had no interest in and wasn’t going to take?

None of it adds up or makes a lot of sense if you sit down and do the math and logically walk your way through it.

So, not only did I have at least four different people I trust and know tell me “this did not happen, it is fiction,” I sat down and tried to think “well, maybe it did and they are lying to me to cover for Miller.” But I couldn’t, because it just didn’t add up.

As an aside, that has happened, you know, in the past — a football head coach candidate once told me flat out he wasn’t in Indianapolis interviewing with Jeff Long and told me that he never left the campus he worked at that day and said, “Hundreds of kids and high school coaches saw me at the coaches clinic we had, I can put you in touch with them.”

That was interesting to me, considering two other coaches on the guy’s staff, well, they told me there wasn’t a coaches clinic, the dude wasn’t in the office and he told the one he was going to Indianapolis to look into a job. ... Oops.

The best part was that I called Long to see if he would answer the phone and give me the truth on it, and he actually answered and said, “How the hell do you find these things out?” And then gave me the “I cannot confirm or deny anything and won’t respond to speculation” nonsense.

Anyway, I don’t want to get side-tracked, but that’s just another one of those silly stories about how all these people — coaches, administrators, sources, people who think they are sources, agents, PR people — lie during coaching searches.

Once I established and confirmed that this Sean Miller story was false, I had to then try to clean up a bit of a mess and began to tweet that I had confirmed Miller wasn’t in Pittsburgh, hadn’t been offered the job and even confirmed that his brother, Archie, wasn’t interested either.

But then people started attacking my friend, Rich Walsh of KDKA, for breaking this story, and people accused him of lying and making things up and everything else. I don’t like that because he is a good dude, and he has some very good sources (he was the one who broke the Pat Narduzzi-to-Pitt story). So I asked myself, “How could this have happened?” And better yet, “How can I explain to people how something like this can happen?”

In this case, my guess is good sources gave him bad or incomplete info.

I did the best I could do on my radio show last night to explain how things like this can happen, but let me expand on these thoughts a little.

We have had, in the past 15 years, the following headlines. All of them were for different reasons and all taught reporters of all ilk many good lessons. But after going through 9,789,786 coaching searches in my 15 years covering Pitt, I completely understand how they could happen:

(Names of reporters/outlets withheld to protect the innocent)

• Tom Bradley: Done Deal at Pitt!!

In this case, a guy who should have been a very good and reliable source told a bit of a fib. And the reporter in question got burned because he didn’t double back with other sources to see if their stories matched. If he had done that, he would have found out that no other source was telling the story that Bradley was hired. That may have made him soften his words a bit. People actually were killing me yesterday because I was so cautious in the way I reported Dixon leaving and used a lot of qualifying words like ”likely,” ”perhaps” and ”expected to,” but that’s because you can’t put yourself out there until you are sure it is indeed a done deal.

Lesson learned: If only one source, no matter how good, is telling you something and it doesn’t match what any other source is telling you, it might not be true and you should be careful to use words like “done deal.”

• Rich Rodriguez: Next head coach at Alabama

In this case, the reporter wrote a true story but made one fundamental mistake. They forgot that it isn’t over until the news conference happens. And by the time the next morning rolled around, Rodriguez had a change of heart and boosters were able to convince him to stay.

Lesson learned: If ”an agreement is reached” but hasn’t been signed and the coach hasn’t gotten on a plane, then be very careful saying he will be the next guy at the new stop because he can always change his mind, have a change of heart or circumstances (like an AD coming to his senses and offering to give in to the coach’s demands to keep him) can change. It isn’t a done deal until he the contract is signed and he isn’t going to be the next guy at least until he is on his way to the next stop and even then use a softer phrase like ”expected to be...”

• Russ Grimm: Next Steelers coach

Not sure what happened here, I’ve heard various stories as to why it happened so I won’t speculate. One thing I will say: In many cases a story like this happens because a guy relies too heavily on what an agent or a family member says and gets burned. Again, not saying that happened here because I don’t know, but the lesson in that case is this: You can’t report something as done unless someone from the other side confirms it.

• Dave Wannstedt: Pulls name out of consideration for Pitt job

This one was actually true, 100 percent true. Wannstedt wasn’t happy with money for his assistants and some other issues and told Jeff Long, um, no, I am no longer interested. So, Long moved on. But after a few days of a semi-meandering search, chancellor Mark Nordenberg stepped in and made a call to Wannstedt and asked him to reconsider and told him he would sweeten the pot on some things. About five days after withdrawing from the job, Wannstedt was being introduced as the new coach.

Lesson learned: Circumstances change, so just because a guy is out of the search on Thursday doesn’t mean he can’t be hired on Saturday. It doesn’t mean people were lying or making up stories on Thursday, it may just mean things changed between Thursday and Saturday.

We have had countless examples of “Joe Blow is a candidate for Job X” followed by “Joe Blow said he never spoke to Job X” — and those things are far too many to count and try and figure out.

But in general, and before this Pitt coaching search really gets going, here is my best shot at trying to explain why this nonsense happens all the time and also why there are so many conflicting reports.

Again, go back to that story about the football candidate in Indy. The guy from the Rivals or Scout site that covered the coach’s team wrote a piece ridiculing “erroneous reports from Pittsburgh” because he talked to the candidate and the candidate said it all was speculation.

Problem for him is, it wasn’t speculation, it was true, and I had no doubt it was true. But he had the candidate on the record saying “I never spoke to them, I wasn’t even in Indianapolis.” That was enough to give fans on both sides, who didn’t want to believe it, ammunition to say: “That Zeise is making up stories again. Look, the candidate himself said he didn’t talk to them.”

But again, remember the motto: “Everyone is lying to you.”

So, without further adieu, here is my best shot at why do these things happen:

The four words that get stretched more than any words in the dictionary are “offer,“interest,” “contact” and “interview” during a coaching search.

None of those four words mean anything, but they could mean everything depending on how you look at them. All have enough wiggle room for anal-retentive administrators who want to deny a report, or coaches who don’t want anyone to know they are sniffing around for other jobs. They can say, “No, no, no, there wasn’t any [fill in the blank with one of the four words].” And they wouldn’t be totally lying about it (even though they are being less than truthful).

Let’s take them one at a time:

• Offer

No school wants to offer the job to anyone who isn’t going to take it. So, there never is an “offer” until a school is sure that a guy is going to take it.

Of course, we all know this is BS because there are many ways to offer the job.

One thing I did tweet about Barnes is that he made the call to Sean Miller. And from what I’m told, he did his due diligence within the past week or so to hear Miller tell him no. He knew there was no chance Miller was coming here. He told a number of people this within the past two weeks. But he obviously had to make the call because, well, you never know.

So let’s put our speculation hats on as to how a conversation like that might go:

“Sean, Scott, how are you?”

“Good, how are you?”

“Look, I just need to do my due diligence, you know that, but do you have any interest at all here…?”

“Nope.”

“OK, just had to make the call, you understand how it goes.”

“I appreciate you calling. I’ll help you any way I can. I know a few guys who are good coaches, but I’m good here.”

Now, obviously I didn’t bug the phone, but that is a very plausible description of how that conversation went. But here is my question: Is that a job offer?

Not technically, but an AD isn’t calling a high profile, big name coach to see if he wants to go through the interview process. He is calling on the chance that if the coach says “yes,” the next question is, “How much you need to make to seriously consider this?”

But this conversation leaves an out for the school. They can claim they didn’t offer him the job.

And that way, the next guy who comes through is “our first choice, the only guy we offered the job.”

This seems like semantics, but that’s exactly what all of this is.

I laugh when these schools issue these statements that this guy was “our first choice” when the guy they want finally gets hired because more often than not, it is nonsense.

I could give you at least three examples where I know for a fact a guy who was hired was not the “first choice,” but I won’t. I will again protect the innocent.

• Interest

This is a meaningless word too because interest is so vague of a term.

I mean, do I have interest in dating Halle Berry? Yeah, I guess, and I’m sure many of the males out there reading this do too.

But what does that actually mean? And how much interest do I really have, seeing as I’m married? And obviously she has no interest in dating me, or 99.99 percent of the rest of the male population for that matter.

It is the same in coaching searches. I can write Sean Miller has interest in the Pitt job and be accurate despite his statement that he has no interest in it. Why? Because I didn’t say how much interest or define what interest means.

It could mean a lot of interest, it could be that he follows the box scores and sometimes thinks about what it would be like to coach there.

So, of these four words, interest is the weakest and most meaningless, which is why it is used so much.

“Coach A has interest in Job B” could mean anything from “he called once to inquire about it” all the way to “he is begging for an interview.”

And when someone says “I had no interest,” there is enough wiggle room in that word for someone else to say “well, that’s not true!” and neither are truly lying.

• Contact

Ray Fittipaldo did an excellent story today on search firms and why they are used these days.

Now, let me say this: The No. 1 reason there is so much speculation, so much rumor and so many mistakes made these days is the rise of the “search firm” in coaching searches.

