Dan Mullen is not a fan of injury news being reported by the people that cover his football team.
The Mississippi State coach was asked Tuesday about the availability of a player. Mullen cut the reporter off before he was able to finish the question and had this to say (comments start at the 4:30 mark).
"I expect everybody to play. And I’ll never comment on an injury again. Because you guys obviously don’t need me to comment on injuries. Because you know more than I do. You report more than I would ever say for the benefit, of the young people’s benefits, not so you could get a scoop out … we’ll never comment on an injury in this program again so please don’t ever ask."
We'd like to give Mullen the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe he was having a bad day. Because there's no way a coach would be this petty, right?
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We're guessing his reaction has something to do with the report about star cornerback Will Redmond from last week. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported that Redmond had torn an ACL. When asked about Redmond's injury, Mullen made the following comments.
“We don’t talk about injuries in our program. You want to find out about our program, buy a ticket and show up on Saturday.”
You'll notice that Mullen said then that his program doesn't talk about injuries. So how will he ever comment on an injury "again" if his program doesn't do it in the first place?
His Tuesday line about not revealing injuries for the sake of the players is weak as well. You can make the argument that being upfront about a player's health status is in the player's best interest. It would reduce the number of questions as to why a player is not playing or missed time at practice. In very few instances is relaying the actual cause of something a bad idea.
But of course, we say that as members of the media and not as a paranoid football coach who may not want to talk about the availability of players for strategic reasons. And if that's the case, Mullen should be up front about it and let his team's fans know that he's the reason they won't get much official information. It's a lot easier to understand than coachspeak about wanting to protect his players.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!