There's a lot of hazards to being a student journalist, and at the top of the charts is that adults think you're just some punk kid who's not where you're supposed to be. Somewhat ironically, the worst behavior I saw during my stint at the Batt was from our own coach, Tony Barone, who would jump on student journalists (ours and those from other schools) for what he deemed questions beneath his status, ignore requests from the SID for player and coach interviews, and most famously, decided to not make himself or any of the players available after losing to Rice in the first round of the 1995 SWC Conference Tournament at Reunion Arena. All this for the coach of a team who made it to the NIT once and the NCAAs never in his tenure.
After the shenannigans at Reunion Arena, me and the photog were walking back down the tunnel to leave and bumped into Willis Wilson, the coach of Rice, who didn't know us from Adam and said, "I heard about Barone, do you guys need some quotes?"
That was almost 30 years ago, before cell phones or the Internet. I can't believe how myopic Arkansas's higher-ups are being about this incident that is plain as day what happened. Blowing it off as some sort of accidental contact is going to see it turn from a campfire to an inferno for them. What idiots.
Life is better with a beagle