Before the search firms — and it wasn’t that long ago they weren’t used — it was very easy to connect the dots as to who was talking to whom, who was getting interviewed, who actually was a candidate.

But now, schools use them because they are, as Ray wrote, basically like a firewall between AD and candidate.

That’s why there is so little information leaking out in many searches and why coaches getting hired without anyone even knowing they are involved in a job is happening so often these days. Believe me, it used to be a heck of a lot easier to track these things. The past five or six years, the leaks and the information flow really have dried up.

The information is out there, but it is a lot more work to try to find it. And often, it isn’t complete or it is a few days late.

Search firms do all the leg work, make all the contacts, set up the interviews, etc. So, for instance: Barnes calls a search firm and tells them what he is looking for. The search firm finds a candidate and reaches out. If the candidate says “no thanks,” well, then there never was any contact between the school and the candidate.

That’s why contact — and all of the ways contact is denied — is another word that is hilarious to me.

One former football assistant was contacted by a school to interview for a similar job there. I found out about it and called him. He said to me: “That is not true. I was never contacted by that school. I don’t know where this stuff comes from.”

The problem he had was that he bragged to the guy one office down from him about it, and I found out. I wrote it, and, of course, shortly thereafter he was gone to the other school. I’m still waiting for an apology.

But in that case, I suppose he wasn’t lying because I found out he wasn’t actually initially contacted by the school. It was a search firm that contacted his agent at the point when I asked him about it.

So let’s review: A school contacted a search firm, that contacted an agent, who contacted a coach.

Is this contact?

Technically, no, it isn’t, but what are we talking about here? I mean, to quote Bob Rager: “I’m thinking, c’mon, man...”

Give me a break. But these are the kinds of games these people play in these things.

So again, always remember the motto: “everyone is lying to you” in these things, and you will be a lot less frustrated and crazy.

Let’s take it one step further and try to figure out why...

For starters, every school wants to make sure the guy they hire is their first choice, even if he isn’t. And every coach who doesn’t get hired wants to make sure he isn’t known as the guy who didn’t get the job.

If a coach’s name is involved in 10 searches and he doesn’t get any of the jobs, it could hurt his candidacy for the 11th job because they’d say, “Wait, why didn’t the other 10 hire you?”

If a school has offered the job to seven guys and all said no, why would the eighth guy want to take the job?

That’s why all of this stuff is so silly and there is so much lying and spinning of these things. And that brings me to the granddaddy of the NONSENSICAL COACHING SEARCH WORDS...

• Interview

This is my favorite because nobody has any idea what this word actually means.

I mean, is an interview a 45-minute conversation between an AD and a candidate on the phone, where the AD gets a feel for the guy and asks some questions about his background and his goals, but doesn’t get into salary, coaching staff hires, etc.?

And in that case above, about Barnes calling Miller: you don’t interview a guy like Miller if you are Pitt. You interview him after you already have the framework of a deal in place and he has agreed to come.

There is still an interview process in that case, but it is more of a formality.

And what if the search firm conducts the preliminary interviews for you to weed out candidates who don’t necessarily meet the parameters of what you are looking for? Is that an interview?

I can’t tell you how many times I have gone round for round with people, either over at Pitt, or with coaches, about what constitutes an interview and what doesn’t, but it is way too many.

Bottom line: Interviews in person, interviews on the phone, interviews through the search firm are all interviews, even if you don’t want to call them that.

But again, nobody wants to be the school that interviews 10 guys and didn’t hire any of them. Nobody wants to be the guy that interviewed for 10 jobs and didn’t get any of them.

These are all things to think about, and this just covers the part where people are playing word games and semantics as they try to issue non-denial denials. We haven’t even got to the point where we talk about guys who flat-out lie to you, which happens way too often.

I laugh when one outlet reports something citing sources and another has a quote that seems to refute it. In that case, based on experience, I almost always believe the sources and not the person speaking on the record for obvious reasons.

There are exceptions, of course, and not everyone lies, but it is amazing how many lie rather than just issuing a “no comment” or some weak non-denial denial. They don’t realize it doesn’t really serve them to lie because if I am calling you, it means I already know the truth.

If you are leaving for a job tomorrow, and a reporter says, “Are you leaving for a job tomorrow?”, it doesn’t serve any purpose for you to say, “No, absolutely not, that’s false. What are you talking about? You must be out of your mind.”

Just say, ”I can’t comment on that” or ”I’m happy here at this school but don’t know what the future holds” and move on.

This way you don’t look like a liar when you leave the next day.

One last example from the football beat way back...

