Columnist protests UK’s Madness threat

Less than an hour before Big Blue Madness began Friday night, the University of Kentucky Athletics Department sent its annual e-mail to reporters advising them that NCAA rules prohibited interviews with prospects in attendance.
The e-mail, which was in all capital letters, included a thinly-veiled threat: “THE CREDENTIAL OF ANY MEDIA MEMBER OR ENTITY VIOLATING THESE RULES WILL BE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE TERMINATION.”
Bob Watkins, whose syndicated column appears in 34 newspapers in Kentucky, objected to the tone of UK’s e-mail. He sent a blistering e-mail response Saturday morning to the person in charge of UK’s media relations, Senior Associate Athletics Director/Communications DeWayne Peevy.
Watkins, who lives in the Elizabethtown area and did not attend Madness, called UK’s e-mail “disgraceful” and chastised Peevy for trying to control reporters in a heavy-handed way.
“Not only are media not subject to NCAA rules, but for you, as spokesman for a public university, to threaten reporters with termination of credentials to do their job as they & editors see fit is outrageous,” he wrote Peevy, “and affirms the continuing arrogance that is UK’s athletics department when the subject is men’s basketball.
“You should be ashamed. You ought to be censured.”
Less than three hours after sending his e-mail, Watkins received a response from UK’s media relations office. “You have been removed from the UKATHLETICS-MEDIA list,” the response read, meaning UK had removed Watkins’ name and e-mail address from the list of reporters who receive the athletic department’s news releases.
“I think that’s petty and juvenile,” Watkins, 68, said Sunday. “There’s such a flow of information on the Internet. You can’t shut people off where maybe you could in the 1950s and ‘60s. But it’s petty you’d even want to.”
Later Sunday, Peevy said that UK’s Media Relations office misunderstood Watkins’ original e-mail as a request to have his name removed. UK had restored Watkins’ name to the list of people receiving news releases, Peevy said.
The NCAA gives schools discretionary power to limit media reports about prospects’ recruiting visits. The intent is to prevent staged press conferences or a pattern of publicity that could be construed as a recruiting advantage.
If a reporter interviewed a prospect at Big Blue Madness and/or during a recruiting visit without the school’s knowledge, the violation would be secondary (or minor) in nature.
Watkins, a 1972 UK graduate with a degree in journalism, said his objection did not pertain to NCAA rules.
“It’s common sense,” he said. “You don’t tell reporters how to do their jobs and expect to get away with it unless you’re Kentucky basketball.”
In his e-mail to Peevy, which he also sent to Director of Athletics Mitch Barnhart, The Herald-Leader and “the house guys” (Dave Baker and Dick Gabriel), Watkins advised Peevy to be more gracious in asking for media cooperation. “Simply remind reporters about the possibility of NCAA action against UK if . . . ,” he wrote.
Peevy said UK’s softer approach in the past emboldened reporters to seek out prospects. So UK took a “more aggressive stance,” he said. The UK compliance office wrote the harsher language.
In his e-mail, Watkins accused Peevy of becoming “the face of UK’s Party of NO! As in ‘no comment,’ . . . ‘this subject is closed’ . . . ‘we will have no further comment.’ ”
Watkins, who entered the newspaper business in 1972 and began writing a sports column in 1981, said he had no illusions of changing UK approach toward the media.
“I know I’m tilting at windmills,” he said. “I understand that. I’m going to do it anyway. It’s just the right thing to do, I think.”
Peevy saw the episode as a teaching moment.
“He didn’t take a subtle approach,” Peevy said of Watkins’ original e-mail. “Maybe we both learned something.”