Overreact much?

In light of a recent editorial that ran in UWW's college newspaper the Royal Purple yesterday, head football coach Lance Leipold has banned the RP from covering football.

Lancy-boy was upset over an editorial, and EDITORIAL mind you, where the writer talked about how one day at the weight room three athletes from an elite program refused to turn over their IDs to the weight room staff. They had their IDs on them, they just didn't want to hand them over. Eventually two caved and one didn't so the police had to be called.

And what did Lancy-boy have to say about it? "This is [expletive deleted] bullshit," Leipold said. "It's going to be a bitch to try to cover football next season."

Ooooooooooh Coach Leipold. Could you have dug yourself into a bigger hole?

The paper is out on Wednesday and by Wednesday night, an article was on the RP website about him banning the reporters from covering the team.

Someone needs to learn you shouldn't send angry emails right away Lance. It is a bad, bad thing to do.

I can't do this story justice just by recapping it here. No, you have got to read it because I guarantee you will be saying to yourself "wow, what a douche!"

Here is the editorial that ran that infuriated Leipold.

And here is the article about Lance's reaction.

He needs to cool his jets. and to take it out on poor little Chris! I know him, sort of, and he seems like a very nervous sort of kid, not very confident when he talks but I think he's a good reporter. He probably almost peed himself when Lance started to scream at him. I know I would. But then I think after the initial shock, I'd prepare my defense and lay into him.

Oh, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has also picked up on the story.

Now if there is one thing I have learned in my years here and just by observing it is as journalists, we don't like it when you bitch us out for no good reason. Regardless of the level of journalism, it is kind of like when you screw with one, you screw with all. Just look at the headlines on CNN.com when Iran was threw that one journalist in jail. Sure Iran-Whitewater is a helluva difference but it is comparable. There are plenty of hack writers out there, there are plenty of bad reporters and I myself have discredited the RP on more then one occasion (and I wouldn't call myself an amazing reporter either). This is not one of them. If the story had ran as a news piece then yes, that would have been shoddy reporting on the RP's side. But it didn't. It was editorial, found in the opinion section. You could not mistake it for news. The reporter not once mentioned what program the athletes were from, just an elite one. So you'd think football or basketball. Lance made the mistake of opening his big mouth. He could have dealt with this in a much more professional manner. A lot of people in the athletic department don't really care for the RP, they see it as inferior. To the Journal Sentinel, it is, sure. But the thing they aren't thinking about is a vast majority of the students read the RP every week compared to the JS. And if you read the comments made by students following both articles, you'll see the majority of them disagree with Lance. The administrators underestimate the RP's campus power. And that's their own damn fault.

Oh, and I would loooooooooove to see how this effects recruiting. If my kid was being recruited by Whitewater to play some football and I read what Lance said, I'd be a little skeptical. D3 athletes don't get scholarships so I don't know how I'd feel paying for my kid to go play for a dill-hole.