I had a great source — the best I could have, actually — tell me an assistant coach was leaving for another job. I called the assistant and asked. He told me: “Nope, no way, not sure what you are talking about. I have not talked to anyone.”

My response: “OK, well I am writing it for tomorrow, I called you out of courtesy.”

His response: “Well, I wouldn’t do that because it isn’t accurate.”

Me “OK.”

I wrote it, used his quote that he had no idea what I was talking about, and about four days later he was introduced at the new school he claimed he didn’t have any idea about. And he got ripped on message boards for being a liar.

So once again, repeat and rinse: “Everybody is lying.”

I know this is a long post with a lot of tangents and anecdotes, but my hope was just to try and give some insight as to why these kinds of stories get put out there and also why a lot of times it is a good reporter getting led down the wrong path by a trusted source.

I know people think this is always speculation, making up stories and rumor mongering, but that’s not usually the case. More often than not, it is, like I wrote before, a bad source, a source with an agenda, a source with incomplete information who decides to take a leap of faith and fill in the blanks.

Barnes likely did talk to Miller over the past few days on the phone, and depending on the semantics of how you view the conversation, may have even offered him the job. But there was never a formal offer, and there wasn’t a conversation of any type between the two in Pittsburgh or anywhere in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

So let’s move on.

Miller to Pitt was always an extreme long shot

And most I’ve talked to over the past three years about it would tell you a more accurate way to characterize it is “no shot.”

However, those of you who read this blog know I have always tried to be realistic and a straight shooter.

As such, here is something that always bothers me when that conversation comes up. So, I am going to say something that might shock you, but I have to get it off of my chest:

Arizona is a tad bit overrated as this basketball Mecca and program of great, great tradition.

Yes, deep breath, there, I said it...

Is it a better job than Pitt?

Yep. It definitely is.

But how much better and where it ranks nationally is probably up for debate.

I went through this today with someone who wanted to tell me it was an absolute pipe dream that someone would leave one of the great programs in the country for a place like Pitt.

And of course, I asked him to please recite this great, great tradition and he talked about national titles, Final Fours, blue chips and lottery picks.

Of course, then I hit him with reality.

How many national championships have the Wildcats won?

Oh yeah, how about only one.

“Well, there must be a ton of Final Four appearances for such a big-time school right?”

Um, not really. Only four, or the same amount as noted blue blood powerhouses Kansas State, Utah and Wisconsin.

And just for comparison’s sake: North Carolina has 18 Final Fours; Kentucky and UCLA have 17. Louisville has 10, Michigan State has 9 and Indiana has 8.

Arizona has produced a fair amount of NBA first-round draft picks — 18 — but the reality is that many of them were developed by Lute Olson. They were not a bunch of blue chip five-star guys.

There were some, but Olson’s reputation was as a master of talent evaluation and a guy who was excellent at developing that talent.

All of Arizona’s high-level success was under Olson’s watch. In fact, the school hasn’t been to the Final Four without him on the bench, and the last time the Wildcats were in the Final Four is 2001. That’s 15 years.

Pick a program you think is a “big-time” program and tell me any that have not been to the Final Four in the past 15 years. Kansas? Duke? North Carolina? Indiana (though it has been almost as long, but this school has won national titles and been to Final Fours)? UCLA? Syracuse? Connecticut? Louisville? Kentucky? Georgetown? Michigan State? Ohio State?

Look, I am not trying to downplay that Arizona is a really good job or criticize it because it is a fantastic job. There are great facilities there, it is in a great location, there isn’t a lot of competition for players out there in the West, etc.

But when it comes to a tradition of winning, there is that as well. But let’s not lose our minds here.

One national title, four Final Fours (all with the same coach, none before 1983 and none since 2001) and zero trips to the Final Four in 15 years does not put this program on the same level of the other elite programs.

My point isn’t that Arizona isn’t a great job. My point is that all of this rhetoric I’ve heard for the past few days about that program doesn’t really match the reality of what the Wildcats have actually accomplished in their history.

Miller is great coach, Arizona is a great program and it makes complete sense that he’d have no interest in Pitt (because again, Arizona is better than Pitt). But aside from a decent list of NBA players, when I look at the Wildcats’ resume as a true “blue blood elite” program, I think of those old Wendy’s commercials and say to myself: “Where’s the beef?”

If there is anything good that came out of this fiasco Tuesday and everything that went on in the aftermath, it is this:

Tuesday officially ends any pipe dreams about one of the Millers riding through the Fort Pitt tunnel on a white horse to save the day for Pitt basketball. Now we can get down to trying to figure out who the real candidates are. Though, the use of that dadgum search firm will make it awfully tough to figure out who they are.