Former Coach Caught In The Wake

Normally it doesn't matter to me about the person or source which breaks a sports (news) story. Getting the facts right is far more important. In the case of the Tommy Elrod firing, I'll make an exception and congratulate ACCSports.com for being first to report this unfortunate event.

As a web site which covers that Conference, its staff did some digging and was the first to report that Wake Forest University had found that its football radio analyst (Elrod) had been fired by IMG Management due to being discovered leaking some of the team's confidential game strategies to an undetermined number of opponents since the start of the 2014 season.

Technically, Elrod did not work for Wake Forest, since IMG owns the broadcast rights and hires the personnel. However, Elrod got the job from his experience as a player, graduate assistant, and 11 seasons as an assistant coach with the school's football team. Elrod lost his assistant coach position prior to the 2014 season when Dave Clawson became Head Coach.

Reports are that Elrod provided confidential game information he received as a team broadcaster to "multiple opponents" over the past three seasons, according to the report.

The ACCSports.com web site should be commended for researching and reporting on this story. This is difficult on the reporting media. As much as this needed to be reported in detail, there is now concern among game broadcasters about what the future holds. Pro and college team broadcasters, as well as national network play-by-play announcers and analysts usually attend practices and have ample opportunities to talk with coaches and players leading into the games about strategies so they can be better prepared to communicate what is happening to the fans.

With coaching and team management positions being highly competitive, it would not be surprising to see media access become more strict or limited from now on.

There are many incidents of media members who either broadcast for or regularly cover a team (or school sports) who are aware of internal things taking place which are not to be reported to the public. This incident, which hopefully is isolated, is going to put a lot of doubt into a lot of coaches, players, and management about confidentiality.

It is also another story (since this is a sports media blog only) to think that it appears that certain opposing coaches and perhaps players may have actually used the information that Elrod wrongly revealed to their advantage. Even if they did not, which we'd all like to think is the vast majority, the question must be raised as to why no one reported Elrod's actions earlier than after his third full season of doing this horrible thing.


Congratulations to those about to be inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame, which just announced its inductees for its 10th year. Verne Lundquist clearly leads the pack, fitting as he retires from his (seemingly) hundreds of seasons of calling college football, as well as hundreds NFL and NBA games from local radio (Dallas Cowboys) to network TV.

Other inductees include long time baseball analyst Tim McCarver and CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus.


Fox Sports' FS1 may have a long way to go in the ratings game, but it is catching up to ESPN in terms of the number of on air people it shares with them. Now Fox has added NFL analyst Chris Carter to the fold. For now, Carter will appear on various studio shows until or unless he is assigned to one. The rest of the list of "common" personalities includes Skip Bayless, Colin Cowherd, and Jason Whitlock.


As the NFL season hits playoff crunch and the prime-time matchups start to get better, the audience is returning. On Sunday (12/11), the Dallas vs. N.Y. Giants finished as the highest prime time rating for a Week 14 telecast since 1997. Then on Monday (12/12), the New England win over Baltimore tied for the highest Monday Night Football audience of this season.


On the college side, it could be because the game was moved back at least a week later than its usual time and came up on a much weaker Saturday lineup, but last Saturday's Army vs. Navy football game actually drew a decent audience. CBS reportedly had nearly eight million viewers during the game, making it the most watched of these matchups since the 1992 game.