Hart is a young man and hopefully he will learn to comport himself better in the future.
It is unfortunate that Carr is such a poor example for his team though.
This article was the cover of the local Columbus weekly independent newspaper on Nov 16th.
http://www.theotherpaper.com/TOP11-16/11-16_coverstory.html
CARR CRASHLloyd loses it after ABC interviewBy Erik Johns / Novmeber 16, 2006
File/Dan Trittschuh
Yelling and F-bombs: Coach Carr
Lloyd Carr has earned a reputation for being a little pissy when reporters ask questions he doesn?t like. Going into halftime of the 2003 Ohio State-Michigan game?a game the Wolverines would win?ABC sideline reporter Todd Harris asked the Michigan football coach why his team ran out the clock instead of trying to score with less than a minute in the half.
?Why would you ask a dumb question like that?? Carr replied.
After Harris rephrased his question, the coach stared at him, smirked and then walked away with a disgusted look on his face.
That little snub pales in comparison to what happened in Ann Arbor Monday, when Carr unleashed a profanity-laced tirade on an ABC television crew.
Nerves are bound to be a little frayed this week. We are, after all, on the cusp of the Game of Three Centuries. Never in the history of what ESPN has declared the greatest rivalry in sports?which dates to 1897?has it been a No. 1-No. 2 matchup.
And Monday, in a closed-off room within the Wolverines? practice facility, the pressure got to Coach Carr, who?s 6-5 in the rivalry but 1-4 since Jim Tressel arrived in Columbus.
After Carr?s weekly press conference Monday, he went off to tape a private interview with Lisa Salters, who does sideline reporting for ABC/ESPN?s college football broadcasts.
A couple other reporters lingered in a nearby lobby, hoping to get a couple more questions with Carr when he finished with Salters. What they got instead was the sound of the coach opening a can of Wolverine whoopass on the ABC folks.
Salters, a former Penn State basketball player, has no doubt heard salty language from a coach before but probably not at the conclusion of the kind of fluffy interview ABC inserts during a game when it?s second down and Brent Musburger can?t think of anything to say about the preceding play.
Jim Carty, a sportswriter for
The Ann Arbor News, was one of three reporters who heard the commotion?but evidently the only one who saw fit to report on it.
?All of a sudden,? said Carty, ?you sort of heard up the hallway the door opening in a louder, more commotion-y way than it normally would. You heard a loud, angry ?Fuck!? which was clearly Lloyd.?
?As he got closer, I heard him say, ?What the fuck kind of questions were those???
Carr then stormed out the door to his SUV, Carty said. As the coach waited for the rest of his entourage to get to the car, the door opened and closed, and Carty picked up bits of Carr?s conversation with Michigan?s football spokesman.
?I heard Lloyd saying, quite irately, to Dave Ablauf, who?s the assistant director of media relations, ?You go back in there and tell them?? then the door closed, so we didn?t hear the rest of it,? Carty said.
Carty, who has been covering Michigan football for five years and knows Carr pretty well, was still stunned by the outburst. And as of Wednesday, he still hadn?t figured out what might have set the coach off.
?With my history with Lloyd, he usually handles direct football or job-related questions fairly professionally,? he said. ?He may glare a little bit, he may set his jaw, he may make it very clear he?s not enjoying it, he may answer in the most terse manner possible, but he usually answers your questions professionally.?
It?s the personal questions or questions about his players that set Carr off, Carty said.
A couple years ago, the coach chewed out longtime
Detroit Free Press columnist Michael Rosenberg for asking a question about a player cited for underage drinking.
Earlier this season, wide receiver Adrian Arrington was arrested on a domestic violence charge after a fight with his girlfriend. Could a question about Arrington have been the spark Monday? Carty doesn?t think so.
?Normally you could make some guesses about things because normally there are some ongoing issues,? Carty said. ?The Arrington thing just doesn?t seem like a big enough deal for ABC to be asking about it.?
?Could it be his record against Tressel? Could it be his future? It could be any of those things,? Carty said. ?There?s really no current issue out there that I would look at and say, ?Oh, yeah, that?s what it must?ve been.??
After Carr stormed off, Ablauf had the unenviable task of going back in to the locker room and patching things up with the ABC crew?which Carty says took nearly an hour.
Whatever Ablauf said apparently worked. ESPN has said nothing about the blowup. In fact, when Carty asked to chat with Salters about it, he was given the runaround.
The only other mention of the incident outside of the
Ann Arbor News was in a Yahoo! Sports column about Bobby Knight. ABC and ESPN have decided not to share the conversation with the public?at least not yet.
The Other Paper?s efforts to get a comment from ESPN were unsuccessful.
And Ablauf isn?t willing to shed any more light on the situation.
?There?s really nothing to talk about,? he said Wednesday. ?It?s not something that?s being discussed publicly.?
So things have quieted back down, at least until halftime Saturday, when Lisa Salters will presumably have the task of extracting a quote from her buddy Lloyd.
:osu4: :osu2: