The Notre Dame football supporters may need to tone down their criticism of Dan Wolken. I am included in that.
Recently, the reporter has faced criticism for remarks he made immediately following Notre Dame’s football team’s defeat by Ohio State. The USA Today reporter declared the Irish locker room to be “amateur hour” on social media, which sparked a lot of hateful remarks.
Wolken said later in the week that while he was exiting the locker room, he heard some threatening remarks from several Notre Dame football players. And he has mainly stood by himself in those accusations for the majority of the week. But on Saturday, Eric Hansen, the publisher of InsideNDSports, virtually confirmed some of Wolken’s report while providing the necessary background information.
Hansen stated why he hadn’t written about Wolken’s story for a few days after stating that both locker rooms were open to the media following a short cooling off period.
Hansen said that he had to concentrate on speaking with players and coaches alone during the limited amount of time allotted for access, so “telling the story of other media members’ experiences in that open-locker room setting, and gathering the resources to do so, was not a priority.
Christian Gray, a sophomore cornerback for Notre Dame who was on the coverage for a crucial third-down convert by Ohio State late in the game, is the subject of the issue because several members of the media attempted to question him.According to what I was told, Gray was crying while holding a towel over his head since he was certain that his team had lost the game. He was unable to compose himself to respond when the media asked him about his play. Additionally, I was informed that injured cornerback Benjamin Morrison became involved and attempted to defend his friend when the media continued to press him.
The incident where players yelled at members of the media began here.
Hansen added, “I heard him tell a member of the media to “get out of the locker room” and call him a coward.” “His language and tone were completely inconsistent with anything I’ve ever encountered from Morrison.
On my tape of that interview, you can hear Morrison shouting in the background, along with other voices, some of which are from other players, as I found linebacker Drayk Bowen and conducted an interview with him after turning the bend to the other path through the locker room. It seems that other players were influenced by Morrison’s rage.
At one point, defensive backs coach Mike Mickens offered to fill in and take questions, Hansen continued. Wolken reportedly got his “coaches telling people not to ask certain questions” at this point.
In summary, Hansen feels that Gray could have been better prepared for the situation by the Notre Dame football sports information team. even figuring out how to give him a bit extra time to relax. Additionally, Hansen thinks that some of the media accounts he has heard were “way overblown,” and that some of them could have acted a little more professionally.
Although he didn’t particularly mention Wolken, he did think that people like Wolken might have gone too far in their description of the scenario. It’s obvious that the Notre Dame football team’s locker room was not in the best of shape, that the circumstances weren’t all that different from previous games, and that the athletic administration did a poor job of preparing the squad for what lay ahead following the National Championship loss.